A student was left understandably devastated when she flew 400 miles to meet a boy she’d met on holiday, only to be told she was ‘pigged’ in a cruel joke.
24-year-old Sophie Stevenson met Jesse Mateman while she was on holiday in Barcelona in August and they kept in touch.
She said she believed it was a proper relationship and decided to visit him in his hometown of Amsterdam.
Sophie, from Stoke, made the £350 journey but was left devastated when Jesse failed to show up at the airport, despite being in contact up until that moment.
She claims she only heard from Jesse six hours later, when she arrived at her hotel, when he texted her to tell her she’d been ‘pigged’.
The message, which featured pig emojis, read:
You were pigged. It was a joke.
Explaing how she’d originally met Jesse, she said:
I went to Barcelona with my friend Michelle and we arrived the day before the terror attack. We were staying really close to where the attack happened.
On that day, we were so lucky, we’d just nipped out to buy some drinks and food and were sitting on the terrace when we started hearing gunshots. When we looked over we saw people running everywhere, it was really scary.
The hotel was on lock-down after that and everything was shut for the day, so we stayed in and that’s when we met Jesse and his three friends.
We were there for four more days, and felt safe while we were with them, so we hung out loads.
It was a proper holiday romance for Jesse and me. We slept together in Barcelona and when I came back to the UK, we carried on talking every day.
We talked about having a long distance relationship.
Once they were back home, Sophie carried on messaging and calling Jesse and they discussed giving things a go.
The pair planned for her three-day visit and she paid £350 for a hotel and return flights from Manchester to Amsterdam.
She said Jesse was messaging her minutes before her departure – but as soon as she arrived in Amsterdam he ignored her calls:
We had talked about me coming to visit, and he knew I’d booked flights, that I’d paid for a hotel and he was going to meet me when I arrived at 5pm on Friday.
We were talking up until I got on the plane. But when I arrived, he wasn’t there to pick me up.
I called him a bunch of times, and he answer. I waited at the airport for two hours and I hadn’t heard anything, I was really starting to panic about being abandoned.
There was a free shuttle bus to the hotel, so I made my way there and six hours later he finally messaged me – on Snapchat.
Sophie told of her horror at reading how Jesse taunted her with pig and laughing face emoticons.
Adding:
Pulling a pig’ is where a guy tries to pull the fat ugly girl. When I saw that message, I wanted to be sick.
I was in a foreign country, on my own and the guy that I liked had just abandoned me.
I replied and said ‘how could you be so cruel’ and all he did was block me. I just couldn’t believe it. I had no way of contacting him. I was petrified being in Amsterdam all on my own.
I was so upset about what happened that I changed my flights so I could head home the next morning. I am furious that this happened and it’s so dangerous.
I want people to know what happened to me so that this never happens to anyone else.
Sophie, who has been unable to contact Jesse since the incident, said her friends and family are mortified for her.
As people have learned about Sophie’s story, they have been writing on social media to express their outrage.
@laurenella_ on Twitter wrote what we’re all thinking, she said:
I hope his mother reads this, what a w*nker! Sophie Stevenson, you’re gorgeous and he’s an utter a*sehole.
Others also commented:
Cruel, degrading ‘pranks’ – if you can call them ‘pranks’ – have featured in the news over the years, including one called ‘fat girl rodeo’.
It’s yet another horrible ‘game’ played in clubs.
In an article by The Independent, writer Louise McCudden explains:
The ‘game’, I’ve learned, is played like this: you either grab ‘fat’ woman in a club, and hang on to her yelling ‘yee-hah’, until they throw you off, or you dance up close to them, ‘acting nice’, aka pretending to be a normal human being, then whisper that they are ‘a minger’, and try to hang on for as long as you can.
It rang a bit false to me, naive fool that I obviously am, that so many people can grow into adulthood, be smart enough to get into university, and still play childish games like this. There are jelly-and-ice-cream parties with toddler guests who’d find ‘fat girl rodeo’ boring and infantile.
These ‘games’ are not a good measure of what most people think is acceptable behaviour but they are a good measure of the psychology of sexism.
Adding:
Don’t be fooled. If you think having sex with a woman means you’re doing something degrading to her, then you are the one who has an unhealthy, sex negative attitude, not me.
A message for you here Sophie, don’t let people like Jesse get you down – he’s the problem, not you.
