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Fitchburg man charged with indecent assault on the Red Line
By adamg on Mon, 12/12/2011 - 9:44am
A Harvard manTransit Police have made an arrest for a November incident in which a guy allegedly poked a woman's crotch with a finger as their Red Line train pulled into Kendall Square.
Bradley J. Spencer, 36, was arrested Friday, Transit Police report.
The Globe reports that Spencer, is a Harvard grad student and teaching fellow. His CV.
Transit Police report the victim, despite being shocked by the assault, managed to take his photo with her cell phone before they both got off the train at Park Street.
Innocent, etc.
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Comments
Does she get to poke him in the eye now?
^
What's Ugaritic...
....for "douchenozzle"?
He did a very bad thing.
He did a very bad thing. Assuming he did it. Which you are. And which is still being determined. This story seems a little odd to me. Who pokes someone in the vagina? Like, with a finger? On a train? It's a little unusual.
Exactly.
I'm really, really tired of these "Pervs On a Train" stories. A cell phone picture of a guy standing on the subway and some lady's claims, does not evidence of a crime make. A supposed sexual nature to the crime does not negate the rights of the accused or standards of evidence.
For all we know, they bumped into each other when the train jostled, and some special Princess doesn't realize that accidents happen.
Unless they're substantiated by another witness who SEES the act happen, the T police have no business doing anything other than trying to find the person by watching their security cameras or looking for someone via patrols, and then quietly pulling them in for an interview.
Transit Police not in the habit of just arresting people
Really, they're not. Doesn't mean the guy is not innocent, but police don't just arrest somebody without, you know, some credible evidence that goes beyond somebody showing up at their office with a cell-phone photo, evidence they think will stand up in court.
But by referring to "special Princesses," I'm thinking you really don't buy these cases at all. Let me guess that you're not female and have never been groped on a train and don't know anybody who has.
Spend a lot of time on the T,do you?
The T is literally a place where perverts used to go to get their thrills. Fortunately for people nowadays, cameras are now everywhere.
To paraphrase Norma Desmond; "It's the cameras that got smaller, not the perverts".
The original photo was taken
The original photo was taken by someone else on the train. I assume that means the second person also witnessed the event, otherwise why would they take a picture?
Maybe not
The T initially said the photo was taken by "a passenger," which I took to mean "another passenger."
But: The police report says the victim herself took a cell-phone photo, which police then used in their investigation. So it could be "the passenger" was, in fact, the woman.
And because of that ...
I've changed the wording in the initial post. My apologies for any confusion!
Good to know! Thanks for the
Good to know! Thanks for the correction, Adam. :)
you're right
It's an assumption based on a blog post nothing more, which isn't right. You're also right that the description of this incident is a bit...bizarre.
This guy's life in Boston is
This guy's life in Boston is completely ruined. His career at Harvard is over. Maybe the T police know something I don't know. Maybe there is video footage of him poking this woman's vagina. But I bet there isn't. I think this could happen to any man who rides the T. Of course maybe he did do it, but also maybe he didn't.
Bullshit
Not the part about his life being ruined, but about this being something that could happen to any man who rides the T.
I've somehow ridden the T and the subway in New York for decades now, even at rush hour, without ever once being in a position where a woman could accuse me of poking her in her groin. Even when pressed together, you really still have to work to do that.
OK. It is true that it is a
OK. It is true that it is a one in a million chance of "accidentally" groping someone on the T. However, I think there is a much better chance of pissing off somebody on the T and being accused of something that is hard to prove you didn't do. Maybe he groped her. Maybe he called her a b_ _ _ _ _ because she hit him with her bag--I don't know. If you really wanted to stick it to someone, this would be the way to do it. I hope you are right that there is something more than a woman who says it happened and a photo of some guy on the train.
Because, as we all know ...
Stupid lying special princess bitches get their thrills from attacking innocent men and having them arrested.
Men never initiate inappropriate and sexual contact with women on a train - they just "lose their balance".
Bullshit.
There's a lot of Bullshit
And it's on both sides.
