They were filming an interview on women’s safety. Then they were harassed.

Last month, Gillian Jones spent a harrowing night in a northern England bar rebuffing a man’s attempts to speak to, then sexually assault, her daughter. She wanted to share her story of the ordeal. Anna Youssef, a reporter with the British television channel ITV News, wanted to hear it.

Jones and her daughter met with Youssef at a park bench on an afternoon in late November to film an interview about the harassment. Then they were harassed again.

The group had to postpone their interview and move to a private space after a man barged into the shot, sat between them and refused to move, Youssef and Jones told the Washington Post. The man made comments about how women shouldn’t be able to vote and made them feel unsafe by interrupting them and encroaching on their personal space, they said.

Suddenly Youssef, who had been reporting on a British charity’s efforts to raise awareness of violence against women, had a new story. Clips of the encounter, published as part of Youssef’s report last week, went viral in the United Kingdom for seemingly proving Jones’ point that gender-based harassment is troublingly prevalent.

“You’re struck by the irony, aren’t you?” Youssef told the Post. “We’re doing a piece about the charity, the need for safe spaces for women. And yet there we were, sat on a park bench in the middle of the day, not feeling very safe.”

Jones, 53, said the episode was the last thing she expected after already enduring an unpleasant experience while at a bar in Birkenhead, a town near Liverpool, with her daughter Bethany Fletcher, 28. Jones said she blocked a drunk man at the bar who attempted to grope her daughter twice. Bouncers later ejected the man from the bar.

“We’d gone for the interview to talk about that incident on a night out,” Jones said. “And how women have to, almost, safety plan when they’re going out.”

Jones connected with Youssef through a local charity, Tomorrow’s Women, that supports women facing domestic violence and other issues. The organization had appealed to women in the area to share experiences where they had felt unsafe as part of a campaign to raise awareness about gender-based violence.

Jones and Fletcher agreed to meet Youssef at Hamilton Square, a small park in Birkenhead opposite the town hall, for an interview. Youssef thought it would be a routine reporting trip.

“These are the sort of interviews I do, day in, day out,” she said.

Video from ITV News shows Jones recounting her experience at the bar, telling Youssef, “It was quite scary, I have to say, being trapped,” when she looks up to see a man sitting down on the bench between her and Youssef.

“I sort of looked at Beth, and she was looking at me, and we (thought), ‘What’s happening?’” Jones said.

Youssef and Jones said the man, who looked to be in his 30s, didn’t raise his voice but refused to move from the bench. He made sexist comments about women – telling a Tomorrow’s Women staff member who was present that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote – and acted belligerently, they said.

“He just wanted to, I felt, disrupt whatever we were doing and make us feel uncomfortable,” Youssef said.

After a few minutes, the group left and continued the interview in a room in the nearby town hall.

“That was a bit of a shock,” Youssef said on camera as the flustered group walked inside.

Jones, Fletcher and Youssef completed the interview without any other interruptions. Then Jones asked: “Could you not use that and just show people what happened?”

Youssef ultimately used the reshot interview but agreed that the interruption was part of the story and also published footage from the encounter at the park. Youssef and Jones said they were heartened by responses to the story on social media, where commenters flocked to remark on the situation’s irony. It raised more awareness, Jones thought, than any charity’s campaign could have managed.

Youssef agreed.

“I just felt like you couldn’t have been given a clearer example of being women in a public space and just feeling threatened and intimidated by someone,” she said. “… When it happened, I was like, ‘Okay, I know how I’m going to start this piece.’”