Councillor bravely reveals he was raped as a teenager in Birmingham

A Birmingham councillor has bravely revealed he was raped in the Gay Village as a teenager and the effect it has had on his life.

Councillor Jack Deakin spoke of his ordeal of being curb-crawled, attacked and the aftermath. He spoke out as other councillors also shared their shocking experiences as they called for safety improvements to late-night trains, metros and buses.

Cllr Nicky Brennan also revealed she was first sexually harassed as an 11-year-old girl while wearing her school uniform as a man exposed himself in a park, and several years later was attacked by a man as she walked home one night. They spoke out at the meeting of the city council and voted to pass a motion calling to make public transport safer. They also called on the council to lobby the government to better enforce laws against sexual assault and harassment on public transport.

Councillor Deakin said he was just 16-years-old when he was attacked. He said: “I remember I had to give the clothes I was wearing that evening to the police and how I felt unable to receive those clothes back after they had been used by the police as evidence. As a 16-year-old, it was the most minor thing that I was never going to get or want my favourite coat back.

“Shortly after I didn’t leave my home for two months because I felt so awful about leaving the house and I was terrified of some men, or men in my life who were even friends, making advances on me. There are other incidents where I have been in the Gay Village and I’ve had to pretend to know a group of people so that I could be safer because of unwanted advances.”

Councillor Brennan described walking through a park with a friend when a man exposed himself and was cat-calling at them both.

She added: “As a 32 year old, I still avoid that park.” She said the harassment was worse during her time working in a pub, culminating in being attacked by a man. “The comments and incidents when I was working behind the bar just seemed to become part of my job. But being attacked by a man whilst travelling home from work one night made me feel so much shame and disgust in myself, and I blamed myself as did others. “I thought about giving up my job, but as a young single mum this wasn’t an option. I know now that I was wrong to think this. It is so normalised to blame women for being victims and the responsibility wrongly gets put on women. Women should be allowed to wear what they want without being harassed, to walk home late at night without being harassed, and women should be able to have a drink and sit in bars without being harassed. Managing the behaviour of women will not prevent male violence. The responsibility needs to be put on those who perpetrate these crimes.”

Councillor Liz Clements, cabinet member for transport, said: “I think as women we’ve simply become accustomed to encountering aggression, harassment, sexually explicit language and worse. For me there is a big dilemma here. We need to encourage people to use public transport, but people won’t do so if public transport isn’t available or isn’t safe. “We urgently need more staff on public transport and more enforcement of the law against sexual harassment and assault on public transport. As women we shouldn’t be fearful moving around our city, and we need action from the government on enforcement.”

A Birmingham councillor has bravely revealed he was raped in the Gay Village as a teenager and the effect it has had on his life. Councillor Jack Deakin spoke of his ordeal of being curb-crawled, attacked and the aftermath. He spoke out as other councillors also shared their shocking experiences as they called for safety improvements to late-night trains, metros and buses.

Cllr Nicky Brennan also revealed she was first sexually harassed as an 11-year-old girl while wearing her school uniform as a man exposed himself in a park, and several years later was attacked by a man as she walked home one night.

They spoke out at the meeting of the city council and voted to pass a motion calling to make public transport safer. They also called on the council to lobby the government to better enforce laws against sexual assault and harassment on public transport.

Councillor Deakin said he was just 16-years-old when he was attacked. He said: “I remember I had to give the clothes I was wearing that evening to the police and how I felt unable to receive those clothes back after they had been used by the police as evidence. As a 16-year-old, it was the most minor thing that I was never going to get or want my favourite coat back.

“Shortly after I didn’t leave my home for two months because I felt so awful about leaving the house and I was terrified of some men, or men in my life who were even friends, making advances on me. There are other incidents where I have been in the Gay Village and I’ve had to pretend to know a group of people so that I could be safer because of unwanted advances.”

Councillor Brennan described walking through a park with a friend when a man exposed himself and was cat-calling at them both.

She added: “As a 32 year old, I still avoid that park.”

She said the harassment was worse during her time working in a pub, culminating in being attacked by a man. “The comments and incidents when I was working behind the bar just seemed to become part of my job. But being attacked by a man whilst travelling home from work one night made me feel so much shame and disgust in myself, and I blamed myself as did others. “I thought about giving up my job, but as a young single mum this wasn’t an option. I know now that I was wrong to think this. It is so normalised to blame women for being victims and the responsibility wrongly gets put on women. “Women should be allowed to wear what they want without being harassed, to walk home late at night without being harassed, and women should be able to have a drink and sit in bars without being harassed. Managing the behaviour of women will not prevent male violence. The responsibility needs to be put on those who perpetrate these crimes.”

Councillor Liz Clements, cabinet member for transport, said: “I think as women we’ve simply become accustomed to encountering aggression, harassment, sexually explicit language and worse. For me there is a big dilemma here. We need to encourage people to use public transport, but people won’t do so if public transport isn’t available or isn’t safe. “We urgently need more staff on public transport and more enforcement of the law against sexual harassment and assault on public transport. As women we shouldn’t be fearful moving around our city, and we need action from the government on enforcement.”

Calls to lower bus fares

Councillor Clements called on West Midlands Mayor Andy Street to lower bus fares and stop any early end of the bus recovery grant.

The motion backed trade union Unite’s ‘Get Me Home Safely campaign’, which recognises a large number of late night public transport users are often shift workers. The union has argued employers need to take their duty of care beyond an employee finishing their shift, such as journeys home during unsocial hours.

The West Midlands police and crime commissioner’s women’s safety survey, conducted in 2021, found:

• 67% of respondents had felt unsafe on a bus.
• 43% had felt unsafe in a taxi. 80% of respondents had expressed feeling unsafe following incidents such as cat calling, wolf whistling, up skirting or inappropriate behaviour.
• 93% did not report this to the police.

A YouGov poll in 2019 about experiences of sexual harassment on public transport found that 37% of women had experienced someone ‘deliberately pressing against them’ compared to 12% of men, and 22% of women had a ‘sexual statement directed against them’ in comparison to 7% of men. Councillor Lee Marsham said not enough has changed for women to travel safely in the West Midlands. He compared two accounts of sexual harassment over four decades apart. He said: “A friend gave me one example of her experience of public transport in the 1980s. She told me if you were on a train carriage on your own you would move so that there were other people around you. If it was dark on the buses you would try to sit near the driver and would never go upstairs on a double decker.”

Cross-party support came from all political parties of Birmingham city council, with Green councillor Julian Pritchard asking whether it was viable to introduce a 24-hour bus station back into Birmingham. Minor objections were heard by the Conservatives, who argued the West Midlands Mayor Andy Street was already lobbying government to bring tougher enforcement on sexual assault and harassment laws.

The motion was proposed by Labour councillors Jane Francis and Liz Clements. Andy Street, the mayor of the West Midlands, said: “Public safety on our transport network – not least women’s safety travelling to and from work late at night – is of paramount importance, and something Transport for West Midlands (TfWM) has worked incredibly hard on improving through a variety of measures – including our Safer Travel Partnership.

“I’m particularly pleased that two of my senior team at the West Midlands Combined Authority, Laura Shoaf as chief executive and Anne Shaw as Transport for West Midlands executive director, have led the way advising the Department for Transport in integrating safety into the design and development of public transport as part of their roles as the UK’s first Violence Against Women and Girls Transport Champions.

“My team have already met with Unite to discuss their ‘Get Me Home Safely’ campaign, and we are exploring what further steps could be taken by TfWM.”

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