Unless this guy has a history, people should be cautious to pass judgment. Even if he has a history, he's innocent until proven on these charges.
The media as a whole has been pretty bad of pushing the charged = guilty meme; and that is wrong. The court of public opinion can be even more brutal than that of the court of law. even more so with the internet.
Hopefully if he is guilty he gets whats coming to him. But an accusation is an accusation until proven. People lie all the time.
How about this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#False...
Funny how you forgot how much it sucked to be a black dude in the south for, oh, a century or three. Look at a white woman funny and you ended up hanging from a tree; god forbid you engage in even consensual sex, because the second the secret was out, she'd claim you raped her to save face.
The Innocence Project has been using DNA evidence to free men who have spend most of their adult lives behind bars, convicted on virtually no evidence other than the victim saying "he did it."
This case, we now know, is different - the guy's confessed and has a history.
Still, I don't see why Adam had to post the guy's photo again after he was caught (posting the photo served no further purpose), AND hunt down links to his CV and where he worked.
Yeah, I shouldn't have run that photo again
There's a perfectly valid discussion to be had about information posted about people under arrest - how much is too much, and what happens if they're found not guilty?
But I don't think we're really having that discussion.
I didn't handle this guy's arrest any differently than any of the other arrests I've written about over the last few years (I actually did less research than I normally do, thanks to the Globe, which first reported his background). But nobody ever brings up DNA testing or overturned convictions or false reporting when I write about gang members in Roxbury. Why is that?
thanks
Phew, I feel like less of a judgmental schmuck, now that I know he's basically confessed and apparently is a serial poker (maybe he's just acting out his FaceBook interactions in a very Don DeLilo-White Noise kinda way). In some way I guess he thinks he's a douchenozzle as well.
Maybe it's just me but I really don't get what is up with people who get off on anything sex-related in a setting like the T. It's not like they've got Barry White announcing the stops or something.
Thanks for asking this
Thanks for asking this important question. It's because despite our 'civilized' society, we still regard women as devious, lying bitches. This has got to stop.
This is why Wikipedia isn't acceptable as an academic reference
Not being able to convict != false accusation.
Inaccurate identification != no rape happened != false accusation. That's called mistaken identity. False accusation and mistaken identity are very different situations.
In many of the DNA cases, the rape victims and witnesses were strongly pressured by police and prosecutors to quickly make a positive identification due to pressure to solve the crime. In many cases, the women were later astonished because the guy the police brought to them looked so very much like the person who raped them and so much like the real rapist whose DNA matched years later. Again, that is NOT false accusation - that is mistaken identity.
Now consider this: nearly every woman who has taken the T has, at some point, been accosted.
Very few men and women have been accused of groping, let alone arrested for it, let alone convicted.
As a woman who has often
As a woman who has often experienced and reported being groped in public, it takes a lot more than a cell phone pic to get ANY kind of response from the authorities. Trust me. There's definitely more to the story than we know. It's not as easy as people think to railroad a strange male into a sexual assault accusation. I know exactly one man who has been accused inaccurately, and at the very least 75% of the women I know have been inappropriately touched by a strange man at some point. I don't know any single woman personally who has successfully pressed charges against their assailants. Not one. Without fail, either the women themselves have decided not to report it, or if they have it's gone exactly no where. A pat on the head and a "be more careful when you're out" is all we get a majority of the time.
Sometimes it may be just an accident
"As a woman who has often experienced and reported being groped in public"
Often? How often is often? Exactly how many of these gropers are out there? Millions? I don't know about your situations or the situation with the "poker", but certainly some of the time it must simply be an accident. The T is crowded.
I can definitely say there are occasions, maybe because of the hyper-sensitive times we live in, when women make inaccurate assumptions and falsely accuse, because it happened to me. Some years ago I was standing in line at a fast food restaurant. Either my hand or my bag must have brushed against the woman standing next to me (I didn't even notice if it did), but she turned around and said to me in a LOUD voice "keep your hands to yourself!". Now, I am a gay man, and I am not in the habit of groping anyone, and, even if I wanted to grope, there would be no reason for me to grope a woman. But everyone turned and looked at me, and in their minds I must have been convicted on the spot. It was very embarrassing. It goes to show what can happen.
