‘He Grabbed My Private Parts Through My Pants’: Teens Report Sexual Harassment On Public Transport

Alyssa* expressed the time she was 16 years old – using public transport heading off from Żejtun – when she came across a middle-aged man ‘‘who is known for touching young girls.’’

‘‘He likes sitting behind young girls and touching their hair and bra straps.’’

She explained it wasn’t the first time that this man had either grabbed her breasts or her bum.

When asked whether she reported the situation to a bus driver, Alyssa asserted how the man who was bothering her knew the bus drivers very well, which made reporting him quite nerve-wracking for her.

‘‘A bus driver once wouldn’t open the doors for me until I told him my name and surname. I was alone on the bus and he had a one-sided conversation with me about how I should leave my boyfriend cause he needed a partner.’’

A couple of years later, Alyssa would go on to experience what she would describe as one of her most traumatic experiences whilst using public transport – she was 21 years old when the following incident took place.

Whilst she was sitting on the route 91 bus, a middle-aged foreign man sat next to her.

‘‘He started pushing his elbow into my ribs so I kept moving closer to the window cause I thought he needed more space but he kept doing it, hurting me more every time.’’

Alyssa grabbed the aggressor’s hand and pushed it off of her – only for him to do it again but with more force, reaching further up.

‘‘He then grabbed my sides and pinched and grabbed my private parts through my pants. At this point, I pushed against him and got up.’’

Maria*, a different individual, also recounted to Lovin Malta a very scarring experience she had experienced in 2018 whilst she was waiting at the bus stop to go to Valletta – she was 16 years old at the time.

She explains how at around 7 pm when she was waiting for the 82 route at Birżebuġġia, three dark skinned-men approached her.

‘‘They surrounded me in the form of a circle and I was in the middle of them – I had nowhere to escape.’’

One of the three men wanted Maria to give him her phone number and asked for oral sex.

‘‘The other two men who were behind me came closer to me and started commenting on how they would ruin me or how they would be aggressive to me in sex, it was scary.’’

Fortunately, a man witnessed all this happening from a distance and intervened to stop the harassment from escalating. A report was also filed to the police following the incident – ‘‘he is not allowed to ever call me again or talk to me.’’

Maria expressed how scared she was during the incident – thinking that she might get kidnapped.

Jake*, who had just got on a bus from Msida next to Junior College, also had quite a terrifying experience.

Before he got on the route 250 bus, a dark-skinned man spotted him kissing his boyfriend goodbye – after which he followed him all the way home.

‘‘He was groping himself on the bus and kept staring.’’

The man got off at the same bus stop that Jake had gotten off which was close to his home. The aggressor kept following him whilst groping himself and also asking for help.

‘‘It was surreal, I knew this stuff happens especially to females, just never thought it’d happen to me. I just remember my legs feeling weak.’’

It seems like sexual harassment is fairly common in public transport. Should security on public transport be enforced even more?

*Names have been amended to safeguard their anonymity  

Have you experienced anything similar to these stories? Feel free to reach out to us in confidence at [email protected]