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Pony-tailed man 'groped office worker' on Tube
10 Nov 2009A young office worker spoke of her fear today as she spent weeks being repeatedly followed and groped by a stranger on her way to the office.
The 23-year-old claimed her pony-tailed tormentor would stand just inches away during her rush-hour tube journey "just staring at me".
"It made me feel very intimidated," she told London's Southwark Crown Court.
When she allegedly spotted Eren Erenbilge a third time, she walked down the platform in a vain attempt "to get away from him.
"But again he was standing in front of me. Like before he was just staring at me, it felt like ages.
"Then he touched me on my right thigh. I can't remember what I thought. I just wanted to get off really. I didn't say anything to him. I think I was too scared. I just wanted him to stop."
She said his "fingertip" fondling lasted just seconds before the scruffily-dressed paint sprayer left the Central Line train.
The woman told jurors that following a week's holiday she decided to catch a later train to work.
"But then I saw him again ... on a couple of occasions. Nothing happened. He was just staring at me," she claimed.
Finally, on November 14 last year, she spotted him once more and, as before, tried to avoid him.
"I started to walk towards the front of the train. But he started walking, too, so I walked back to the other end. However, when I boarded he still got on the same carriage as me. There wasn't much I could do."
She claimed that to begin with he was standing next to another woman.
"I heard her say 'Stop touching my hair'. I looked over and he said, 'I'm not touching your hair. I'm trying to get to work'.
"A few people then got off ... and although I moved right at the end of the carriage he moved closer to me.
"He just started touching me again, the same way as before with his fingertips in a circular movement on my thigh, but this time it was a couple of inches higher."
She claimed he stopped briefly before he began again. "But this second time he actually groped me. I shouted at him, telling him to get off, to stop touching me, to leave me alone.
"But he just told me to 'F*** off', that it 'was 2009 love' and to 'grow up and stop acting like a kid'. It wasn't even 2009 then."
Minutes later she got off the train and complained to police.
A few days later three plainclothes officers travelled into London with her.
Not long afterwards she saw the defendant again, told those with her and he was arrested.
Earlier, Nick Barraclough, prosecuting, told jurors: "In broad terms, he denied any impropriety and said nothing had happened. He denied following the woman or staring at her but did remember an argument with her on that last day.
"The Crown's case is that he did target her, follow her, sees her from time to time on the tube, would stare at her, make an effort to be near her and on two occasions sexually assaults her."
Erenbilge, 27, of London Road, Purfleet, Essex, denies two counts of sexual assault - the first between October 1 and November 13 last year, and the second on November 14.
Reader views (2)
I imagine that the delay is more to do with the traditional British fear of making a fuss, coupled with an expectation that the complaint will be ignored or trivialised by the police.
- Nolan, Londonist, 11/11/2009 10:18
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This is a fascinating case. It took her a fair while to complain to police. Could it be, in the best Freudian tradition, her subconscious was preventing her from doing so as at some level she found these encounters thrilling - a forbidden antidote to an otherwise mundane or lonely life, perhaps? In my many years as a practising psychiatrist, I have come across these situations a number of times.
- Dr. Jonathan Melvin, Killiney, Dublin, 10/11/2009 18:10
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