Chelsie Gleason claims shares her encounter with a harasser on TikTok and receives a large amount of praise for her reaction.
Chelsie Gleason was recording her weight routine while at the gym, and it’s a good job she did as she managed to catch footage of a man harassing her, which she claims has been going on for weeks.
After posting the video and getting a large amount of responses, Chelsie then posted subsequent videos giving some background on the situation.
She said: “When I first had an interaction with this guy, he was, he seemed like just a random nice guy that would come up and talk to people in the gym.
@justchesslee being a female is fun(:
♬ original sound – Chelsie Gleason
“After weeks and weeks and weeks of weeks of this happening, you know, it started getting a little weird. Like, why is he approaching me, I’ve already told him, you know, leave me alone. I don’t really need your help. I don’t really want your advice. I’m not asking you for anything. Just kind of leave me alone.
“So me and my friends started noticing his weird behaviour, he would go up to random people and talk about weird conspiracy stuff, you know, black vans following him, you know, people’s personalities being changed.”
Commenting on the moment captured in the video where the man approached her she said: “When he turned around, he called me f*****g traitor, which, you know, he’s called me before, so I didn’t think anything of it, honestly at that point.
“Staff is well aware, we’re all watching him. We’re not really doing too much, because he’s just, it’s all verbal. And it’s nothing threatening, really, until about a couple weeks ago.
@justchesslee Heres the long awaited story time! Again thank you @crunchfitness for all the help ! #fitness #fitnessgirls ♬ original sound – Chelsie Gleason
“So a couple of weeks ago, we had a really horrible interaction with him. I was with some of my girlfriends working out and he came up to us and I was just like, dude, just f**k off. Leave us alone. We don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to talk to you. I’ve told you before just f**k off.
“And he called me crazy, called me a b***h, literally got all defensive. He would follow me around areas of the gym, just make weird comments to me harass me, and a lot of my gym brothers, they would have my back, they made sure that I got to my car safely.”
“Finally, after this video blew up, we got his name, we got ahold of him. He’s banned. He can’t come back.
“When I got to the gym last night, they informed me that he tried to come back and the police were called and he was arrested. And they found he already had a warrant out for stalking another girl.
“So but there you go, that’s pretty much it. He’s in jail. Now he’s kicked out. He’s banned, everybody safe.”
@justchesslee Also was not trying to bash the gym at all by making the post just Spreading Awareness!! #besafe #gymgirls #fitness ♬ original sound – Chelsie Gleason
In the original video posted you can see the man approach Chelsie, who keeps her earphones in as an attempt to ignore him. The man walks away but subsequently comes back, much closer to Chelsie this time at which point she drops the weight she’s holding, takes a step back and tells him to back away.
Comments on the video have supported Chelsie in her response to this interaction saying things such as: “Yes! Always be loud and call attention! I’m so sorry you had to deal with that.” While another wrote: “YES MAKE A SCENE YELL AT HIM DO NOT BE POLITE.” The general consensus seems to be that if you are dealing with a similar situation you should call attention to it, which another comment saying: “Ladies: Don’t ever be afraid to be loud and cause a scene if a man is making you uncomfortable.”
It seems that Chelsie did the right thing to call attention to the situation while the gym also responded well getting the man banned. Hopefully this will lead to more women being encouraged to stand up for themselves and call out creepy or unwanted attention.
