Mary Killen Mary Killen

The men I’ve groped (including Boris)

I’ve been putting my hands on legs for years

issue 05 October 2019

Charlotte Edwardes reports that Boris put his hand on her leg during lunch 20 years ago. Full disclosure, I put my hand on Boris’s leg 20 years ago during lunch. It wasn’t that I was making a pass at him. I just wanted to hold his attention while I was telling him something I wanted him to listen to. Now I am worrying. What if Boris and/or a cohort of other males come forward? ‘Mary assaulted me in a historic sex abuse incident. #SheToo.’

These are topsy-turvy times. Anything could happen and now I think about it, I’m sure I have been putting my hands on legs and generally assaulting men for years — absentmindedly.

But the past was a foreign country. They did things differently there. At one time it was honestly the norm for men to have their hands on the legs of the women on either side of them during dinner.

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