Sure, absolutely mistakes can
Sure, absolutely mistakes can happen, but there's a big difference between a woman telling you to keep your hands to yourself (and you doing so, because you never intended harm) and a woman who feels the need to snap a picture (or ask someone else to snap a picture) and report it to police. Taking that step is time consuming and aggravating, because let me tell you…the police don't believe you.
And as for my definition of often: in the last 12 years that I've lived in this city, I have twice had men deliberately expose their penis on the red line (while maintaining steady eye contact), once had a man expose himself AND start stroking it on the orange line. That counts as sexual harassment even if I wasn't touched - being stared down is almost more creepy. In the touching department…I couldn't really begin to get an accurate count. There's the erect penis rubbed against me on the green line (we were packed into the stairwell getting on at Hynes). There's the finger that traced the shape of my V during a crowded ride between Harvard and Porter. There's the group of teens who squeezed and scrammed on the Blue Line (not even crowded that time). There's countless hands drifting across my backside that mysteriously reappear even after I shift away or politely ask someone to "watch their hands." There's the old man on the commuter rail to Franklin who kept "falling asleep" and allowing his hand to wander onto my thigh - after the third time I returned it to his own lap, he quietly told me to "hush, and enjoy it." There's the man at Downtown Crossing who terrified me by following me at close range down a tunnel, and JAMMED his hand in between my butt cheeks hard enough to leave a bruise. And this doesn't cover the groping that's happened anywhere but on public transportation.
In all of the drifting hands incidents, I always try to give the benefit of the doubt. I move away quietly, and if the hand returns, I speak up politely. If THAT doesn't work, I grab their wrist and say, "EXCUSE ME, IS THIS YOUR HAND?" That usually works, but once got me shoved down onto a row of seated commuters. Sorry, everybody.
I am one woman. I dress conservatively (if not quite conventionally). I am not even that pretty (I'm fairly fat, if you want the truth). But I ride the train a lot. I'm out late at night, a lot. I don't travel in a pack, because my friends don't live in my neighborhood. I DO dye my hair funny colors, which seems to be an invitation for a certain kind of attention, but I refuse to be intimidated back into mousey brown. I have noticed that the incidents are dropping off now that I'm aging (approaching 40 and can't wait!) but I still find my body is often not my own when I'm on public transportation. Or in a bar. Or at a concert. Or walking down the goddamn street sometimes. It's frustrating and exhausting.
My Creepy Encounter
I have seen this guy on the T a couple of times and he clearly has issues with boundaries and problems with women in general. He tried to squeeze an arm between me and another female passenger waiting for people to get off a train and then he started to try to push between us. He backed off with a hateful stare when I stomped my foot and spun halfway around and told him sternly to wait his turn. I viewed this as bratty and pushy, but not pervy.
Another time, he was pushing himself into the space of a younger female passenger in an end seat with a gap ... one of those where there is room for someone to stand and enough that they don't have to encroach. Only he was clearly attempting to either creep out the seated woman or make incidental contact with her. He retreated when another passenger called him on it, and she declined help reporting him. He had plenty of room - it was clearly unnecessary and creepy and may have had the intention of "accidently" making crotch contact with her face. Until she moved to a different car he glared at her menacingly.
(Note: I wrote all of this before I read the incident report. Pretty sure it is the same guy)
Ugh. That is just awful. He's
Ugh. That is just awful. He's pretty distinct looking, so chances are it WAS the same guy.
I hate, hate, hate it when I see men creeping on young women like that. It took me until I was in my late twenties to even have the courage to ask a stranger to back up or move away. I never wanted to "embarrass anyone" or "make a scene." It's heartbreaking to think of how many times I just stood there, mortified, telling myself "he couldn't POSSIBLY be doing this on purpose." Now I make a point to stand up for myself or anyone else, since I know a lot of women are feeling the same way inside.
