I know how a sexual assault on a train never leaves you

Last week's report on the rise in reports of sexual assaults and harassment on trains will have made grimly unsurprising reading for most women who use the UK's train network: a freedom of information request from the BBC to British Transport Police (BTP) found a 37 per cent increase in reports of sexual offences since 2015.

- ALEXANDRA HEMINSLEY

This rise of more than a third in 10 years contains a kernel of positivity: BTP do now seem to encourage women to report crimes, are clearer on what constitutes these crimes, and run intelligence-led operations using “plain clothes officers who are specially trained to identify offenders”.

However, it also conceals a bleaker truth: the number of these reports that lead to arrests, let alone convictions. As our criminal justice system continues to buckle under the weight of underfunding and delays, women in the UK are increasingly realising that sexual assaults are not crimes that lead to punishment for most men. Meanwhile, a Labour government and minister for women who talked big about “halving violence against women and girls in a decade” seems to have focused its scant attention on the vanishingly small risk of assault in single-sex spaces.

The actual risk of sexual assault on public transport is not just a source of anxiety for women who use it, but one of fear and frustration. Even when, as happened in my case, BTP do all they can to arrest a suspect and encourage victims to take the assault seriously enough to file a complaint, the lack of convictions hammers home the bigger systemic battle that women face to simply travel in safety.