Sexual harassment was rampant at this year’s first Coachella weekend, Teen Vogue’s Vera Papisova reported.
“This year’s Coachella experience was also full of moments I never saw on Instagram: being repeatedly violated by strangers,” Papisova wrote in her report for the magazine.
She said of 54 women she interviewed, every single one of them had a story of being harassed during the weekend.
“In the three days I was at Coachella, I only spent a total of 10 hours at the actual festival, where I watched numerous performances and interviewed festival goers about their experience with sexual assault and harassment for Teen Vogue,” she said, adding that she was also a victim of harassment.
“During the 10 hours I was reporting on this story, I was groped 22 times,” wrote Papisova.
The women cited in Papisova’s story said that the crowded concerts seemed to make harassers feel like they could get away with touching them inappropriately.
From the article:
“It never goes further than a touch on my butt or my back, but it’s not an OK place to be touched,” said June, 20. “Would you do that to a coworker? Or another guy? Then don’t do that to me. This is my third day, and it’s probably happened to me 40 times this weekend.”
“In a really big crowd, you want to have a good time, and you want to dance,” said Phoebe, 20, “It’s just really uncomfortable to feel someone right behind you, touching you or rubbing you. It happened to me a lot at Post Malone.”
More than 90 percent of female concert goers experience harassment, according to a survey by OurMusicMyBody.
Some incidents went beyond unwated touching. Papisova said that one man called her a “heinous b—-” after she refused to kiss him in a VIP area. She described another instance in which a male stranger accused her of having “attitude” after she told him not to follow her into a bathroom stall.
Read Papisova’s full report here.