Let me justify your misogynistic assumptions here...
I sure have lots of extra time to harass perfectly innocent men on the train. So I have to spend the time tracking down a cop, spinning my false tale, reiterating the story to a prosecutor, dealing with court dates... It's all worth it to mess with some random stranger on the train, whoo-hoo! The cops have no experience with this sort of thing and will believe me, no questions asked! What fun! I like being felt up, too. Keep it coming boys!
Also; just noticed on the
Also; just noticed on the original post about the incident, it says the photo was taken by ANOTHER PASSENGER in the car. So, chances are they weren't working as a tag team to bring down an innocent man, right? No reason for someone else to snap his photo unless they also witnessed the improper poke.
I'm siding with you on most
I'm siding with you on most of this, but, if a woman screamed out about a man touching her, whether or not I saw it, I'd try to stop the man or get his picture. It doesn't mean I saw the groping, I just heard someone in distress and my instincts had me immediately try to help.
That's a very good point. I
That's a very good point. I would probably do the same in that situation (of course, with my big mouth I would probably call the guy out right on the spot). But I still stand by my statement that it takes a lot more than her word and a cell phone pic to get attention from the authorities, at least in my experience.
"innocent, etc"
I already implied that the guy was a douchenozzle, but I do agree with Whit that we do have to be careful to take that "innocent, etc" tag a bit more seriously.
It's disconcerting that more often that not this issue of presumed innocence seems to be brought up when it's a case of violence/sexual assault against women. Either blaming the victim (not the case here) or giving the guy the benefit of the doubt and opening the possibility that maybe he's been targeted here -- a he said/she said sort of scenario. But given the potential power of blogs and internet info sources to really bugger a person, it's good to err on the side of caution. How sucky would it be to learn that this guy was totally innocent and this whole thing was a misunderstanding, after his name, picture, c.v., university affiliation and everything else is put out there. I mean you could Google it easily enough, but there are the links for you, all done.
I haven't seen UHub get into the situation of having to issue a retraction on something like this, but given UHub readers' propensity to shooting off snide-ass comments (ahem...), well, I know I would feel like a bigger schmuck than I usually do.
If you ever get a chance....
... check out "I Just Didn't Do It" -- an excellent, very serious movie by the same Japanese director who made the excellent (but somewhat fluffy) "Shall We Dance".
A tough call...
Mixed emotions on this (and it comes up everytime there is a story like this).
On one hand, I have no doubt believing that there is more evidence in play than the initial police report suggests, and I fear that the overwhelming number of sexual assaults on the MBTA (of all types and severity) go unreported.
But I do have a personal story that I can't help but recall when stories like this emerge. One Summer day, I was sitting on a bench in Copley Square, reading and minding my own business. A woman who was about 30 feet away from me, started screaming that I had assaulted her, yelling about "rape" and such. She was well-dressed and, to a casual observer, certainly wouldn't have looked mentally ill apart from the frantic screaming).
Fortunately, the people sitting near me knew that no such offense took place and, even more fortunately, a police officer just happened to be walking by and observed the whole scene.
Had I been unfortunate enough to be closer to this woman at the time she started her screaming, or didn't have the benefit of a dozen or so people who could have defended me, I might very well have been hauled in, had my name publicized and victimized for merely being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Of course, bizarre instances like this are far less common than pervs who get caught red-handed, but these are the sorts of crimes where accusation is tantamount to conviction.
Yeah, some people are just pigs who want to defend men and their actions by putting down victims. But there is the troubling prospect of someone unfairly accused and the gravity these cases have above and beyond most other police log items.
Sorry, personal experience does not justify presumption of guilt
I have to admit, I agree with those who have found the UHub posts about this story to have an implicit bias not supported by the facts publicly announced at this point. Are there pervs on the T? Undoubtably. Is everyone accused of pervy behaviour guilty? Assuredly not.
