Finding My Voice After Being Groped On The Subway

Trigger warning: This post contains sensitive topics such as sexual assault.

It was a relief to tell my friends why I was missing work that day: I had to testify in court because I’d been groped on the subway. The explanation came out easily, like it was as mundane as mentioning offhand the hassle of finding a new apartment. It happens all the time, from what I hear, and I’d accepted the possibility that it would happen to me years ago, when crowded public transit commutes first became part of daily life for me.

But when it did happen, on an ordinary workday at rush hour on a jam-packed train, feeling a hand squeeze my ass, I just looked around in a panic for anyone who’d seen. Did that really just happen? Did anyone see it? Someone make eye contact with me, please.

But no one said anything, and neither did I until I got off the train and reported it to the first transit official I saw. And that’s how I ended up on the witness stand almost two years later, trying to explain what I was so afraid of at the time that I didn’t shout out for help.

A couple of things happened when I was 18 years old. In May, I gave the opening remarks at my high school graduation. I was so nervous that I didn’t bother to prepare what I was going to say until an hour or two before the ceremony.

“Good evening,” I said into the microphone. I’d never spoken in front of so many people before, and certainly not in a football stadium, so I wasn’t expecting the call-and-response effect of my voice coming back at me, delayed maybe a half-second over the sound system and echoing off the buildings nearby. Every word I said next, right through the closing “Thank you” came out wavering. I sounded terrified.

One night not long after that, my then-stepfather pulled me out of the backseat of my friend’s Mustang by my ankles. I was not kicking or screaming — my objection was well understood without that, I’m sure. I stayed weirdly quiet the whole time he tried to drag me away — afraid to disturb the neighbors, I guess, and to acknowledge what was happening. It was humiliating. Instead, I focused on relaxing my body. Making it dead weight. He tried to carry me by my wrists and ankles, and when he got frustrated and dropped me in the middle of the street, I heard the slap of my back hitting the pavement before I felt it. It echoed. My friends were screaming, although I still said nothing. They made enough noise to make up for my silence, and they protected me.

The neighbors never did come out. Not then, and not after my friends called the police. (Teenage girls, I know now, are awesome and capable.)

When I was groped on the subway, I’d grown into a twenty-something professional, but what I was afraid of was the same thing: my own voice. The desperate sound of it. The need to vocalize to a car full of strangers that the violation I’d just experienced was scary. Causing a scene, purposefully and loudly, felt impossible. I just couldn’t become a hysterical woman on the train, not when everyone was already having a shitty commute.

Still, I managed to say out loud, “I’d like to report that someone groped me on the train.” I made sure to say it in the active voice. I recounted the whole uncomfortable incident to the transit police officer who was called in and again to a detective a week later. I looked at a photo lineup. Both describing and identifying a stranger I’d barely looked at in one somewhat traumatic moment were a lot more difficult than I’d imagined, and I was afraid of getting it wrong.

When I eventually saw him again in the courthouse, I was sure but uneasy. By then, I wanted the whole case to be over, but I was afraid of the verdict. I didn’t want to feel responsible for what the sentence might be, but I also really cared whether there was some accountability for what I’d experienced. I ate a lot of frozen yogurt that day.

The verdict came in a day later: not guilty. I’ll never know whether the jury thought I was wrong or mistaken or what. The defense attorney had made it clear through her questioning that there was more she thought I might have done to help myself, as if assuming what I was capable of was a reasonable thing for her to do. Why didn’t I say anything right then, she wanted to know. Well, I was afraid, obviously. There’s plenty to fear any time someone touches you when you don’t want them to. But I was also angry and indignant, and that was enough to get me to speak out on my own terms, at least.