It's deeply unpleasant, being groped by a man at work, especially when he’s senior to you.

I’m qualified to talk about this issue because I endured it when I was much younger and it took a lot of guts to smack his hand away. Thank God I did, because he never attempted it again after that.

He’d tried it on too many times, when we were alone in the office, me in my first job in my late teens, him a hard-drinking, chain-smoking married man and had an enormous pot belly that forced his trousers to hang very low. The man would stand uncomfortably close so that when he moved, his hands would brush over me or he would press his pot belly into me.

“Don’t do that!” I finally hissed at him when I’d had enough, knowing he could |easily fire me. But, silently, he accepted defeat and never did it again.

Another would-be groper was a middle-aged married man, a decade younger than the first, and I was about 19 or 20 when he managed to get me in a dark corner at a party. As he pressed down on me in an attempt to plant unwanted kisses on my mouth I was saved by my friend, who forced him to stop.

My first encounter was far more terrifying. I was 16 and was interviewing a man who invited me to sit on a settee to speak to him, which I did, and he sat next to me. But then he sat closer, much closer, and very quickly pushed me down, lying over the top of me and trying to kiss me, his hands all over the place. His intentions were perfectly clear.

In panic, I mustered up some super strength and pushed him off, making a swift exit through the door. I never told anyone about this experience because I was ashamed I’d let it happen, that somehow it would seem as though I had led him on.

At 16, I was very innocent and shy and simply couldn’t bring myself to discuss something of that nature, either with my male editor or my parents. In those days, the 1980s, sexual harassment simply wasn’t talked about or taken seriously as either a nuisance or a crime.

There is a particular kind of man who becomes a workplace groper. Unattractive, in my experience, and married and middle-aged, and so with little hope of ever sleeping with a much younger and attractive woman again. Frustrated, the only route he can take to get his cheap little thrills is to use his position of power and target those he perceives as vulnerable because they have a lower professional status than him, because they seem meek and therefore pliable, because they use the power of surprise or because they can employ their physical strength to ensure a woman can’t say ‘no’. They can also get a kick out of seeing a woman subjugated, even out of seeing her disgust, anger and shock. It is precisely these reactions that he is depending on to continue his campaign of unwanted groping, because if a woman is too shocked to report it, he’ll interpret her unwitting inaction as a green light, and may even move on to more serious sexual crimes.

In the case of Lord Rennard, the Lib Dem peer who faced allegations that he sexually harassed women in his party, comments in his defence by his pals show what a joke many people still think groping is. Lord Greaves said that half the members of the House of Lords had pinched a woman’s bottom at some time in their lives, but were past it now, too old and doddery, and Lib Dem MEP Chris Davies said: “This isn’t Jimmy Savile. This is touching someone’s leg six years ago at a meeting through clothing. This is the equivalent of a few years ago an Italian man pinching a woman’s bottom.”

An investigation into the allegations about Lord Rennard was carried out by his party, which concluded the claims against him could not be proved.

But attitudes need to change because gropers arrogantly assume they can take what they want because they want it, regardless of the consequences to his victim, which can include depression, anxiety, fear and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Fun for the bottom-pinchers, maybe, but let’s stop for a minute and think about how it defiles the victim, to have her person touched intimately by a complete stranger.

And touching someone’s leg through clothing can feel threatening, because it is being done without the victim’s consent and it is being done secretly so that if the perpetrator is challenged there and then, it can easily be denied. And that means he can do it again – and go further.

Until gropers are publicly challenged and punished, they are in a win-win situation and it remains a lose-lose situation for the victim, left sullied and humiliated, their confidence diminished by a situation not of their making. Gropers must get the message that their sexual advances are not wanted – and if it’s not going to come from the law, then the only answer is a hard kick where it hurts.