Adam, just because you have never been unjustly or mistakenly accused of a crime, even one that seems highly unlikely, don't assume that it's not possible. My T story is not salacious, and I'm sure many of my darker-skinned fellow Bostonians can trump it, but here it is anyway...
It was back in the mid 90s, I was waiting for the 39 at the Pru bus stop, when two patrol cars screeched up to the curb and four beefy police officers spilled out and quickly surrounded me. Turned out that some asshat had been making prank 911 calls from the area. They had tracked one call to the bank of phones next to this stop (yes, this was back in the day when pay phones were still everywhere), and they assumed that the nerdy 20-something (me) playing with a weird device (early PDA) was their perp. I mean, c'mon, what are the chances I wasn't? I was even working on a communications app at the time and my backpack was filled with notes about wireless protocols et al!
Two cops start questioning me while the other two talk to the rest of the people waiting, asking if they had seen anyone/me talking on the phones. The bus pulls up just as this is happening, and everyone (but me) pours on. One cop shouts at this last little asian woman, who looks absolutely terrified, if she saw me talking on the phones. She shrugs her shoulders and indicates that she doesn't understand/speak english. He points at me, points at the phones, and yells the question again. She nods quickly and flees onto the bus, which shuts its doors and pulls away. The cop turns back to me like he's Perry f'ing Mason and just cracked the case of his career. My outrage was pretty strong at that point and I had to make a very conscious effort to be civil. If I had not had experience keeping my cool while a [gunny sgt/XO/department head] yelled in my face, I can imagine things might have gone much differently.
Luckily for me, the other officer (older, and I assume senior), correctly interpreted my outrage and de-esculated the situation. He took me aside, got me to calm down, asked me to look at him straight and answer his questions (basically "Did you do this?"). I was sincere, he was convinced, he told me I was free to go, and told the others I wasn't their guy. Then they left. And I got to sit on my butt shaking with adrenaline for 20 minutes waiting for the next bus.
That one police officer (out of four), who was able to see past his initial assumptions and took the time to get a fuller and more accurate read of the situation, was probably the only reason I did not end up arrested.
Okay
Instead of taking a photo, she should have pulled a gun?
Is that what it takes to stop pervs like him and their "women are all lying bitches wanting to ruin the lives of random men" apologists like you?
You probably honestly thought that jerkweed, woman-hating professor from abroad was "just trying to stay upright" when multiple witnesses saw him grope an adolescent girl, eh? Or when the teen girls got fucking sick of that perv on the greenline groping him and took pictures?
Lying girls - women can't be trusted. Yeah. Maybe we should just ban all men instead.
The assumptions in your reply
The assumptions in your reply are no better than the wrong assumptions you replied to. Take a long hard look in the mirror.
This could be the Harvard guy
This could be the Harvard guy that Lady GaGa is looking for. They seem to deserve each other.
wait a minute....
How DO you spell "curriculum"?
He has it spelled "cirriculum" and unless that is a fancy schmancy way of differentiating his fancy schmancy CV from all others, he oughta be arrested for poor spellingmanship.
AND vagina poking.
Women have been groped by men
Women have been groped by men on public transit in cities all around the world forever, and it was just tough luck for them. We are just now hearing about these occurrences since cell phones are handy at catching perps in the act. So now, some of you are worried about men being the object of false accusations? Please. Adam says it best in his comment here.
"you are worried about men
"you are worried about men being the object of false accusations?"
We should be as worried about ALL crimes - whether it's someone being falsely accused or someone claiming abuse.
Channel 7 news at 5pm just
Channel 7 news at 5pm just reported that the alleged groper has admitted that he has a problem with groping women.
An incident report says the
KENNEDY FOR CONGRESS
three cheers for Prosecutor Joe Kennedy, this has to be a first a Kennedy prosecuting a Harvard Groper instead of covering it up
I admit defeat. He did it.
I admit defeat. He did it. However, I still say that in the history of the world that more than one man (or maybe even one woman) has been accused of something like this falsely. I also still think that there are plenty of nuts on the T--like this guy, for example.