When justice turns away from the silent
This morning, I was reviewing footage from my home security camera. Around 11:17 p.m. the previous evening, a woman walked by alone, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but within moments, a man appeared in the same frame, walking the same direction. What happened next was immediate and chilling. He caught up to her, grabbed and pulled at her purse, then grabbed her right arm and shoulder and physically manhandled her while he directed her out of view of the camera.
She was gone for approximately three minutes. When she reappeared, she was walking alone again, but everything about her demeanor had changed. She was walking quickly, her posture stiff, her energy unmistakably altered from when she had first passed by.
Concerned by what I saw, and deeply unsettled by what I didn’t see during those three minutes off camera, I called the local police department to report the incident and offer the footage. I made it clear that I was not speculating, I had a video that showed a woman being forcibly grabbed and removed from view by a man in the dead of night. The officer I spoke to was polite but dismissive. They told me that unless the woman herself reported a crime, there was nothing they could do. They didn’t want the footage. They closed the matter right then and there.
And that was that.
But what exactly justifies doing nothing in a situation like this? I keep returning to one deeply unsettling possibility, that, perhaps, because of who they assumed this woman was, her suffering didn’t matter enough to investigate.
We live in a society where people, especially women who may be living rough lives, are too often seen as disposable. Was she unhoused? Was she a sex worker? Was she high? Was she just in the wrong place at the wrong time wearing the wrong thing? These shouldn’t be qualifiers that influence the validity of her experience, but I can’t help but wonder if they were. And if she doesn’t come forward to report it herself, does that somehow mean it didn’t happen? Or worse, that it doesn’t matter that it did?
We’re told that silence equals consent. But in reality, silence often equals fear, fear equals trauma, and trauma equals survival. If that woman didn’t scream, it may be because she knew screaming wouldn’t save her. If she didn’t resist, it may be because she’s learned that resistance makes things worse, and if she didn’t file a report, it may be because she already knows the truth, that the system won’t stand up for her.
When the police told me they didn’t need to view the footage, I was stunned. I had evidence of what appeared to be forceful, potentially criminal behavior. Not a hunch. Not gossip. Video. And yet, because the woman herself hadn’t filed a complaint, it didn’t even merit a glance. Is this what our public safety institutions have become? Reactive only to the loudest victims, and dismissive of the quiet ones who have every reason to be afraid?
What message does this send? That if someone doesn’t value themselves enough to speak up, we’re not obligated to value them either? That justice is conditional on presentation and composure rather than pain and truth?
We cannot afford to let this be the standard. Because justice, true justice, must begin where society often stops looking, in the shadows, in the silences, in the blurred footage that doesn’t make the nightly news. We must acknowledge that harm exists even when victims are silent, and that force is still force even when no one screams.
I won’t forget what I saw. More importantly, I won’t forget the way it was brushed aside. This is not the world I want to live in, a world where someone can be pulled off the street and the system simply shrugs.
We need to do better. For that woman. For every woman. For every person who goes unseen, unheard, and unprotected simply because their pain doesn’t come prepackaged in a way the system respects.
Silence isn’t consent. Indifference isn’t justice, and what I saw deserves more than apathy.
Because she deserves more. We all do.
Brendan T. Engrahm, Renton
