More than 120,000 police officers and staff across the United Kingdom have now been trained to better deal with non-contact sexual offences, crimes that have historically been under-recognised. The scale of the training was revealed by Sky News, which spoke to a woman whose complaint led to a significant arrest.
The woman, identified as Dorothea, was travelling by train towards Dover with her mother when a man seated nearby committed a non-contact sexual offence. She described how the individual stared at her and continued the behaviour for more than five minutes on a busy mid-morning train carrying half-term holiday schoolchildren.
Rather than staying silent, Dorothea contacted the police while still on the journey. She said that what should have been a day out with her mother had turned into a deeply uncomfortable experience, but that she felt it was important to report what had happened.
Acting on the report, officers arrested a 24-year-old Afghan national, Kabir Rahmati. Police suspected he was heading to Dover in an attempt to flee the country, and his detention quickly proved to be a pivotal moment in a separate and far more serious investigation.
After his arrest, Rahmati's DNA was flagged in connection with the rape and violent assault of a woman in Liverpool around a day and a half earlier. Officers had already been searching for the person responsible for that attack when the train report brought Rahmati into custody.
Rahmati was sentenced to more than nine years in prison for both offences and was placed indefinitely on the sex offenders registry. Police said the outcome underlined why reports of non-contact offences matter in their own right and can lead to far wider results.
Authorities credited both Dorothea's decision to report the incident and a new course for officers and staff that treats non-contact sexual offences as more serious crimes. Sky News reported that the British Transport Police officers who detained Rahmati on his way to Dover were among those who had completed the training.