So sorry to hear this happened to you.
Why are most of these reports from Portugal?
What's going on there?
Well, as someone who's spent a fair bit of time in rural Portugal lately, and tries to read rural Portuguese news--as written for the locals, rather than the expat community--regularly, let me come up with a few guesses (in no particular order of importance, just as I thought of them):
1/ My impression is that Portugal is a more secular country than Spain, and those who are still devoutly Catholic take the pilgrimage to SdC less seriously because (my paraphrase) "everyone knows that true Catholics go to Fatima anyway." So in Portuguese eyes, you're halfway between being a tourist (fair game) and being seriously religious. And what's with this "walking alone on your pilgrimage" anyway? Anyone knows pilgrims walk in groups of 40, along the highway, wearing fluorescent vests!
2/ The towns are farther apart, there are way less pilgrims, so there is more unsupervised opportunity for shocking "ladies" by sadly screwed-up guys.
3/ The tourism industry in Spain is much more invested in camino tourism than is that of Portugal and the Portuguese caminho's relative popularity is quite new; thus many Portuguese towns' police forces are pretty much unaware of the particular needs and interests of "lady pilgrims." (BUT DOING THEIR BEST--see the original poster's view above about how the police handled the situation once they were made aware of it.)
4/ Although urban Portugal, the highly touristed Algarve, and many younger professional Portuguese are surprisingly progressive, compared to North American images of Portugal (at least this was the case for me), the smaller towns and village are mostly populated by elders due to the hollowing out of Portugal's interior since the 2008-09 economic meltdown. Those families who stayed are much more like small-town North Americans than like urban dwellers anywhere. I suspect that unaggressive exhibitionism is possibly not considered that big a deal by the locals. "After all, these women are walking by themselves in the woods. What do they expect?" (again my imaginary paraphrase, based on my projection of how my rural Portuguese neighbours and acquaintances would react)
Please accept that I am in no way justifying this behaviour; it's awful, no matter where it happens. Something similar happened to me in France, in the late 60s, when I was a teenager. It was disturbing and scary then; I would be shaken if it happened to me now, I know.
In spite of the occasional occurrence of something like this, Portugal is a wonderful and very safe country, in global terms. The average man is quite respectful and women are impressively independent. There is no comparison, to me, between the level of personal independence and security that I feel in a small town in Portugal, compared to being in many parts of most cities in North America.
Portugal is a country in transition, and I feel, handling that transition amazingly well.
Bom caminho!
(By the way, emergency in Portugal is 112 as well, and the only thing I've come across that's close to being an app for pilgrims is this, and I don't know how consistently or regularly it's monitored)
S. O. S. Peregrino
Telefone apoio a peregrinos:
[telephone support for pilgrims]
(+351) 915 595 213 [in Portugal, you shouldn't need the 351--this is country code for Portugal]
(from the
https://www.vialusitana.org/ home page)