Gang travel misery

By Casey Neill
YOUNG Yarra Ranges commuters have told the Mail they are scared to use public transport because of unprovoked violence and assaults.
Menzies Creek student Jacqui, 15, has twice been a victim of violence stemming from public transport.
“It’s really not uncommon at all,” she said.
She said many peers were now scared to catch a train.
“After the first time a lot of my friends were really freaked out,” she said.
A greater official presence at stations would help the situation, Jacqui said. “At Belgrave station they have people there and I haven’t heard of anything happening there,” she said.
Jacqui said the problem often peaked after school when large groups of adolescents congregated and few adults were around.
She said arguments and fights regularly broke out between school-leavers and former and current students.
“It happens a lot,” she said.
Jacqui was first attacked in 2008 at a playground opposite Upwey Railway Station while sitting with friends.
“Two girls kept walking past yelling stuff,” she said.
The pair left but returned with friends and attacked Jacqui and her peers. “They were hitting us and yelling,” she said.
“Somehow we managed to get away and went into the milk bar. I called my dad to come and pick us up.
“We don’t even know them.”
Jacqui has seen her attackers on the platform in Upwey since the assault and believes they probably travelled into the area by train.
“I hadn’t had anything like that happen before,” she said.
“I’d heard about it but it’s never happened to anyone I know.”
She was again assaulted in the first week of term two this year, this time walking to a bus stop just a few hundred metres from her home at 7.50am.
A man approached her and asked to borrow her mobile phone. She told him she had no credit.
“He started hitting me and kicking me,” she said.
“Then he just left me on the ground. He didn’t even take my phone.”
“I was just shocked. I just walked home. I was really shaken up.”
Jacqui’s mum took her to the police station to report the assault. “But all they can do is follow it up,” she said.
The Mail contacted the State Government but did not receive a response before going to print.