PERTH transport bosses are trying to trace CCTV footage to verify claims by a commuter that she witnessed a young woman performing oral sex on a man on a peak-hour train.
A witness to the incident, who only wanted to be known as Kerry, called into radio station 6PR this morning to say the incident occurred on the Armadale line about 5.30pm yesterday.
She also said transit guards had not intervened.
“We all make jokes about the Armadale line, it is so bad, and once again it’s just proven to me that it’s just getting worse and worse,” she said.
The incident comes just weeks after PerthNow exposed the extent of foul language, sexist and racist comments and shameful behaviour on Perth’s train network.
David Hynes, of the Perth Transport Authority, said officials were investigating the matter “very seriously”, and would be attempting to access the CCTV vision to back up the claims.
“This is the sort of stuff people should not have to put up with, whether you’re in the Hay Street Mall, or in Northbridge or on a train, so we’ll be looking into it,” Mr Hynes said.
“We have CCTV vision on all trains; we’ll track down the carriage and download the vision, find out what we can and we’ll be looking into it pretty seriously, including whether our transit guards could’ve behaved better.”
Locating the vision could take some time, as images can only be downloaded directly from the train’s hard drive, which can only be done when the train is out of service.
The shocked woman commuter told 6PR: “I witnessed a group of young…middle aged people, sitting in the middle carriages on the Armadale line.”
“I was a few feet down from them and in the corner there were two people, male and female with the female giving the older male oral sex, in front of everyone in the carriages.
“The other ones (in the group) were all drinking.
“It was quite intimidating, the kids there (in the group) were very vocal and a little bit aggressive.”
Kerry said there were two school children on the carriage when the incident took place.
She said there were transit guards on the train in another carriage at the time, but they did not intervene and actually walked away from her after she confronted them as she got off the train.
“I don’t want my children on the Armadale line…it’s just so bad, it’s getting worse and worse,” Kerry said.
Opposition transport spokesman Ken Travers said the incident demonstrated the need for a text messaging service for passengers that people can use when they need help.
Currently passengers on Perth trains can call a dedicated number if they witness anti-social behaviour occurring. “Who is going to ring that number and say there are two people having sex?” Mr Travers asked.
“What I have consistently said is to have a phone number the passengers can text to say we need assistance.
“This woman said she was too intimated to ring the (current) number.
“Yesterday’s incident completely highlights the benefits of such a system.”
The PTA today hit back at calls for an SMS emergency system and said a trial in 2007 found it to be unsuitable.
“The SMS is unsuitable because there can be a delay between the text being sent and the information being received,” spokesman David Hynes said.
“In practice, the information supplied via SMS was usually insufficient for our security people to know precisely where the incident happened.
“In the trial, we often had to send a message back to the passenger to get these details, this is not possible if the sending number is blocked which can be the case, especially with private phones even if it is not blocked, the passenger might not know the required details, or be in a position to respond to a text.
“In summary, our trial found that an SMS emergency service would be unreliable. An unreliable service is possibly worse than none at all as it leads to the expectation that help is on the way, when this may not be the case.”
