Although not directly gun related, it is self defense related and being in NYC she never had a chance. The token booth clerks all suck, they fall asleep all the time and the MTA wants to raise fares and this is what we get for service
MY UNENDING RAPE HORROR
SUBWAY GAL 'STILL IN SHOCK'
By WILLIAM J. GORTA
'THOUGHT I WAS DEAD': Maria Besedin yesterday as she tells of her rape ordeal. The Post reported a judge's ruling that two MTA men who saw the attack only had to call police.
April 3, 2009
The young woman attacked by a rapist in a desolate subway station as two MTA workers looked on recounted her nightmare yesterday.
Maria Besedin told her terrifying story two days after Queens Supreme Court Justice Kevin Kerrigan tossed her lawsuit -- ruling the booth clerk and conductor who saw a pervert drag her off in 2005 had no obligation beyond calling cops.
"I held his gaze for at least five seconds, yelling, screaming, 'Help! Help!' " Besedin said of station agent John Koort.
But all he did was press the panic button to notify his bosses of trouble.
Besedin's ride through hell began on a Queens-bound G train when a sicko, the only other person in her car, began touching her feet. She jumped away, but in the commotion, missed her station, Greenpoint Avenue in Brooklyn.
She got off at 21st Street in Long Island City, where the same sex fiend began lick ing her feet.
She bolted and he chased her up the staircase, where she tried frantically to signal Koort with her eyes that she was in desperate trouble.
But Koort never left his booth and didn't try to scare the attacker using his micro phone.
Said Besedin, "I always hear announce ments over the intercom towards lower levels of the trains, 'This and this train isn't running' or 'Service has been stopped to here and here. Come back upstairs' or -- even if someone jumps the turnstiles -- 'Hey, where are you going?' -- but unfortunately, he couldn't even do that," she said.
The rapist dragged her down the stairs.
"I had been violated and raped on the stairs on the lower level and then dragged over to a tool-box kind of thing and raped," the petite Besedin said in a shaky voice. "I had lost all my dignity."
Harmodio Cruz, a conductor on a train leav ing the station while the attack was under way, called in a trouble report but never stopped the train.
The rapist at one point told his terrified victim, "If you don't stop screaming, I'll do this," grabbing her by the scruff of the neck and hang ing her over the train tracks.
"I thought I was as good as dead," she said.
Since the attack, Besedin, who came to the United States from Russia when she was 7, has struggled with living in the city -- where the cheapest means of transportation is the one that frightens her the most.
She dropped out of a graduate psychology program at Fordham University in The Bronx because she couldn't handle riding the D train.
Besedin said she struggles with depression and posttraumatic-stress syndrome, braving nightmares and "awful, awful anxiety."
"I really lost four years of my life from this," she said. "All my hopes and dreams, to go to graduate school, to write."
The NYU graduate particularly misses going to the art exhibits at PS 1 in Long Island City, but can't handle taking the subway to the same stop where the awful attack took place.
"I'd be reminded of what happened to me," she said. "I just felt I was robbed of the joy I felt."
The workers' calls brought cops to the station 10 minutes later, but the rapist escaped up a different staircase -- and is still at large.
Besedin said she hadn't heard from the NYPD in about three years, when police asked to take a picture of her to show to a man who admitted to a string of rapes.
"They said the man had confessed to his crimes and he would ID me if I was one of his victims," she said. "Nothing happened after that. I didn't hear from them again."
Speaking of the transit employees, she said, "I wasn't expecting a hero. I was just expecting a . . . system where everything could be done, call the cops immediately, talk over the intercom, say, 'The cops are coming, we see what you're doing' . . . I'm certain it would have prevented this horrible thing."
The soft-spoken 25-year-old said she's "still in shock" over the judge's decision and feels let down by the justice system.
Her lawyer, Chris Seeger, plans an appeal.
"It's so hard for me to process this whole thing, because I wanted every woman out there to be safe and not to have to experience anything like I did," Besedin said.
