TAMPA, Fla. — Alisha Hessler said a man left her in this condition, but rather than dragging her case through the legal system, she dragged her accused attacker out into the open. WTVTreports that she gave Gabriel Urena an option of being criminally charged or to be publicly humiliated on a busy street corner.
Hessler said it all got started when she was at a club with two friends and Urena, whom she had never met. At some point in the evening she said Urena repeatedly tried to grope her. After she physically tried to stop him, she said things turned for the worse.
“I did hit him first and then all of a sudden that’s when he started beating me repeatedly punching me,” Hessler told WTVT.
After initially calling the cops, Hessler said she reached out to Urena through Facebook and set her terms. Urena admitted to WTVT off-camera that he was sorry.
While Hessler is satisfied and believes that Urena wouldn’t have learned anything in jail, a domestic violence advocate believes what was done actually diminishes the seriousness of the alleged beating.
“Wearing a dunce cap and holding a sign on the side of the road really trivializes a serious issue,” Mindy Murphy with The Spring of Tampa Bay told WTVT.
