It was broad daylight in London, and there were other people in the tube carriage. She should have been safe. She had fallen asleep, missed her stop, and ended up at the end of the Piccadilly line. Still, on a weekend morning in a bustling city, she should have been safe. She was not.
Last week, Ryan Johnston was sentenced to nine years in prison for raping a 20-year-old woman on the tube in front of a horrified French tourist and his young son, in a case the detective leading the investigation described as one of the most disturbing of his career.
Something about this story, which unfolded in the space of just two tube stops, punches through all women’s comforting illusions about when and how they are safe. It has spread like wildfire through female WhatsApp groups, prompting questions about how it could have happened: How could anyone not intervene in a rape unfolding in front of them?
Yet the judge said that the French father had returned to England to provide evidence that helped secure a conviction, which suggested it was not because he did not care. That leaves the uncomfortable and more morally complex possibility of a parent alone with a young child, facing someone evidently dangerous enough to commit an unthinkable crime, forced to decide whether intervening to help someone else’s daughter would put his own child at risk.
The whole thing stirs memories of a notorious attack on a woman on a train in Philadelphia in 2021, where initial reports suggested none of the other passengers came to her aid and some even callously filmed it on their phones.
Later more nuanced versions emerged of a slowly unfolding horror that began with the attacker trying to strike up an unwanted conversation, then groping his victim, before finally progressing to rape. As some bystanders were not on the train throughout, they did not all understand exactly what they were seeing, and those filming it might have been trying to capture evidence for the police.
The initial story felt true, chiming with fears about cities becoming lawless or people more uncaring, but in some respects it clearly was not — small comfort though that must be to the woman who was nonetheless very publicly raped.
Research suggests that far from standing around gawking, people who witness violent crime surprisingly often intervene to help — and not always the people you might imagine.
This week, 74-year-old British lawmaker and former Special Air Service reservist David Davis reportedly stepped in to prevent two men attacking a homeless man on a street in Westminster.
When soldier Lee Rigby was brutally murdered on a London street in 2013, it was a 48-year-old cub scout leader called Ingrid Loyau-Kennett who got off a passing bus to help and ended up keeping Rigby’s agitated, blood-soaked killers talking.
Asked afterward what had given her the courage to intervene, she said she used to be a teacher: someone used, perhaps, to imposing authority and quickly assessing overheated situations.
Many years ago, when a man followed me off a tube train and wrestled me to the ground in an empty corridor, it was a nervous-looking middle-aged woman who came to the rescue. It was only afterward that I realized how many men had been standing a few feet away on the platform, close enough to have heard me screaming yet staring at their shoes.
Now that I am also a middle-aged woman, that surprises me less than it did. A man confronting a violent man must be prepared to fight, with potentially lethal consequences, but an older woman intervening might sometimes be read as less of a threat. Or perhaps we are quicker to recognize the danger signs: the man staring wolfishly at a young girl on a bus, pressing too close, pestering her into a conversation she clearly does not want to have. Which is, of course, how the Philadelphia attack started.
For the thankfully less violent crimes many people will witness over the course of a lifetime, such as sexual harassment in a public place, women’s groups preach the five Ds. If Direct action feels unsafe, either Delegate (ask someone else to help, or call the police), or Document the evidence, or Distract, perhaps by striking up a conversation with a woman being hassled, giving her a chance to escape. If all else fails, there is Delayed action, or offering sympathy afterward.
Yet perhaps the missing D is just the ability to suspend disbelief.
It is a small thing, but somewhere in the middle of a long solo train journey last year, I looked up from my own phone long enough to realize what the man next to me was actually doing with his. He was surreptitiously but repeatedly taking pictures of a tiny girl sitting nearby: reviewing them, cropping them, saving them.
It took a minute to work out how to alert her parents without frightening her or possibly getting punched, but what took the longest time was simply accepting that it was happening. Yes, you saw what you think you saw. No, there is not an obvious, innocent explanation. Now you have to act.
When did he realize exactly what he was seeing, the French tourist on the Piccadilly line? At what point did he understand he had a choice to make, and how often since might he have tortured himself by wondering what would have happened if he had chosen differently?
Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist.
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