Government Operations Agency Performance: Board of Elections & Ethics; Campaign Finance; CTO; WMATA Hearing
February 22, 2012
Good Afternoon Council Member Bowser, Members of the Committee and Committee Staff.
I ask you to raise your hand if you have you been sexually harassed on the Metro. How about on the streets of DC? Most studies on sexual harassment and assault in public spaces have found that 80- 100% of the female respondents say they have been harassed at one point in their life. My name is Chai Shenoy and I am a Ward 4 registered voter. In 2009, I co-founded Collective Action for Safe Spaces, a grassroots organization that aims to empower the DC Metro area to build a community free from public sexual harassment and assault. We do this through online activism, public policy and advocacy, community workshops, and innovative direct services. Collective Action for Safe Spaces was started with a simple online presence via a weblog called Holla Back DC!. We asked people to submit their experience of street harassment to us through an anonymous form. This website became an important tool for people throughout the DC Metro area to share their experience and get support from the online community, as well as tips on how to address street harassment. Many of the experiences came from individuals traveling the Metro, on the buses, leaving or entering stations. The perpetrator(s) were private citizens or — in a few troubling instances — Metro employees themselves.
I started Collective Action for Safe Spaces as a result of a metro ride I took in 2008. On a June weekend, I got on the Red line at the Silver Spring metro station. It was my first time on the Metro as a newly returned resident of the area. There was hardly anyone in the train car. At the Takoma metro station, a man walked in. Though I was on the phone, I made note of him because the car was empty. He kept looking at me while figuring out where to sit. I continued talking on the phone and from the corner of my eye, I saw him staring at me. I ignored him. His gaze continued. And, slowly, he spread his legs and exposed himself. I felt my face getting red and yet I didn’t react because I knew that is what he was hoping for and because no one was on the train car. At the Fort Totten metro, he got up and went into a more crowded car. Later that evening, I reflected on the incident and felt anger, terror, and shame. But, beyond anything, I felt guilty that I did not stop him. What if he went into the next car and exposed himself to a teenage young woman? How would that shape her identity? How about her safety in public spaces?
Sadly, I am not the only one who has had this experience. In 2009, there were 46 cases of sexual assault reported to the Metro Police. This includes cases of unwanted touching, groping, indecent exposure and assault. Last year, the Metro reported 84 cases involving sexual offenses.
On our website, nearly 30 percent of the reported incidents occurred in or around the Metro. Clearly there is a system in place for victims to report crimes of sexual assault, but many do not because they don’t know they can or how to do that, or they believe their reports will be taken seriously. I’d like briefly review a few of these incidents:
This first incident happened at the Waterfront Metro on the Green line in June of last year. The woman wrote that she “noticed a man standing very close to me, on the next step down on the escalator.” She took a step up, and he did as well. She says, “I felt something graze my inner thigh and turned around quickly. He had his arm reached out under my skirt and was snapping a picture.”
On March 28, 2011, a Yellow line rider submitted a disturbing story. She reported that a young man would “stand behind young women and press up against them closely with his hips, pretending train is too crowded.” She said that at first she thought it was only her, then she saw it happen to another woman who “pushed him off” and “he moved through the car to another woman.” She did let the police know about this incident.
Finally, a Ward 4 resident reported that while she was waiting for the Metro during the morning rush hour at the Takoma station, a man approached her and made advances. She politely declined, but he continued–talking about his desire to perform sexual acts on her. At that point, she wrote, “I walked as far down the platform as possible until the train arrived, all with the individual following me until I boarded a train car.”
These aren’t isolated incidents. We believe some variant of these incidents happen to paying passengers of WMATA every day. At minimum WMATA should address this public safety issue in the following ways:
- Create a multi-agency working group to collect data on the prevalence of public sexual harassment and assault on WMATA. Due to its unique jurisdictional issues, WMATA should be engaged with the local police in data collection. A brief story should bring this point home: a person submitted to us that on March 18, 2011, after 11:00 p.m., she was walking home from the Friendship Heights metro. About 1.5 blocks from the metro, she felt a hand up her skirt touching her vagina. She thought the perpetrator was going to rape her, so she yelled, scaring the perpetrator off. She reported the crime to MPD, but that crime was likely not reported to the Transit police. The perpetrator may have arrived at that location through the Metro, or worse, been involved in other sexually-based crimes on the Metro. Crime doesn’t stop when someone leaves the fare gates. A multi-agency working group will provide more accurate data about how perpetrators use the Metro to engage in unlawful conduct.
- With in the input of direct service organizations, fund a public service announcement (PSA) campaign visible on all buses, trains, and all bus shelters and metro stations. This campaign would advertise a dedicated telephone number for individuals to report incidents of sexual harassment or assault. Following the footsteps of Boston, New York, and Chicago, such a campaign would help educate the public about this issue, and send a strong signal to wouldbe perpetrators that we, as a community, will not tolerate sexual harassment and assault.
- Train WMATA employees and Transit Police on how to handle complaints of sexual harassment and assault. We want to encourage individuals to not only say something if they see something, but also if they feel something. We don’t want to discourage victims from coming forward. And right now, it seems that leaders at WMATA don’t understand the scope of our concerns. In a recent article, Transit Police Deputy Chief Ron Pavlik suggested that metro police could not expected to arrest people for telling someone “they look good” or asking or for a phone number. I agree. But statistics and stories from our website are telling a different story: of obvious, repeated, and egregious violations of a person, or their personal space, that makes them fear for their safety. Surely that is an issue that we can agree needs to be identified, targeted, and stopped. And the first step on that journey is to create an environment were victims feel empowered to reports these incidents to the authorities. Trainings on addressing sexual harassment and assault will help do so.
Council Member Bower, we have “seen something” and “said something” now we want WMATA to do something. I respectfully urge you to have WMATA implement our three-pronged approach to making WMATA safer for all. Multi-jurisdictional data collection will help keep track of the problem and may assist the police in understanding crime patterns. A PSA campaign will educate the public and show perpetrators that we, as a community, are creating a culture of zero tolerance. Finally, training WMATA and Transit Police will ensure that our first responders are better equipped to deal with public sexual harassment and assault.
Thank you for letting me testify and I happy to respond to questions.