This latest horrific crime shatters any illusions we may still have about when, where and how such things can happen

t was broad daylight, and there were other people in the tube carriage. She should have been safe.

She’d fallen asleep, missed her stop, and ended up at the end of the Piccadilly line. But still, on a weekend morning in a bustling city, she should have been safe. And yet, hauntingly, she wasn’t.

Last week, Ryan Johnston was sentenced to nine years in prison for raping a 20-year-old woman on the tube in front of a horrified French tourist and his young son, in a case the detective leading the investigation described as one of the most disturbing of his career.

Something about this story, which unfolded in the space of just two tube stops, punches through all women’s comforting illusions about when and how we are safe. It has spread like wildfire through female WhatsApp groups, prompting questions about how on earth it could have happened: how could anyone not intervene in a rape unfolding in front of them?

Yet the judge noted that the fact that the French father had returned to Britain to provide evidence that helped secure a conviction suggested it wasn’t because he didn’t care. Which leaves the uncomfortable and more morally complex possibility of a parent alone with a young child, facing someone evidently dangerous enough to commit an unthinkable crime, forced to decide whether intervening to help someone else’s daughter would put his own child at risk.

The whole thing stirs memories of a notorious attack on a woman on a train in Philadelphia in 2021, where initial reports suggested none of the other passengers came to her aid and some even callously filmed it on their phones. But later more nuanced versions emerged of a slowly unfolding horror that began with the attacker trying to strike up an unwanted conversation, then groping his victim, before finally progressing to rape. Since some bystanders weren’t on the train throughout, they didn’t all understand exactly what they were seeing, and those filming it may have been trying to capture evidence for the police. The initial story felt true, chiming with fears about cities becoming lawless or people more uncaring, but in some respects it clearly wasn’t – small comfort though that must be to the poor woman who was nonetheless very publicly raped.

In fact, research suggests that far from standing around gawping, people who witness violent crime surprisingly often intervene to help – and not always the people you might imagine. This week, the 74-year-old Conservative MP (and former SAS reservist) David Davis reportedly stepped in to prevent two men viciously attacking a homeless man on the street in Westminster.

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When the soldier Lee Rigby was brutally murdered on a London street in 2013, it was a 48-year-old cub scout leader called Ingrid Loyau-Kennett who got off a passing bus to help and ended up keeping Rigby’s agitated, blood-soaked killers talking. (When asked afterwards what had given her the courage to intervene, she explained that she used to be a teacher: someone used, perhaps, to imposing authority and quickly assessing overheated situations.)

And, many years ago now, when a man followed me off a tube train and wrestled me to the ground in an empty corridor, it was a nervous-looking middle-aged woman who came to the rescue. It was only afterwards that I realised how many men had been standing a few feet away on the platform, close enough to have heard me screaming yet staring fixedly at their shoes.

Now that I am also a middle-aged woman, that surprises me less than it did. A man confronting a violent man must be prepared to fight, with potentially lethal consequences, but an older woman intervening might sometimes be read as less of a threat. Or perhaps we’re quicker to recognise the danger signs: the man staring wolfishly at a young girl on the bus, pressing too close, pestering her into a conversation she clearly doesn’t want to have. Which is, of course, how the Philadelphia attack started.

For the thankfully less violent crimes many of us will witness over the course of a lifetime, such as sexual harassment in a public place, women’s groups preach the five Ds. If Direct action feels unsafe, either Delegate (ask someone else to help, or call 999, or on a train text 61016 for British Transport Police), or Document the evidence, or Distract, perhaps by striking up a conversation with a woman being hassled that gives her a chance to escape. If all else fails, there’s Delayed action, or offering sympathy afterwards. But perhaps the missing D is just the ability to suspend disbelief.

It’s a small thing, but somewhere in the middle of a long solo train journey last year, I looked up from my own phone long enough to realise what the man next to me was actually doing with his. He was surreptitiously but repeatedly taking pictures of a tiny girl sitting nearby: reviewing them, cropping them, saving them. It took a minute to work out how to alert her parents without frightening her or possibly getting punched. But what took the longest time was simply accepting that it was happening. Yes, you saw what you think you saw. No, there isn’t an obvious, innocent explanation. So now you have to act.

When did he realise exactly what he was seeing, the Frenchman on the Piccadilly line? At what point did he understand he had a choice to make? And how often since, for all we know, might he have tortured himself by wondering what would have happened if he’d chosen differently?

Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html