Denim the Menace and the Gropey Gus

I have had the misfortune of being targeted more than once on public transit.  The first time, I was 21 years old sitting in a single seat on my way back from work with my arms full of packages and staring out the window.  I didn’t notice the person sitting in the single seat behind me until I saw is hairy hand groping my left breast.  I yelled and the bus stopped and the man got up and let the bus.  I was so upset that I couldn’t speak coherently to say what the matter was.  A woman consoled me and encouraged me to talk to the driver, which I did.  He gave me the number of the complaints department.

On the way back from UBC in the summer time, a man got on the bus and sat opposite me at the rear of the bus.  He pulled up the leg of his denim shorts, which he had altered for easier access, and began to masturbate.  I moved to the front of the bus and went to the driver.  Again, the bus was stopped and the man got away.

I have also been rubbed up against on more than 1 occasion.

I am now 42 years old.  I live near VGH and work downtown.  I never take transit to work.  I work evenings and dread coming home late on public transit.  I would rather walk or drive than be sexually harassed again.  I should say, that my history prior to these incidents is one of severe sexual abuse and I felt that I was targeted because I was sending out some kind of a signal to these offenders.  I have had many years of counselling and am at a good place in my life with this but I still avoid transit specifically.  My heightened instincts for “bad people” is on high alert when I take the bus or skytrain.  I can see them better than they can see me now and they are everywhere.

Thank you so much for doing this work.  It is LONG overdue!

Wary Witness

This is not recent, but I’ve just heard on the radio that you are interested in these stories, and I have two incidents which really bothered me. This one occurred about 5 years ago on one of the trolley buses leaving UBC. We were somewhere on 10th and a woman got on with a stroller with a child in it. She was Filipino or Latina, and the child was more fair skinned, but could have been hers. The child was about 3 years old. An older woman, with grey hair, but maybe in her late 50s or early 60s and dressed like an ex-hippy (big woolly sweater, grey hair in a pony tail), began to harass the woman with the stroller. the older woman was sitting in the first seats, reserved for handicapped folks, so the woman with the stroller was standing right there. The older woman began to say, in a very loud voice, that in her day they didn’t carry children – that it was ridiculous to push children in strollers. She went on and on and on, getting more and more extreme. She was essentially brow beating the woman with the stroller. The woman with the stroller did not answer. The bus was not crowded but there were many people around and we were all staring at the abusive woman. It was intolerable. The woman with the stroller got more and more red in the face. I feel very ashamed that I did nothing. The woman with the stroller got off, maybe around MacDonald. I have no idea what I should have done or could have done. I had a similar thing happen where I was assaulted on a bus (physically) and the driver did nothing, mostly because he as unaware (but the bus was too packed for him to have known).

Driver Dilligence (19/f)

I see a lot of these stories where the transit driver did nothing in cases of abuse and harassment, or transit cops did nothing. I do have one story where a transit driver did do something and maybe he could be a model for hope. This happened almost 15 years ago when I was an undergrad student at UBC, I think I was about 19. My female friend and I lived on campus but we loved hanging out and dancing all night at the goth and metal bars downtown so we frequently took the very last bus from downtown back to UBC by ourselves. There were two drivers who had that route at night. One very grumpy who didn’t like us or the way we looked and one who was very friendly and always watched out for us. Because we looked pretty weird since we were goths, and were usually in a large pack of friends who waited for the bus with us to make sure we got on safe we didn’t have too much sexual harassment happen to us (all though we did have other kinds of harassment because we were unusual looking) but this night a strange man followed us on to the bus. Luckily it was the friendly driver driving that night and he really didn’t like the way this man was leering at us. We were a little oblivious, too busy chatting at each other (no, we were not drunk and rarely drank/did drugs in those days even though we spent a lot of time in bars, not that a woman’s intoxication should ever be an invitation for sexual harassment). The driver called out to us to come and sit behind him, explained that he didn’t like the look of this guy and called campus security to pick us up and take us to our dorm once we reached the UBC bus loop.  That driver may have saved our asses that night and we got home safe due to his vigilance.

Wrecked Proposition

Thank you for creating this project!

