This is me:

I’m the girl who got headbutted. You might recall this incident from a few years back with either a feeling of support and the urge to high-five me, or an intense dislike because I’m mad feminist, hell-bent on making up stories to demonise men. If you are not familiar with the story, I will give you the short version; I saw a man attacking his girlfriend and I stepped in to stop him, resulting in him headbutting me after a lengthly confrontation where he threatened to have me killed. The man was prosecuted. I made a post about it on my personal blog which had about two hundred followers. The post gained a monumental amount of attention, but a couple of months later, someone decided to ‘prove’ that I had made all of it up. I was the centre of an online witch hunt for months. I was threatened, bullied, laughed at and shot down whenever I tried to offer a rebuttal. I wasn’t too bothered, because the man had been sent to prison and I stayed in contact with the young girl who was very grateful that I had stepped in. It didn’t matter to me that a few thousand people thought I had made it up; I knew the truth, the police knew the truth and my friends and family knew the truth. I stopped using my blog and ignored all the mad comments.

But it continued. It snowballed dramatically. Before I go on, I can assure you that this happened. I promise. You can Google my name, Laurie Malyon, and you are one click away from finding numerous articles very clearly stating my attacker’s sentencing.

I’ve put up with comments and threats for almost two years now, and whilst everyone around me tells me to ignore it I can no longer sit back and watch people slander me on the Internet. I realise that I am utterly powerless in changing the opinions of 500, 000 people who are too lazy to spend five seconds doing some research on Google, but I’m going to give it one last go before I stop talking about this godforsaken controversy forever.

I did a good thing. I am proud to say that. I stepped in when many others would not have. It’s very easy to see something like that and pray that someone else stops it so you can remain a bystander, but there was no one else around to stop it when I saw it and I’ll be fucked if I’m ever going to sit by and watch somebody be harmed intentionally at the hands of someone else. I am still in contact with the girl. I see her perhaps once every two months, and she still thanks me every time she sees me. I helped her out of a situation that everyone was too scared to help me out of when I was her age. I stepped the fuck up.

The comments I have received about the situation make me very, very upset. I am a human with real feelings and I can read everything that people write. I’m put to shame on feminism blogs that read the ‘debunking’ post and didn’t think to research it. They say that I’m giving feminism a bad name by lying. They say that I’m an attention whore. They say that I’m an idiot for claiming to have stepped into a domestic situation because that can often make it worse. They ask if I’ve ever even heard of a domestic situation. They tell me I deserve to be in a domestic situation for lying. They say that I’m ugly. They say the amount of makeup I wear in my photos is silly and I look like a slag. Now forgive me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that absolutely negating the entire point of feminism? As a well educated and practising feminist, it is not the comments from men saying that they’ll ‘give me a real black eye’ that upset me, it’s the comments that are hateful and shaming from my fellow sisters.

A lot of people speculate (because I’m a loony feminist) whether or not I’d have stepped in if it were a woman beating a man. Of course I would have. Violence is violence and I completely agree that anyone attacking anyone should be stopped. Twisting it into this and challenging me on it creates even more diversion from the real issue. Why the hell are people trying to pick so many holes in my story? Was it really that difficult to believe that I was a normal girl, on her way to work, who simply stepped in when I saw someone in need? Why have I been questioned and scrutinised for two years? Surely the anger shouldn’t have been directed at me for posting about it, but towards the man who succeeded in assaulting two young women, entirely unprovoked?

I am not taking it any more. I am not remaining silent whilst people call me names and post about how I deserve to die. I am sick to the back teeth of being branded a ‘whore’ by feminists who aren’t really feminists if they’re using a word associated with slut shaming when nothing about my story even mentions anything sexual. I am fed up with being told by men that they’d rape me then give me a black eye with their dicks and how no one would believe me if I tried to get them arrested because I’m that mad man-hating feminist who lied about being headbutted.

I’m trying to undo all the unfair comments with this post. I’m speaking out to the 3.6 million of you who have read about the situation, whether I was portrayed as a do-gooder or a liar. I am asking you to share this so that I can attempt to clear my name. I understand that the post has spread like wildfire throughout the Internet in it’s entirety and that it’s unlikely I will get any kind of redemption from this, but even if this makes 100 people believe me I’ll feel a little happier about the whole situation.