Violence against women on UK trains has risen by 50% in two years, it was reported this week. The news barely raised an eyebrow among my female friends, so commonplace are sexual assaults and aggressions on public transport. Society seems to be teetering at a crossroads, perilously close to accepting that being stroked, squeezed or grabbed at is just another mundanity of women’s commutes. Grim, but not unlikely. And hardly a crime. Right?
Except it is. Of course it is. It’s just that the system, from railways to courts, seems to have accepted otherwise.
I was sexually assaulted on a Thameslink train, someone grabbing and stroking my behind when I stood up to move away from him because he was very drunk and I was very pregnant. My worry hadn’t been assault, but how unsteady he was on his feet, and so close to my bump. I was a couple of weeks from my due date, travelling with my medical notes as instructed. As I moved past him and felt his warm hand creep up underneath my coat and on to my body, I understood viscerally how sexual assault has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with power, control, the need to let a woman know what her assailant could do.
I shouted at him and tried to move carriages, only for his friends to follow me up the (conductor-less) train, where they stood in front of the doors, blocking my exit, and told me that “everyone” knew I had lied. I recorded this on my phone, the shaky video showing the curve of my bump looming over my trainers while the leather tips of their shoes nudge into the top of the frame as my voice rises in fear.
The video cuts out when someone intervenes: a quick-thinking women appeared at the carriage door and asked if I would like to come and sit with her and her boyfriend. Her nonconfrontational tone and the three magic words “and my boyfriend” seemed to work. I was released from the carriage and able to text British Transport Police (on 61016), who met me at my destination station and arrested the man as he left the train.
A third stranger approached the police to say she had seen the assault, offering to act as a witness, should I wish to take it further. The case went to court, and I was confident that a sober woman with a witness would be taken seriously in a case of the crown versus a man almost too drunk to stand.
And yet.
The magistrate ruled “not guilty”. In summing up how he reached his decision, he explained that to be found guilty would have a huge impact on the man’s life, and while he was sure I intended to be reliable, there was a very real possibility that as I was pregnant I was in a heightened emotional state and could not be relied on to give an accurate account.
What that statement taught me is that we can urge bystanders to intervene as much as we want – effectively making it passengers’ responsibility to police public transport in the absence of conductors and station staff – but as long as courts prioritise the “huge impact” on the perpetrator’s life, nothing will change. Of course a timely and well-judged intervention can prevent a situation from escalating, but if we want assault on public transport to decrease, we need to do more than rely on the good nature of fellow passengers.
Trains need to be properly staffed, particularly on routes such as mine where there are long gaps between stops with no chance of making an exit. Travellers need to understand that bright lighting on trains isn’t there to disturb their post-pub nap, but to increase the efficiency of what CCTV there is. And that CCTV needs to be functioning. Above all, there needs to be a belief that if – as in my case – all the other dominoes line up, a magistrate will actually take the call that the “huge impact” on a woman’s life is worth equal consideration to that on her assaulter.
The recent riots and their swift dissolution revealed an eye-wideningly close relationship between crimes and fast, visible consequences as a deterrent. I am far from recommending further pressure on our already rotten prison system, but at present perpetrators know that sexual violence is simply not taken seriously by the courts. Turning this around will take money and careful policy, and I look forward to seeing if this new government, which has promised to halve violence against women and girls, will commit to either.
As for bystanders, I celebrate and encourage their intervention. Even the mayor of London’s somewhat maligned “Say maaate to a mate” campaign at least started the conversation around the essential act of men holding their peers to account. In my case, it was the offer of company that helped. No one was offering to speak for me, to stand in my path or to start a fight, but simply extending an invitation. It worked.
I appreciate that many of us have a fear of escalating the situation, and that men in particular don’t want to impose themselves as an extra complication, a further judgment call for a woman to make. But extending that offer can make all the difference. Not simply in letting a criminal know that they have been seen, but also in reassuring a victim that yes, it has really happened. Something the courts seem slow to acknowledge.
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Alexandra Heminsley is a freelance journalist, broadcaster and author of the memoir Running Like a Girl
