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NY subway platform groper arrested

November 8, 2011 By HKearl

Shyane Dejesus - image via NYDailyNews

“I was raised to fight back. I felt disgusting. I’m nice but I’m a tough cookie.” – Shyane DeJesus

Last week, 22-year old college student Shyane DeJesus attacked, berated, and snapped a cell phone picture of a man who groped her on a subway platform in New York City.

Yesterday she identified him from a police lineup of suspects.

Via NY Daily Mail:

“I knew it was him right away,” Shyane Dejesus, a senior at City College, said Monday. “It is a face I couldn’t forget. … I was overwhelmed. I started crying.”

The man she identified, Froylan Andrade, 39, was awaiting arraignment Monday night on sex abuse charges — a day after cops arrested him at his Elmhurst, Queens, home…

Cops said they were able to arrest Andrade because of a tipster who recognized him from the photo Dejesus snapped.

Andrade was arrested Sunday after his brother gave cops his address.

Both brothers work at Spring Natural, a restaurant on Spring St. Police went there after getting the tip…

Dejesus, who got off the subway at Astor Place, urged other women to fight back too.

“Don’t let them scare you,” she said. “They’re cowards.”

If you’re able to take a photo of a harasser, it can be really useful to do so, especially if you’re going to report the harasser to the police, transit authorities, or business owners (depending on where the harassment took place). Since the harasser is a stranger to you, having a photo can help those in charge identify the perpetrator. Without the photo, DeJesus’ groper may not have ever been caught, or at least he may not have been caught so quickly.
As DeJesus suggests, if you feel safe, speak up against harassers. Here are tips for how to respond to them and how to report them.
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Filed Under: News stories Tagged With: arrest, groper, Shyane DeJesus, street harassment

Women’s Equality Day Wish: No Street Harassment

August 26, 2011 By HKearl

The Guardian just published  an op-ed I wrote for today’s Women’s Equality Day! Check it out and consider leaving a comment.

(By the way, a dozen op-eds and articles I’ve written have been published since I did The Op-Ed Project training last year. I highly recommend it!!)

A man dubbed the “Upper East Side Groper” allegedly groped at least a dozen women in Manhattan before getting caught earlier this month. On the heels of his arrest, last week three gropings perpetrated by one man were reported in Queens, New York. Meanwhile, in northern Virginia, a man nicknamed the “butt slasher” has assaulted at least nine young women in shopping malls across the past few months. He has not been caught.

Aren’t these just unfortunate, isolated, random incidents, you may ask. No.

The news stories simply bring to light experiences that happen to too many women. Recently, when a woman in Astoria, New York, blogged about a man groping her, 45 women emailed her with similar stories. More than half of 800 female survey respondents of a 2008 study said they had been groped or sexually touched in public. The majority of the respondents were only in their teens and twenties. When I was 18 years old, a man groped me on a street near my college campus, making me part of that percentage.

Today is Women’s Equality Day in the United States. But equality is more of a wish than our reality when so many inequalities exist – including women’s unequal access to public places because of gender-based street harassment, including gropings and slashings.

Street harassment comprises actions and comments between strangers in public that are disrespectful, creeping, threatening and unwanted. It ranges from whistling and sexist or sexual comments to flashing, stalking, groping and assault. It primarily impacts women, including more than 80% of women worldwide, and it directly limits their access to public spaces.

The milder forms of harassment like whistling and comments are often dismissed as a compliment – something women “ask for” – or a harmless annoyance. The reality is, they cause harm; and their accumulation can make women feel wary in public and even “choose” not to go places unaccompanied.

For Psychology Today, Dr Kathryn Stamoulis recently wrote about how a teenage girl she counsels confided that she did not want to run errands for her parents or go to school unaccompanied because adult men sexually harass her. Many harassed individuals are like her: teenage girls whose perception of self, of men, and of their place in the world, is negatively impacted by the sexual harassment they face on the streets.

Women who face lots of mild forms of harassment, or just one serious form like groping or stalking, may feel obliged to change commuting routes, only go places accompanied, or even move neighbourhoods, change jobs or quit hobbies to avoid further victimisation. Street harassment genuinely impedes women’s equality by limiting women’s access to public places; it denies them the liberty they should have of being able to walk freely in public without harassment.

Thankfully, more and more people are recognising that street harassment is a barrier to equality and a denial of liberties – and they’re taking action. Ever since New York City councilwoman Julissa Ferreras found out that teenage girls in her district face street harassment on their way to and from school, she has made the issue a priority. Last week, she took to the streets to raise awareness about the rampant groping in Queens, and last fall, she broke new ground by organising the first-ever city council hearing on street harassment.

A college student at Stanford University with whom I’ve corresponded is currently organising a coalition of people and groups in the California Bay Area to advocate for anti-street harassment measures. This summer, she worked with transit authorities to add sexual harassment information to their brochures and website and possibly to start an awareness ad campaign.

In Washington, DC this past spring, 50 volunteers, just ordinary residents of the city, participated in a community safety audit, organised by Holla Back DC! and me. On designated dates, they fanned out across the city to analyse what the streets looked like during the day, and at night, and then made recommendations for how to make the city safer. During the last week of September, we will be encouraging interested persons to keep a “street harassment log” for a week using a log we provide. Because street harassment is under-documented and researched, the goals of these projects are to start documenting harassment better – and to add to the growing number of stories being collected online – so we can then work on solutions.

What can you do to ensure women have equal access to public spaces? Your role can be as simple as sharing a story, talking about boundaries and consent, or helping out when you see harassment occurring. Every action helps and every action can bring us closer to Women’s Equality Day being a reality, not just a wish.

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Filed Under: News stories, Stories, street harassment Tagged With: groper, slasher, street harassment, upper east side groper, women's equality day

“It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life”

April 6, 2011 By Contributor

I have loads of experiences like this, unfortunately. Once I was waiting for my bus at 6 p.m. when an older man approached me. He started making disgusting remarks about me and I tried to ignore him. He then grabbed my behind and started to feel me up. I was 13 years old back then, and it was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. I shouted at him but no one helped me.

More recently I was followed when I was walking home. The guy was shouting demeaning things and I was very scared. This is not cool, it should end now!

– Anonymous

Location: United Kingdom

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem. Find suggestions for what YOU can do about this human rights issue.

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Filed Under: Stories, street harassment Tagged With: groper, sexual assault, street harassment

“Leave the women alone!”

April 5, 2011 By Contributor

This happened years ago, but I was on a crowded tube train once when a woman was groped by a male passenger. I only became aware of this when another guy confronted the perpetrator and threw him out of the train at the next stop, shouting, “Leave the women alone!”

– Anonymous

Location: London, United Kingdom

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem. Find suggestions for what YOU can do about this human rights issue.

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Filed Under: Stories, street harassment Tagged With: bystander, groper, sexual assault, sexual harassment

Kissing gropers in East Jerusalem

August 23, 2010 By Contributor

A group of five young men approached me on a walkway near a busy road. Other pedestrians were around, although not close to where we were. They started talking to me, surrounding me as I started walking away, towards the road. Two of them linked their arms with mine, put their other hands on my breasts and kissed me on each cheek. I threw them off and made it to the safety of a family on the corner.

–  Anonymous

Location: East Jerusalem, Israel

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem. Include your location and it will be added to the Street Harassment Map.

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Filed Under: Stories, street harassment Tagged With: east jerusalem, groper, homosociality, male bonding, sexual harassment

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