u/PeakLoud2274

A few months ago, I, a university PhD student ended up bumping into some university staff members at the local pub. I was hanging with an older staff member and some other researchers.

Once the younger researchers went home it was just me and my friend, a staff member. He suggested we join tables with some other older staff. I was with them maybe an hour and one man decided to talk with me the whole night.

It went from him first bringing up some work things he was pissed off with me about which was weird.

Then the conversation turned more normal and we talked about cooking, thank god.

Then he reached over and touched my face and called me "his little bitch". I kind of reflexively said "don't touch me" and this escalated into him immediately becoming aggressive, wanting to take it outside and fight me.

I left almost immediately after. I made a report to the university and I got the pub to set aside the footage.

The investigation consists of witness statements which I know will be lies. All of these men are friends with this person. And I don't think they feel any particular responsibility to hold him accountable. Including the man I'm friends with, honestly, push come to shove I don't trust him to tell the truth.

But that shouldn't matter, I have the CCTV footage. Except no I don't. I've been told that due to GDPR this man will need to consent to his footage being shown.

So that's it. He'll be off the hook and there's nothing I can do because the perpetrator does not consent to sharing evidence of his wrongdoing?

Should I escalate this to the police at this point?

In spring 2024, for whatever reason, I wasn't doing too badly in getting matches on hinge. Unfortunately, I was getting seriously fatigued by the lack of effort on the part of my matches. I think I had to speak to around 40 walls before I met someone who'd actually hold a normal conversation.

There was one person I still think about sometimes mostly due to the pacing. When we matched, they replied quickly and sent really high effort messages. The next day, they dragged a bit more but remained quite high effort. Over the course of two weeks the messages were probably "medium effort" with three days between them at the end.

In principle I don't mind texting a bit longer before meeting but the general trajectory seemed to be down hill. There was also no clear path to taking this offline. I felt that if this was just going to keep fizzling I'd prefer to nip it in the bud: if i wanted a penpal I'd buy a pigeon.

After three days of waiting and having being trying to arrange something I sent a text saying "it sounds like this isn't going to work out, I'm looking for something more reciprocal".

Immediately they responded with multiple paragraphs explaining they'd "just been through something" unspecified and how they were "totally into me" but respect me decision.

I'd been breadcrumbed before, let alone the boring matches. I decided not to believe it but part of me still wonders whether I was just projecting frustration onto my match or if I made the right call?