A young woman in Fredericton is going public with her story of street harassment. She says she was publicly humiliated by five different groups of men as she walked by, one of whom groped her.

It happened while she was walking home from a friend’s house Friday night, within a one kilometer stretch on York Street, a busy and well-lit area in Fredericton.

One comment alluded to three men sexually assaulting her.

"I was called a slut, whore, bitch," says Nicola MacLeod. "My senses were definitely heightened after the first incident which was definitely the worst. That was the most grotesque of the comments and continued all the way until I got home. The last group of men I encountered, one of them actually grabbed me."

MacLeod says the night was traumatizing.

"So many women go through this. To have it happen to me in a series of instances in such a violently aggressive tone from five different groups of men was just ...I was blown away,” says MacLeod.

MacLeod says she didn't feel comfortable going to police about it.

"I know that the police are trained and they have sensitivity training and they try, but we hear so many stories in the media about women who were asked what they were wearing and why they were alone,” says MacLeod. “At that point didn't want to deal with it; I just wanted to go home."

MacLeod decided to turn to social media to share what happened to her. With hundreds of shares and comments later, she says talking about it has been therapeutic.

"What we used to call ‘cat calling,’ we now call ‘street harassment’ and that's a much more accurate term and it places it on that continuum of harassment which is also part of this greater continuum of violence against women,” says Beth Lyons, executive director of New Brunswick Women's Council.

Lyons says part of the problem is that many people wouldn’t believe the harassment that MacLeod encountered in one night.

"We need to believe women when they tell us that these things are happening. As we know after the Jian Ghomeshi trial, after different stories in the media, we have a problem with believing women when they say violence, harassment has occurred to them,” says Lyons.

Fredericton police say they encourage anyone who's been verbally harassed to report it.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Laura Brown.