I was sitting on a train, minding my own business, when a young kid (age about 14/15) got on and sat on the luggage rack beside me.

He was quiet for a while but I knew he was looking at me, up and down, and I became a bit uncomfortable. He then started talking to me, I ignored him, and the words which came out of his mouth were foul. He said things like, “I wonder how soft your p* is” and things which were very very very sexually explicit. I was actually mortified and almost shaking.

There were people on the train, seats in front of me, two women, seat a few up, young healthy business-like men, and I am 100% sure they all heard him. No-one did anything. Not a single person stood up and told him to F Off.. so I endured what seemed like hours (but were in fact a few minutes) of total verbal abuse. I had it in my head that if he tried to touch me I’d stick my pen through his eyeball. But that wasn’t his game.

Eventually we pulled into a station and a guard – who had been sitting 8 seats away – stood up and put ‘the lad’ off the train, all nicey nicey, gently gently. I had no idea he was even there. It was a ‘come on now laddie.. off you go’… touchy feely thing and the boy just grinned..

The ‘guard’ never once spoke to me, never intervened, before, during or after – zilch. When I got off the train I was still shaking. I actually – at 9 am in the morning – walked into a shop and bought a bottle of wine and plastic cups, went into the toilets at work and poured myself a large glass.

I think you’re just not expecting to be assaulted so publically and for no-one to do anything about it. As this site says – I am someones sister, mother, aunty & girlfriend and if communities can’t or won’t do anything to protect their own, who will?

p.s. I was on my way to help with a charity which helps vulnerable adults in the community – sick isn’t it??

– AM

Location: Stirling Train, Scotland, United Kingdom

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