But he was always so nice to us. - Melissa

Melissa was ten years old when she was touched inappropriately in her neighbourhood, in a shop that was less than two minutes away from home by foot.

Melissa and her brother were familiar faces with the shopkeepers. They would politely greet the shopkeepers who were friendly with their parents, calling them uncles and aunties.

One shop had a claw machine with stuffed toys. Melissa loved trying to catch them, though she rarely succeeded.

Once, when she couldn't catch any despite multiple attempts, the shopkeeper retrieved a couple of toys from the claw machine.

"It's okay," he said warmly. "You and your brother can have them."

As he said this, he patted a delighted Melissa on her head. Then he rubbed past her chest firmly with the side of his forearm, pressing the toys into her opened hands.

Melissa felt something wrong in that fleeting moment. The touch was unusual. Deliberate, somehow.

But she looked up at the uncle's smile. His apparent generosity. She thought about their long history of positive interactions. Her parents knew him. He was friendly. He had just given her free toys.

There was no congruence between what she felt and what she saw.

Perhaps she was standing too close to him in the tiny shop and it was an accident. Perhaps she imagined the pressure to be firmer than it actually was.

She thanked the shopkeeper and returned home with the toys, pushing this incident to the back of her mind.