Lauren Young joins #HijaAko movement, shares harassment experience

Lauren Young joined the #HijaAko movement against victim blaming and shared her own harassment experience on Twitter.

The actress shared that she was sober at a bar in Boracay with her friends, when a guy suddenly "kept talking to me and bothering me and just grabbed my boobs out of nowhere."

Lauren noted that she was fully covered up even at the beach, "yet he violated me publicly. #HijaAko."

She added another tweet and stressed that harassment is "not about what you're wearing."

"It's the fact that he was disgusting and wanted to take advantage of me," she added.

"I was not intoxicated - and even if I was - it doesn't give him the right to do that. #HijaAko," she added.

I was at a bar in Boracay, sober, with my friends and a guy kept harrassing everyone there. He kept talking to me and bothering me and just grabbed my boobs out of nowhere. I was fully covered up even at the beach and yet he violated me publicly. #HijaAko https://t.co/loYgJKru41

— Lauren Young (@loyoung) June 14, 2020

The hashtag #HijaAko trended on Twitter Sunday, after Frankie Pangilinan used it in response to TV and radio personality Ben Tulfo, who addressed her "hija"  in his tweets, saying "a sex offender's desire to commit a crime will always be there."

According to Tulfo, all the sex offenders need is "an opportunity, when to commit the crime. "

"Sexy ladies, careful with the way you dress up! You are inviting the beast," he added.

Retweeting Tulfo's statement, Frankie listed down three important points on the matter:

• Rape culture is real and a product of this precise line of thinking, where the behavior is normalized, particularly by men.
• The way any person dresses should not be deemed as ‘opportunity’ to sexually assault them. ever.
• Calling me hija will not belittle my point.

Frankie then started using the hashtag, even changing her Twitter name to "Hija" to encourage people to be stronger than their abusers and to fight victim blaming.

#HijaAko has generated thousands of tweets from netizens who are all speaking up against victim blaming and revealing their own horror sexual assault stories.

Frankie spoke up against victim blaming on social media, after Lucban Municipal Police Station warned girls not to wear short clothes to prevent sex crimes.

On Saturday, PNP chief General Archie Francisco Gamboa directed the Directorate for Police Community Relations to look into the matter.

The Lucban PNP Facebook page was found shut down earlier on Sunday morning. — Jannielyn Ann Bigtas/LA, GMA News