Sex attacks rise on Melbourne public transport

PERVERTS are using packed public transport and the daily commute to attack women in full view of other passengers. Has this happened to you?

WOMEN using public transport in Australia’s second largest city are being preyed upon by “disgusting” sex offenders, police warn.

New figures show an alarming rise in the number of sexual assaults happening on Melbourne’s public transport system.

“They’re crimes of opportunity that revolt most of us,” Leading Senior Constable Luke Gandolfo told the Nine Network, which aired footage of man striking three times in one day.

Footage showed him board the Route 16 tram along St Kilda Road where he brushed up against women and then touching them inappropriately, including a schoolgirl.

In other recent examples a man on the Werribee line followed people through carriages before touching himself in front of a teenager and child while another woman was pinned up against a wall.

“They’re disgusting. It’s the sort of thing that a lot of people never get over and never forget,” Snr Const. Gandolfo said.

Crime figures show an increase in sexual assaults in the year to June 2015 — up 33 per cent on buses and bus stops, 12 per cent at trains, 37 per cent at tram stops and a staggering 49 per cent at train stations.

This man pinned a woman against a carriage wall before indecently assaulting her. Picture: Channel 9

Police advise using phones to film the offender if possible and moving away if you feel threatened, while train operators say passengers should use the emergency button.

A crime victimisation survey last year showed about a fifth of people were fearful of using public transport because of the risk of an attack.

In Sydney earlier this year a 34-year-old man was charged with sexually assaulting a 17 year-old girl on a train during the middle of the day.

He allegedly dragged her off the train and assaulted her at Strathfield station, one of Sydney’s busiest.

And in a shocking attack that was captured on CCTV, David Marlin was sentenced to a minimum nine years in jail after the sexual assault of a 34-year-old woman in 2014.

The footage shows Marlin approaching and shaking hands with the woman on a public train near Ingleburn, in Sydney’s southwest before he punched her in the face,

In response to community fears, the NSW Government changed security arrangements to have police in charge of the rail network with about 400 officers on the beat.

Originally published as Sex attacks rise on Melbourne public transport