Miss 17 was quite shaken after a recent incident on public transport which left her feeling very unsafe.
It seems she’s not alone. Perhaps you saw the media coverage of the young woman sexually assaulted by a fellow passenger on a Gold Coast bus – and not one other person came to her aid.
Why didn’t the other passengers come to her aid? Or the bus driver? Why didn’t she say something, or even push the man away? What would you have done if you had been in that young girl’s shoes?
Is Public Transport Safe for Women?
Miss 17 was on the bus home from work one evening when she realised that a man, sitting diagonally opposite behind her, was taking photos of her on his phone.
But this was just plain creepy. Apparently the photographer couldn’t have been much more obvious – the sound was turned up on his phone so she heard each “click”, and when she did turn around to see who was doing it, he would hastily look away.
She texted us for help, but what could we do? Fortunately she was just a few minutes from her stop, where we picked her up and drove her the rest of the way home (as is our usual habit – even though we live close to the bus stop, we just don’t feel it is safe for her to walk home after dark).
Should she have alerted the bus driver? Or the other passengers? As the Gold Coast example shows, it wouldn’t necessarily have helped!
We discussed phoning the police to report the incident, but decided against it for a number of reasons: firstly, we didn’t feel it would be taken seriously; secondly, because Miss 17 often catches that particular bus and didn’t want a repeat event or to become the subject of a stalker. Thirdly, after the event it all seemed a bit too late to do anything about it.
Although the photographer was definitely violating her in a sense by taking her picture without her permission, raising the matter there and then would have likely only increased the threat to her personal safety.
Obviously it is nowhere near as traumatising as the case of the Gold Coast woman – but it does beg the question: where does this sort of behaviour cross the line? And what can a woman, travelling alone, do about it?
Do you feel safe as a woman travelling on public transport at night – or even during the day? Why/why not? How would you have handled either of these incidents?