Blind footballer accused of being a 'creep' and thrown out of gym for 'staring at woman'
Mr Addison said there is now a culture of trying to catch gym creeps in the act of staring and recording other people during their workouts.
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Mr Addison said he was visiting a new gym for the first time when the incident happened. He said soon after he arrived he was approached by a furious woman who accused him of staring.
He said he attempted to explain that he was blind, but she didn’t believe him, allegedly called him a creep, and then got the staff to throw him out.
Speaking to the Happy Hour Podcast, he said: “I don’t really know where I am looking a lot of the time unless I am talking to someone like I know that I’m talking to you so I am trying to look in your direction.
“So I was just staring straight ahead and unfortunately there was a woman doing some exercises.”
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Mr Addison added: “I don’t know what she was doing, whether it was some squats or whatever, where you may be in a more vulnerable position maybe and don’t want to be stared at.
“She came over to me, and I didn’t know she was talking to me at first because I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m just doing my thing.
“She said something along the lines of ‘Why do you keep staring at me? Stop. Don’t be so creepy.’
“I was like ‘Oh no sorry, I’m blind’. I had my cane with me, it was folded up in my lap but she wasn’t having any of it.”
Mr Addison said there is now a culture of trying to catch gym creeps in the act of staring and recording other people during their workouts.
He said he suspects that the woman thought the cane was a prop as part of his disguise.
At the time, Mr Addison said he was not confident speaking up for himself so when he left the gym he never went back.
He concluded: “It was rough, it knocked my confidence a lot and made me feel like being blind is a problem, that it causes problems.”
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Mr Addison, who has 225,000 followers on TikTok was born sighted, but began to dramatically lose his vision from the age of 11.
By the time he was in his early teens he had lost nearly 80 percent of his sight and now has just four percent remaining.
He regularly posts to his followers on social media about his life as a blind man.
