Man offers to pay teenage girl’s train fine if she performs 'sexual favours' for him

Seventeen-year-old contacted train guard immediately, who stopped train

A male passenger in France offered to pay for a teenage girl’s train fine if she performed apparent sexual favours on him in return.

The 17-year-old girl was fined after she forgot the discount card she needed for her ticket to be valid on a train which left Rennes in the direction of the western French city of Angers on Sunday afternoon, reports French newspaper Ouest France.

The man, who was with his three-year-old daughter, said the people in the carriage could club together to contribute to the fine after overhearing the train guard slapping her with the fine.

However, once the train guard had left the carriage, the man told the teenage girl he would pay if she provided him with a “little service” in the toilets.

The girl contacted the train guard immediately who then stopped the train at Angers in Maine-et-Loire where the police were waiting for him.

The man, who was around 35 years old, was highly intoxicated, according to police, and had more than a gram of alcohol per litre of blood in his system . He spent the night in a cell to sober up before being released the next day.

Under a sexual harassment law brought in last year the man may have to pay a €1,500 (£1,376) fine. The accused said his remarks were misunderstood.

In January, a report from France’s High Council for Gender Equality found more than a million French women were forced to endure sexist insults in 2017 with only four convictions for breaches of sexual harassment laws.

Sexist insults are described in the research as “daily violence” faced by women. The most frequently reported insults were salope (slut), pute (whore) and connasse (bitch). Last year politicians approved legislation which introduced on-the-spot fines of up to €750 (£688) for wolf-whistling or sexual harassment on the street.

The #MeToo movement inspired French women to create their own campaign against sexual harassment under the Twitter hashtag “BalanceTonPorc”.

The hashtag translates as “rat on your pig” and encourages women to come forward with accounts of men who have groped, threatened or harassed them. A year after it was first used, it had appeared on close to one million tweets, according to one social media tracking site.

The #MeToo movement exploded in late 2017 after a series of sexual assault allegations were made against men in Hollywood and a slew of other industries. Millions of women around the world shared their own stories of rape, assault and harassment.