A Pennsylvania prosecutor on Thursday said it’s “simply not true” that Philadelphia riders “callously” did nothing to stop a woman from being sexually assaulted on a commuter train.
The attack last week on a Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) train made for national headlines with commuters being painted as cold-hearted travelers who not only failed to intervene, but stopped to record the rape with their phones.
However, Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer insisted that version events is not accurate.
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“There is a narrative out there people sat on the El train and watched this transpire and took videos of it for their own gratification,” Stollsteimer said, using local nickname for SEPTA’s Market-Frankford line.
“That is simply not true. It did not happen. We have the security video from SEPTA that shows that was not the true narrative,” he said.
Stollsteimer blamed SEPTA for painting an inaccurate picture.
“I think it really came from SEPTA officials,” Stollsteimer told reporters. “I saw the video where they talked about ‘these people,’ acting like there was a group of people just callously recording this incident.”
A SEPTA spokesman declined comment on Thursday.
Fiston Ngoy, 35, was arrested and accused of the Oct. 13 assault in Upper Darby, officials said.
Upper Darby Police Superintendent Timothy Bernhardt and SEPTA spokesman Andrew Busch on Monday both squarely blamed riders for not coming to the woman’s aid during the attack.
Stollsteimer conceded that some riders might have caught a glimpse of the assault, but didn’t realize what they were seeing.
“It was not very crowded at all, sparsely crowded, and it’s moving,” he said. “So this is an incident that’s happening over time. So people are getting in and out of the car. They may not all have been aware at any time of what would happen previously.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