"I thought the judge would be able to see how crucial an issue it is," she said. "Especially now that the MTA wants to charge us even more to ride their unsafe trains."
MY UNENDING RAPE HORROR
SUBWAY GAL 'STILL IN SHOCK'
By WILLIAM J. GORTA
'THOUGHT I WAS DEAD': Maria Besedin yesterday as she tells of her rape ordeal. The Post reported a judge's ruling that two MTA men who saw the attack only had to call police.
April 3, 2009
The young woman attacked by a rapist in a desolate subway station as two MTA workers looked on recounted her nightmare yesterday.
Maria Besedin told her terrifying story two days after Queens Supreme Court Justice Kevin Kerrigan tossed her lawsuit -- ruling the booth clerk and conductor who saw a pervert drag her off in 2005 had no obligation beyond calling cops.
"I held his gaze for at least five seconds, yelling, screaming, 'Help! Help!' " Besedin said of station agent John Koort.
But all he did was press the panic button to notify his bosses of trouble.
Besedin's ride through hell began on a Queens-bound G train when a sicko, the only other person in her car, began touching her feet. She jumped away, but in the commotion, missed her station, Greenpoint Avenue in Brooklyn.
She got off at 21st Street in Long Island City, where the same sex fiend began lick ing her feet.
She bolted and he chased her up the staircase, where she tried frantically to signal Koort with her eyes that she was in desperate trouble.
But Koort never left his booth and didn't try to scare the attacker using his micro phone.
Said Besedin, "I always hear announce ments over the intercom towards lower levels of the trains, 'This and this train isn't running' or 'Service has been stopped to here and here. Come back upstairs' or -- even if someone jumps the turnstiles -- 'Hey, where are you going?' -- but unfortunately, he couldn't even do that," she said.
The rapist dragged her down the stairs.
"I had been violated and raped on the stairs on the lower level and then dragged over to a tool-box kind of thing and raped," the petite Besedin said in a shaky voice. "I had lost all my dignity."
Harmodio Cruz, a conductor on a train leav ing the station while the attack was under way, called in a trouble report but never stopped the train.
The rapist at one point told his terrified victim, "If you don't stop screaming, I'll do this," grabbing her by the scruff of the neck and hang ing her over the train tracks.
"I thought I was as good as dead," she said.
Since the attack, Besedin, who came to the United States from Russia when she was 7, has struggled with living in the city -- where the cheapest means of transportation is the one that frightens her the most.
She dropped out of a graduate psychology program at Fordham University in The Bronx because she couldn't handle riding the D train.
Besedin said she struggles with depression and posttraumatic-stress syndrome, braving nightmares and "awful, awful anxiety."
"I really lost four years of my life from this," she said. "All my hopes and dreams, to go to graduate school, to write."
The NYU graduate particularly misses going to the art exhibits at PS 1 in Long Island City, but can't handle taking the subway to the same stop where the awful attack took place.
"I'd be reminded of what happened to me," she said. "I just felt I was robbed of the joy I felt."
The workers' calls brought cops to the station 10 minutes later, but the rapist escaped up a different staircase -- and is still at large.
Besedin said she hadn't heard from the NYPD in about three years, when police asked to take a picture of her to show to a man who admitted to a string of rapes.
"They said the man had confessed to his crimes and he would ID me if I was one of his victims," she said. "Nothing happened after that. I didn't hear from them again."
Speaking of the transit employees, she said, "I wasn't expecting a hero. I was just expecting a . . . system where everything could be done, call the cops immediately, talk over the intercom, say, 'The cops are coming, we see what you're doing' . . . I'm certain it would have prevented this horrible thing."
The soft-spoken 25-year-old said she's "still in shock" over the judge's decision and feels let down by the justice system.
Her lawyer, Chris Seeger, plans an appeal.
"It's so hard for me to process this whole thing, because I wanted every woman out there to be safe and not to have to experience anything like I did," Besedin said.
"I thought the judge would be able to see how crucial an issue it is," she said. "Especially now that the MTA wants to charge us even more to ride their unsafe trains."
