I’ll probably delete this at some point but just want to vent. I use to post here under another Reddit account and had a well upvoted thread or two here at one time but deleted it for my own personal safety after I made a seemly harmless post in another subreddit (regarding foreign travel) and I got vilified, and almost got doxxed, led by none else, a feminist (can’t even post in regular subreddits it seems…..).

Anyhow though, I won’t go into to many specifics for obvious reasons like names of stores and my location, but I was falsely accused of harassment earlier this year 45 minutes from my house in a store within a mall. I’m a mall/store walker and a attractive woman literally bumped into me when I was turning into the aisle, she was texting not paying any mind. She looked at me funny and said “You scared the shit out of me!” And stormed off. I shrugged and walked around two more times to get my steps in and browse the aisles to see if I needed anything before making a final pass. While I was leaving I noticed a AP guy trailing me so I left and was puzzled. 15 minutes later as I was leaving the mall I was stopped by two plain clothes cops and said XXX called and reported me and apparently the woman said I bothered her and felt threaten by me. They let me go with a warning and I contacted a lawyer ASAP and thankfully nothing came out of it.

I won’t name the big store or mall but let’s say the store has a reputation for nothing fucking around with shoplifters and legit criminals so I’m scared to even go back to any location to shop because I feel like I’m being watched. All because apparently they thought I was bothering and “following” her around and wanted to make sure I wasn’t a creep and doing it to other women. I got grilled why I came to that specific mall and I’m lucky my health problem (I won’t disclose it here but it’s visible and contributes negatively to my life) didn’t screw me to. I thought how am I following her if you assholes didn’t see me approch her to begin with?

Maybe it was my fault, maybe I’m not that aware of a person and I should have said fuck it and left, but I didn’t know it was a crime to walk around a store.

It really hurt and traumatized me. I briefly mentioned it here under my old account and I know a guy said I probably got some sort of PTSD and maybe I need therapy and who knows maybe I do. Has anyone here been Falsely accused and how did you move on? Now I don’t even want to be around women, especially attractive ones unless there is multiple witnesses and video and audio recording.