In May 2009, Rinehart was in the middle of her standard commute-a Yellow Line to Red Line switch in the direction of Silver Spring. “I wasn’t actively groped,” explains Rinehart, a 24-year-old office administrator. But she did not immediately register a physical reaction to the assault. Stephanie Rinehart’s grope occurred on a brightly lit Metro train, in plain view of dozens of people. And I was too stunned by the whole thing to really stop him.” Graves rejoined her friends and waited out the rest of the night inside Cobalt. But years later, Graves still remembers the look on her groper’s face: “He just had this nasty smile on his face.
When it was over, Graves bolted for the bathroom in an attempt to rinse off the experience. “By the time I figured out what he was doing, I just wanted him to finish and leave.…I didn’t want anybody else to notice what was going on, because I was so embarrassed by the whole thing,” she says. “He rubbed up on me with an erection and wouldn’t back off until, as best I could tell, he had ejaculated.” Graves stayed silent as the man assaulted her. The man had developed an obvious erection.
“At some point I figured out the guy was straight,” she says.