A few years ago, when I was 19, I was a student at UBC and lived on campus. I was leaving my boyfriend’s residence and heading home to my own place across campus. It was dark, wet and I have never felt particularly safe walking on campus so I took a small shuttle bus (C22) to get home. While on the bus a young man, about my age, asked me for directions to Wreck Beach. This seemed a bit odd, given that it was winter, but I gave him the directions. The stop I told him to get off at is one stop past where I planned to get off the bus. I could feel his eyes on me so after I got off the bus I looked behind me. I saw nothing and I thought he was still on the bus. Then a minute later, as I am walking alone, this same guy popped out of the bushes just ahead of me and asked me if I was single. To this day I have no idea how he managed to run ahead without me hearing! I told him no, and I wasn’t interested. He kept persisting and asking for my phone number. I looked around and there was no one nearby to witness this or help me if he attacked. Finally he left, after saying I was being “mean”. I was scared to go home because I didn’t want him to see which building I lived in.

I took this bus to avoid feeling unsafe walking alone at night, and instead, I felt unsafe on transit. Let this be a warning to all the women at UBC given the recent assaults – Transit isn’t safe either.

“Sorry” – Case of Insincerity

I have been sexually assaulted on the bus 2x (same) and saw the offender on the bus 2 other times after that, and reported 3x to the police, one to transit with no avail. The first time it happened, he sat behind me and slipped his hand between the chair and wall and touched my breast. I screamed, asked him what the hell he was doing, he said sorry and got off bus. No one helped me, I reported to the police, they told me to tell driver next time. The next time it happened, I told the bus driver and he said he couldn’t do anything. The next time I saw the creep, on the same bus from ubc to downtown, he sat behind a woman (I was in the very back) and put his jacket on his lap and lend forward. I stood up and told him to “get the f$&k off the bus” and he did, coward. I got off called the police, again they told me there was nothing they could do.
It was 12 yrs ago

He was about 5’7
240 lbs, white, sweat pants, and carried a long coat
Round face and wore sunglasses

Double Double Recoil and Rebuttal (F/25)

This happened to me when I was 19, I was on the 41 bus coming home from UBC. At around Fraser street an older man (probably in his 50s) got on the bus. At this point I was with two friends (one male and one female). The man was standing near where we were sitting and I could tell was leering at my chest. I told my male friend and he stared at the man until they made eye contact and that made the man back off. He walked towards the back of bus and I felt better. My friends got off at Victoria and I stayed on the bus. Once they left the bus, the man came back and sat next to me. He was extremely close to me and I could smell his very potent BO. He put one hand down his pants and the other between his leg and mine and started caressing my leg. I was disgusted, I stayed silent for about 30 seconds hoping he would stop. When he didn’t, I started shuffling away from him but he kept edging closer. Until I couldn’t get away from him, so I stood up and told him to stop caressing my leg because he’s disgusting and that he needed to take a shower and buy some deodorant. I got off at the next stop even though it wasn’t my stop.

I saw him again a couple weeks later and he had cornered another girl in a two seater. I could tell by her body language he was doing the same thing to her. I should have intervened… But thankfully he got off soon after.

My second story happened a couple months after that. I use to be a server at earls, and after work one day I took the sky train to meet some friends for the fireworks. The earls “uniform” is always a short skirt and I didn’t have time to change. I waited for the train at metrotown and I guess caught the eye of a transit security guard. He said hi to me on the platform, which wasn’t suspicious because I frequently see transit employees greet people. I said hi back, and actually felt kind of relieved that he was there on a pretty deserted platform. He asked me where I was going and I told him to main street where my friends would be picking me up. He told me that main st station is pretty unsafe at night and he will accompany me there. I thanked him and said it’s okay because my friends including my ex bf are going to be there before I will and said they will meet me on the platform. He insisted that I shouldn’t ride alone and got on the train with me. He was probably in his early to mid thirties and was nice enough not to raise any red flags. He asked me my name and I gave him a fake one. He asked me where I went to school and I said UBC to which he replied: “wow, pretty and smart”. I thanked him, and he asked me if I liked working at earls. That creeped me out because I didn’t tell him I worked at earls. I stayed quiet and he scrambled to explain he likes earls and my clothing looked like something earls girls wore. I gave a vague chuckle and didn’t confirm that’s where I worked. Then he told me that if I told him where and when I worked he would come eat there and leave me a nice tip. I told him that’s not necessary. At this point I had tried to stop the conversation by putting my earbuds on but it wasn’t working. He just kept talking and asking me invasive questions like why I was hanging out with my ex, do I have a lot of exbfs, why we broke up etc. He finally asked me for my phone number. He was really polite and nice through out the whole exchange but I was creeped out. I firmly told him no, that I’m not interested and thanked him for accompanying me but what he was doing was highly inappropriate. He became flustered and tried to tell me I was flattering myself if I thought he was interested in me. Luckily for me, we had gotten to main street and I quickly ran off without him following me.