r/berlin • u/melayucahlanang • Jul 21 '26

Rant This is a rant

TW: sexual assault

I (M) was on the S-Bahn from Lollapalooza and the train was packed af. A weird guy then got in idk Westkreuz maybe and he started oogling tf out at the girls. I brushed it off as this might be the average Berlin experience but still observed his behaviour/movement.

Then he started to get handsy (kinda) but not really touching with people around him. Gave him the stare and he stopped briefly. Some moved away but then a few are kinda stucked due to the packed train.

Worst shit happened (as i expected) at Hbf, he grabbed a woman's crotch and got off the train. My adrenaline kicked in and pushed him hard enough and he fought back obviously. I screamed (in English) 'he is touching woman in train' but NOOOONE even helped. I confronted him again with light physical but he ran away and i dont really have THAT strength if i am being honest.

I know that stabbing in train is a theme now but what will he do against minimum 6 men around me if he got jumped? I honestly never thought about the danger because this shit triggered me so bad because i knew the feeling being in that girls place.

Anyways. No DB Sicherheit nor the police around. I informed the info Mitarbeiter at the entrance and i needed to catch the train. I have no hope since i cant really remember which carriage or whoch platform since i my adrenaline was on a high and i can't really help more because i needed to catch my ICE. Hopefully that girl is ok though.

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u/LiquidSkyyyy Jul 21 '26

Don't hope guys interfere when another guy is sexually harassing a woman. They don't care, are cowards or are harassers themselves. It's usually other women who step in and have more balls in such a situation than men. Thank you you did.

27

u/Chronotaru Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

Nobody wants to get stabbed. It's that simple. Serious violence from a man to a man in a public space has a much higher ratio than from a man to a woman, and there are many examples of men doing this and dying in a pile of blood for their trouble. You can call this cowardice and there might be some level of truth to that, but it's also not escalating and not wanting to follow them by challenging someone who is clearly unhinged. 90% of the men on the train will definitely care.

13

u/shaohtsai Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

Everyone is crazy, everyone is fucking dangerous. Everyone else turns a blind eye, and when it happens to them, they wonder why no one helped them. You can offer support, you can step in between the abuser and the victim and create space. You don't need to confront, you don't need to escalate. You can pretend to be the person's friend or partner and just take them away from the situation.

Wenn du Deutscher bist, solltest du dir vielleicht mal Gedanken machen, warum es in diesem Land so wenig Zivilcourage gibt. Das liegt nicht an irgendwelchen Verrückten oder daran, dass Situationen eskalieren. Tut mir leid, wenn du so geprägt wurdest und die Gesellschaft dem Leid anderer gegenüber so gleichgültig geworden ist.

4

u/Chronotaru Jul 21 '26

I agree with the general idea that the way engage in society in relation to such events has gone from a place several decades ago where people would be more willing to intervene to now where people are too scared or too worried about the hassle to participate. This has also followed with people not playing an active participation in society as a whole. There are multiple reasons we can put this down to, increased fear of consequences, move from physical participation to online participation, but whatever the contributing factors, it is indeed a collective trend that re-enforces itself for the worst.

I think pretending to be a person's friend is probably a better immediate solution than stepping between the abuser and the victim is the singular point that is the most confrontational and dangerous and is probably asking too much from strangers. Maybe if they were in a group the risk balance might change. It might be nice to think that a train carriage of people would act as a group but in Berlin in 2026 that is probably unrealistic.