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Rise in Sexual Assaults on Public Transit Has Canada’s Biggest Cities Finally Taking Action

'These aren't people making a trip from A to B, they're there for the purpose of offending.'

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The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) says it will start looking specifically into how it can make its female passengers feel safer while taking public transit.

From January to May of this year, the TTC received 35 reports of sexual assaults on its public transit system. In all of last year, the public reported 60 incidents. In the past month, Toronto police has investigated several public transit assaults and many of those offenders have still not been found. Most recently, a woman was standing on a subway when a 23-year-old man came up behind her and sexually assaulted her during the afternoon. Last month, a man in his 40s lured a woman out of the subway, claiming he was a model scout and proceeded to sexually assault her outside of the subway station. In light of these incidents, Toronto City Council request that the TTC to review the system with a "gender-specific lens" to "address safety concerns of women and women with disabilities." However, Toronto isn't the only city that's recognized this issue. Last month in Vancouver, transit police began an awareness campaign about sexual assault on public transit. From 2011 to last year, the number of sexual assaults on TransLink public transit more than doubled. According to Vancouver Police Chief Doug Lepard, 60 percent of public transit sex offenders have not been reported. "These aren't people making a trip from A to B, they're there for the purpose of offending. They are low-level sexual assaults," Lepard said to the TransLink board. "Because of the large number of people and in [close] spaces, it's easy for them." One of the main initiatives of the campaign encourages the public to report assaults. Similar actions will be done in Toronto with a new TTC app that will allow victims of assault to take photos and video of their attacker by disabling the camera flash and sound. TTC CEO Andy Byford says it should be released by the end of this year. "I want my customers to feel safe and secure," Byford said at Monday's meeting. "If you felt that there was something odd about someone staring at you and you felt uneasy, you could very discreetly, without that person knowing, take a photo of them and … then send it to a transit control centre and it would be acted upon."

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