Ad campaign urges victims to report cases

This ad warning against sexual harassment is one of at least three posted on Red Line trains. The MBTA will officially unveil the campaign tomorrow at North Station. This ad warning against sexual harassment is one of at least three posted on Red Line trains. The MBTA will officially unveil the campaign tomorrow at North Station. (Aram Boghosian for the Boston Globe)

By Erin Ailworth, Boston Globe Staff

4/13/08 - Malikah Fardon-Jones-Finney and her 12-year-old daughter glanced at the ad hanging over their heads at the top of the Red Line train wall.

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The image is simple - a young woman squeezed between faceless bodies - and the message succinct: "Rub against me and I'll expose you."

"Does that happen?" Fardon-Jones-Finney asked. "How can you tell when the train is packed?"

Across the way, 23-year-old Olesia Plokhii also gave the ad a once-over and her approval.

"I guess I think it's a proactive idea," she said as she tapped out a text message on her cellphone. "Any kind of awareness around that says 'Perpetrator beware,' I think that's ultimately effective."

The ad - one of at least three posted on Red Line trains - is part of a new public service campaign by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority to increase awareness of sexual harassment on public transit, and to encourage victims to report such events.

Joe Pesaturo, MBTA spokesman, declined to discuss the details of the campaign in advance of the official unveiling tomorrow at North Station. Red Line riders yesterday, however, got a preview of the ads. One shows a security camera pointed into the unknown, with the message "Flash someone and you'll be exposed." Another depicts a lone woman riding the T with the words, "I'm not the one who should be ashamed."

Many riders praised the ads yesterday, but weren't sure what they would do if caught in a such a situation.

"The immediate thing is, you move away," Richard Beck said, looking toward his 16-year-old daughter Lauren. "And if someone follows you, you need someone you can go to - a conductor, a police officer."

Beck, who is from Stamford, Conn., was in the area to visit colleges with his daughter and waiting at Park Street Station for a Red Line train.

"If I know you, you'd kick them in the shins," he said to her.

"Yeah, pretty much," Lauren replied.

Up on the Green Line platform at Park Street Station, Cheryl Liu and Ginny Tseng discussed being women riding the T.

"When it gets crowded, I like my personal space," said Liu, a 27-year-old Emerson College student. "I'll back off if people get too close."

"I'll use the bag, the bag-in-between" maneuver, Tseng replied, demonstrating how she uses her stuffed shoulder bag to create a barrier between herself and anyone else.

But Liu said she wasn't sure how far she would go to protect herself if someone breached that barrier.

She remembers reading in December about a 16-year-old Boston Latin School student who snapped a cellphone picture of a man who had allegedly been exposing himself to riders on the Green Line. Police arrested a Newton man, whom neighbors identified after police publicized the picture.

"She was smart that she did that," Liu said. "I would probably notify the driver."

"I'd probably get off the train and take the next one," replied Tseng. "Maybe I would yell."

Ann Nicklason, 55, said she was too shocked to yell the one time a man rubbed against her on a crowded New York subway train during rush hour. She recalled the encounter yesterday as she and her daughter, in town from Washington state, and some friends searched for a train to Cambridge.

"It was so packed you could hardly breathe," she recalled. "It was gross. I couldn't even see his face."

The story surprised Nicklason's 17-year-old daughter, Sami Ressler, and her daughter's friend Maya Midgley. Neither had ever thought about something like that happening to anyone they knew - much less themselves.

"It's just shocking to think that someone would do that," Midgley said, adding that she was trying to figure out if she would scream for help, much less take a picture of the person assaulting her.

"Maybe the campaign is good because it makes women think about it ahead of time," added Midgley's mother, Lynn Greiner.

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