She Did Everything Right. He Still Followed Her.

This weekend, Irish influencer Chloe Koyce was followed into her Dublin hotel by a man after a night out. She did everything right. She got a taxi. She was with friends. She went straight to the hotel. And still, she was targeted.

In a video posted to her socials, Koyce recounted the incident. She had said the name of her hotel aloud without thinking. A man overheard. He followed her in through the hotel entrance. There was no staff visible at reception. No security personnel in sight. No checks. No intervention. He got into the lift with her. She asked what floor and he said any... at this stage he had already taken off his belt and held it in his hand. Chloe, sensing the danger, began recording. She even stopped as she walked to her hotel room, he stopped too but then continued walking... she went straight to her hotel room, where her mother was staying. The man lingered outside as she knocked on the door. She asked was he ok and then thankfully, her mother opened the door.

He didn’t leave until she directly confronted him. Only then did she go to reception to report the incident. The response she received confirmed there had been no one present at the desk when she arrived.

To watch the video in full please go to: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DHg23CfN5TN/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Koyce has since reported the incident to Gardaí. She handed over the footage. She chose not to release the man’s image publicly. Her focus is on the wider issue: why this happened and what should have been in place to stop it.

This is not an isolated incident. This is not a one-off mistake. This is a systemic failure to protect women. From street to taxi to hotel, there were multiple points where intervention or safeguards should have been present. None were.

Equitas stands with Chloe Koyce. We are calling this what it is: a result of a culture that continues to minimise male violence and ignore women’s safety. This is the result of an industry – hospitality, security, tech – that routinely deprioritises risk to women. There was no key card entry requirement to the lift. There was no staff presence. There was no immediate action after the incident.

We have written extensively about how misogyny is embedded in structures. It is in the failure to act. The silent assumptions made. The lack of protocols. The way women are left to rely on their instincts, their phones, their own confrontation to protect themselves.

This case should be a wake-up call. But women are tired of wake-up calls. We want change. Real, structural, policy-driven change.

Equitas is calling for a renewed focus on enforcement, visibility, and response:

• Hotels and public venues must ensure that existing security protocols are actively enforced – key card systems, CCTV monitoring, and access control are meaningless if not consistently managed.
• Staff and management must be trained and supported to recognise risk, respond to reports, and intervene when necessary – not after the fact.
• When a woman reports a threat or an incident, her account must be taken seriously and acted on immediately.

We are not demanding the impossible. We are demanding vigilance, accountability, and a zero-tolerance approach to lapses that put women in danger.

We also demand that incidents like this are not treated as unfortunate errors but as critical failures. The man who followed Chloe Koyce could have harmed her. He didn’t because she kept calm, recorded, had someone in the room, and confronted him. She did the work. She carried the weight. As so many women do.

It is not enough to rely on individual survival tactics. We need a world that prevents harm, not one that expects women to manage it alone.

To those who run hotels, transport services, entertainment venues: this is on you. Your policies, or lack of them, directly affect the safety of your guests. You are responsible.

To those who dismiss this as an overreaction: consider how close this came to violence. Consider what might have happened if Chloe was alone in her room. Consider how many women don’t make it to the point of posting a video.

Equitas will not allow this to pass as another story in the cycle. We will keep the spotlight on these failures. We will name them. And we will hold to account any institution that continues to expose women to danger through negligence or indifference.

We do not want statements. We want safeguards. We want accountability. We want a world where women are safe in taxis, on the street, in hotels, in their homes.

Until then, we will not be silent.