EXCLUSIVE: 'I was harassed while pregnant on public transport - we need female only carriages now'
As the Mirror exclusively reveals TFL refusal to install women-only tube carriages on the underground after an online petition to safeguard women from harassment on transport, former Love Island star Georgia Harrison - who changed the law for women’s rights - speaks out.
While enduring a traumatic court case which saw her ex boyfriend Stephen Bear sentenced to 21 months in prison for voyeurism and disclosing sexual footage of her, Georgia Harrison has campaigned to increase the support for survivors of sexual abuse, in all forms.
And now, following Transport For London's decision to not create female only carriages on the London Underground, we caught up with Georgia to discuss her thought on TFL's decision. Here's her story:
I've personally have had quite a few negative experiences at the hands of men on public transport and so have a lot of my close girl mates. I've had times where I've been on busy carriages and people have grabbed me or groped me and you don't want to say something or you don't know who's done it.
I worked in the city a lot so I tended to find that during rush hour when it's really compact things like that happen. And a lot of my friends have had those experiences as well. I picked one of my friends up from the train station, some time last year and she was crying because the whole way home a man had been brushing up against her and she knew it was on purpose. And there was nothing she could do about it and she was too scared to say anything. She was really, really upset and she was like 'oh it's so out of character for me, I feel I didn't stand up for myself' but you just don't know what you're going to do in that moment. The other day I was getting the train home late at night and I don't often do it but it was just going to be quicker to get a train. It wasn't like a sexual assault or anything but it was a guy that was sitting opposite me and he was really drunk and he was speaking to me really inappropriately. It was very clear I was pregnant and he was saying how it's horrible having kids , it's going to change my life negatively. The other people on the carriage could probably sense it was making me uncomfortable but didn't want to say anything. And then he kept trying to grab my hand after, like trying to make up with me but he had really dirty hands and alcohol them. I'm pregnant and I've got a baby inside me, I didn't really understand the animosity that was coming towards me because of the fact I was having a child. And that was a really recent experience for me , this was only a couple of weeks ago.
They're doing it in Japan , they're doing it in India, Indonesia and even in Thailand. So there are lots of other countries that are accepting that this is something that's needed so I'm surprised that London isn't looking in to it. But I can obviously see how other people are going to be concerned about inclusion, so making it safe for everyone. But it shouldn't be something that is looked at negatively, like women have to segregate themselves. It absolutely isn't. It should just be if I am a young girl of any age, or if I'm a woman going home late at night and I know people have been drinking, and I know I'm going to be on my own, and I'm a little bit nervous I don't see why I shouldn't have that option to get on to a train whether it is female only.
I definitely think more CCTV would be helpful. I think that's just a no-brainer and I can't get my head around how that's not something that we've not already introduced. In a dream world I guess you would have more security or police on the underground so when there are issues you can jump off and straight away get some help. In don't see why CCTV isn't available on trains, it's a very public place where lots of assaults do take place and there is no reason why people shouldn't feel comfortable being filmed in that environment, people get filmed almost everywhere that we walk now realistically. And it should be a way of monitoring the trains without it being too expensive.
I just think we need a change in society in general in the way we do look at our misogynistic traits, obviously a lot of that is fed by online hate which is very new to society and something we've never had to deal with before. And I'm a big pioneer of the best way to do that is through schools and through educating people as they grow up. That actually ,what they are witnessing isn't correct. There is a better way of being and a better way of viewing women and understanding and empathising with them. And actually it makes you more of a man to be able to understand, respect and appreciate a woman than it does to be able to put them down.
I have women messaging me with all sorts of things. They'll explain that they've been assaulted and they just want somebody to speak to . They'll message me about rape and domestic abuse and obviously image based abuse.
The messages never really seem to slow down if anything they seem to have got a lot more prolific, especially when it comes to sharing imagery. And that's because of the rise in technology, the rise of AI. The fact that DeepFace is now being able to claim far more victims than obviously image based sexual abuse would, because you actually have to be in someone's presence to do that where as now you don't really need that.
Lots of women have reached out for help and a lot of them are really ashamed by what they're experiencing and I think that's why they tend to message me because it's something they don't really want people to find out about. They want someone to speak to. I always do my best to push them on to charities that can help them and I've actually put the revenge porn in my bio now so hopefully people will see that and go straight there.
There's just one thing I've been having a few discussions about and that's basically if you are to report image based sexual abuse, you have to have done it in a six month time frame which is something that really blew my mind.
So basically if I were to find a video of me uploaded on to PornHub that's been there for like a year and a half that I didn't know about, I don't have the right to report because it's out of the time frame. I think that it should just be a crime that is life long and it doesn't matter when it was committed, it should always still stand. So that's something I have been talking about as much as I can when I'm doing speeches.
And the other thing I'm campaigning for is to have image based sexual abuse taken as seriously as online child pornography. So if something is proven to be underage pornography, it goes on to a list and it then becomes illegal. And any site that's hosting it, is therefore hosting illegal activity and is at risk of being taken down and it's taken very seriously. Whereas if you prove something is unconsented and image based sexual abuse, nothing is then done to protect the footage or to put it into a different category of anything else. So even though you've gone through a whole court case, the person that took the video still owns the copyright and it isn't deemed as illegal footage. So when it comes to charities trying to get things taken down, it doesn't hold as much weight as underage unconsented footage.
If you've been the victim of sexual assault, you can access help and resources via www.rapecrisis.org.uk or calling the national telephone helpline on 0808 802 9999
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