The young woman whose lawsuit was recently dismissed against the MTA and the employees who did very little to help her duing a brutal sexual assault on a NYC subway platform has spoken out.
“Speaking for the first time since the ruling, Maria Besedin said Thursday she never expected the toll booth clerk and train conductor who witnessed the 2005 attack to be heroes and put their own lives in danger. But, she said, they didn’t even call 911, or yell, ‘Stop!’
Besedin hoped to have her day in court so a jury could decide if the MTA staffers were negligent for only alerting central command. She believed her case would make the system safer for all users.
‘I’m honestly still in shock,’ she said of Queens Supreme Court Justice Kevin Kerrigan’s decision Tuesday to quash the suit.
‘It’s so hard for me to process this whole thing because I just really wanted everyone out there to be safe, to never have to experience anything like I did.’
The petite 25-year-old was still visibly shaken by her ordeal, which happened at the 21st St. station in Hunters Point on June 7, 2005, two days before her 22nd birthday.
She said suffers flashbacks, posttraumatic stress disorder, and continues to undergo therapy and take anti-anxiety medication. She has dropped out of college and lives with her parents in Rhode Island. …
‘I think it was beyond negligence, it was obvious that an extremely violent crime was going on.’
‘By the time somebody came, I mean, I had lost all my dignity, and it was over,’ she added.
Besedin’s lawyer, Chris Seeger of the firm Seeger Weiss, says he plans to appeal within days.
‘Yes, I do want justice,’ said Besedin, who still rides the subway.
As for the court system that rejected her case, she said, ‘It means that they don’t really understand exactly what negligence is and what the impact . . . this kind of atrocious thing can have,’ she said.”
Agreed. Let’s hope the appeal works. Her case could lead to important changes within the MTA.
Nick says
Hope she is motivated enough to push for the Moronic NY gun lows changes. If she, or these two others had a personal firearm, this would never happen… Thanks Mayor Bloomberg!
shikinouta says
So basically the person in the glass booth watched a rape on his security screen for then minutes and did nothing. sounds like a mix of perversion and negligence to me.
Deb says
The monster knew nobody would stop him.
administrator says
Maria was on the Today Show: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/30105703/
“The most important thing for me was breaking the silence and telling my story, because it was just haunting me and eating away at me. I was kind of a zombie, walking around with this enormous weight on my shoulders and blaming myself,” Maria said. “The more I got to speak out about my story, the better I felt. The most wonderful thing was that other women would start to come forward about their own stories that they had never told anyone else.”
We all need to break the silence around abuse, including street harassment – share your stories too! send them to stopstreetharassmentATyahoo.com