I failed to protect her

hypercolius said:

what if she ended up badly hurt?

Try looking at the picture from a wider angle.

What if you had gotten hurt?

What if you had tried to restrain the old man and ended up breaking his arm (the elderly often have brittle bones so this is a possibility)? You would now be seen as the agressor in the eyes of the law and be the one prosecuted for bodily harm.

It becomes a minfield which is why other people step back and say "it isn't worth it" if they have no stake in the goings-on.

I fear society has long passed the point of caring about individuals very much.

If you do choose to step in then at least be informed as to the possible consequences then decide if a stranger is worth the risk you bring on yourself.

I should have stepped in, though. I did it before. And there was nobody else around- what if she ended up badly hurt? He wouldn't have really been able to take me head-on due to his size and age unless he had a knife with him (and I have had training even with that). 

I was upset because me walking away like that reminded me of how everyone walked away from me when three girls turned an entire university society against me. Instead of calling them out, everyone just went along with it. 

And when I directly asked for help once from 2 people, they made excuses but never stepped it. That's why I felt bad- because I know what being abandoned like that feels like. 

That is why I was so upset. It happened and started in front of me.

Two cyclists cycling close together, when suddenly one of them began yelling at the other, got off his bike and started threatening her. 

I was really disappointed in myself- I could have physically removed him due to his specifics without any issue. Instead, I just continued walking. 

But I get what you mean about 'welcoming' intervention. I intervened like that in school against 6 people bullying a girl. The situation resulted in that girl spreading hateful rumours about me. 

Is anyone giving any consideration to the possibility that the man may have been having an autistic meltdown?

By not directly getting involved with the confrontation you remainded a resource available to potentially go somewhere to get more help (in the event of if you had heard the situation further escalate).

Sometimes, becoming part of the physical problem would limit other options still being available to obtain appropriate help a different way.

Also, I am not sure you had all the facts available to fully inform your decision-making; as I am not sure you witnessed the initial phase of the issue.  That is not your fault, as you could not influence that fact.

We each try to do our best under duress.  None of us know for sure how a given challenging situation will impact us at the time (or afterwards). 

How we react to an event on one day is not the prediction for how we might react to a similar situation on a different day.

We also ought to consider that not everyone we perceive as potentially needing our help always necessarily welcomes that intervention - which means "perfection" is unattainable.

In an urban environment, from a street smart safety viewpoint, it is also worth just quickly checking off our mental list: "could this be a staged distraction?"  (Who else is around - I hadn't noticed them before - and are they seemingly more interested in me / my bag / my mobile etc  than the incident we can both surely hear?).  Sad, but pragmatic considerations too.

It may not feel comfortable afterwards in retrospect; however, our best on the day, even if not perhaps matching up to our best intentions for real World considerations and also then taking into account our own limitations and safeguarding - just has to be good enough.  You are enough.  You took the trouble to be concerned about the situation - but sometimes that is all the option afforded us.

After all, you do not know if your potential intervention might have escalated matters beyond your capability and resolution capacity on the day.

It's natural to be afraid. Fir me it's also a freeze response, especially if it's a quick action, it's loud and chaotic, I freeze. Sometimes getting involved may make the things even worse and put you in trouble.

I believe it is relatively common for people not to step in. There's a mindset of "someone else will help", or not wanting to get involved. From a safety standpoint as well, you have no idea what people are hiding under clothing, or what they might do.

I don't think it makes someone horrible for not being the person that steps in. The horrible person is the one commiting the act.

How shocking for the woman and how horrible for you to witness that.

I think the theory of what you could have done and the safe and practical action of what you actually did, are naturally going to provoke tension in your mind, and lead to all kinds of negative thoughts such as you are a “horrible person”.

The reality is that you weren’t responsible for the incident. If you had stepped in, even though it seemed the man was frail, he clearly was violent and you don’t know if he was carrying anything that could have injured you or worse.

We all do things that we regret, and things that we believe we should have done. You likely hadn’t ever come across an incident just like that, and it is a learning opportunity for you, rather than something to blame yourself over. 

Police officers are trained over many months to deal with situations like the one you witnessed, and moreover, they often have the body protection and weapons to help them. You likely have no experience, 

The situation is in past and I know you said you are sure you would chicken out next time, but if it helps, you could replay the events in your mind and think of how you would deal differently but safely with the situation. It might be that you wouldn’t do anything differently, and that is often the only safe and realistically practical thing that you can do. You could walk past, but go back afterwards, or you could imagine always carrying your phone to call for help, etc. 

I think you are being very harsh on yourself and you don’t deserve to be consumed by such negative thoughts. 

Thats a really difficult one and I think a situation where you're damned if you do and damned if you don't, I probably would of asked the woman if she was OK and taken it from there. But the problem with intervening with an elderly person is if you have to intervene physically, elderly people can have very frail bones so restraiing them is difficult as you can accidently injure them.

I supose the other thing is the woman might have been behaving badly for the man to start shouting like that? I've been known to lean out fo my car window and shout 'Do you want to see your next birthday? If so look where you're going' when cyclists have done something stupid or someone face down in thier phone has walked out in front of me without looking.

hypercolius said:

I feel I'm a horrible person for not stepping in to protect her.

In todays society there is a significant risk of being told to keep your nose out of their business (by both), by being called a chauvanist for assuming she needed a man to stand up for her or for getting into an altrication with the man, hurting him when you had to restrain him from hitting you then getting sued.

The risk of standing up for someone in distress is a real kicker I'm afraid.

Probably the best you could do is to video it on your phone quite blatantly and say "I'm going to report you to the police" and then ask the lady if she wanted any support from this aggression. Let the fear of being proven committing a crime keep him in his place - then offer your contact info to the woman in case she wants to use it in a prosecution later (email address is probably enough).

We all suffer from "what if" analysis of events but it is how you respond to them in future having thought it through that will define you I feel.

So having said all that, what would you do differently if you could?