“It was an evening, back then I was still in school. The bus was practically empty and a man entered at the same stop where my friend disembarked and sat close by,” recalls Keti*, who’s currently a student. She was holding a painting of the Georgian poet Shota Rustaveli she’d drawn in an art class. “He asked me who the guy in the painting was and slowly started touching me physically, putting his hands on my knees.” She was frozen in fear, but managed to get off at the next stop. The stranger followed her. “I was afraid he’d follow me home, so I ran the opposite way.” 

The incident haunted her for months. “It was hellish, I didn’t want to go anywhere alone. I didn’t tell anyone at home about it, I still don’t know why…I didn’t know what he was doing, I just knew that whatever he was doing was wrong,” she says.

Later, she’d often see the same man while commuting, but each time he’d enter the same bus she was on, she’d leave to avoid further incidents. “To this day I feel uneasy every time I see that bus. I’m no longer afraid, but it’s still uncomfortable.” 

A 2022 survey by Bankwatch found that 35 percent of the 382 women interviewed  had experienced offensive sexual advances while using public transportation. Most never reported it. 

Despite its prevalence, sexual harassment isn’t talked about much in Georgia, leaving victims to fend for themselves, or to find support online. 

Sarah*, an expat who has been living in Georgia for four years, said her experiences with sexual harassment have influenced her decisions.  

“I’ve altered my behavior to manage the nastiness.” she says “This summer was really bad for unwanted attention. I have started worrying about what I wear to try to prevent the attention. I used to be able to wear my gym clothes on the metro, but I can’t anymore. It scares me when men stop me and try to talk to me on the metro.”

She remembers an incident on the bus, where a stranger was persistently staring at her “I was so uncomfortable, but I couldn’t get away because the bus was too crowded.” Staring turned into physical touch when it came time for the man to get off the bus “When it was his stop, he pushed himself against me and muttered ‘You’re beautiful.’ and I was so upset that I started to cry.” She found the strength in herself to speak up. “I shouted at him as he was getting off the bus, which was really out of character for me, so I was really proud of myself for that.” But she couldn’t find the support from others on the bus, only response from the public being silence and glares “I looked around for sympathy and there was none.” 

In another encounter, a man refused to stop following her, pestering her for a date. Sarah found refuge in a nearby restaurant. “The waiters and waitresses pushed him outside and blocked the door so he couldn’t get in,” she says. “I think they saved me that night.”

After a frightening experience with a Bolt taxi driver, Sarah opted to use public transport instead. And she’s not alone in this experience, as another expat, Emily,* has shared her frustrations with Bolt taxi service and support, as she’s also had a concerning experience with a Bolt driver. In February 2023, the driver ended the journey in the app without explanation and even stopped the car. 

“It was scary that he ended the ride, so it would look like I had gotten out of the car at that point. At this point I had run out of Georgian and he didn’t speak enough English to communicate with me, but he gestured that he wanted me to direct him the rest of the way.” When they got closer to the destination, he asked her whether she lived alone, and she refused to answer. 

“He then pulled out his phone and used the WhatsApp voice-to-text translator on his phone to translate a message to me. It said, ‘If it wasn’t so late, I would ask you to go for coffee with me.’” At this point she immediately left the taxi and reported the driver. She received a call from Bolt a few days later and learned the company does not provide drivers with sexual harassment trainings.

“After my numerous experiences with Bolt drivers, I have learned to not be overly friendly and to mention my husband as soon as possible in conversation,” she says.

Emily stressed her disappointment in the company’s lack of response to the incident. 

“I am not the only woman who this happens to. I have heard similar stories from multiple other women, some of them even more upsetting than mine. Many of them have tried to report their incidents and received no help from Bolt, while others have not reported it because of fear of negative repercussions or not being believed.” 

When reached for comment, Bolt did not agree to an interview or provide any explanation for the incident. 

Women have also reported sexual harassment and unwanted propositions from Yandex drivers. Salome,* A university student had a scary encounter earlier this year when a Yandex driver joked about “kidnapping” her for “10 million lari.”

She played it off as a joke, but when she saw he wasn’t smiling, she ended the ride early to avoid him knowing exactly where she was studying. “He leaned back from his seat and told me about how I was a very cultured and a beautiful girl,” Salome recalls. After that, she contacted Yandex support to report the incident and let them know how uncomfortable the driver made her feel. Yandex promised to handle the case and sent a coupon for three lari. But Salome learned later that other women had complained about the same driver and he was still working. 

“A few weeks later, my friend sent me a story with a screen about a creepy Yandex taxi driver with a warning ‘Don’t get in the car with this maniac,’” Salome says.

She reached out to Natia, a young woman who posted the story and found that she wasn’t the only person the driver harassed. 

Natia said the driver started making “weird comments” about her job and how much money she must earn when he learned she worked at a club—saying things like “the bag back there must be filled with money” and “how much would the owners pay me if I kidnapped you.”

At first, Natia tried to keep the conversation a joke, but she grew scared when the Yandex app notified her that her ride had been canceled. 

“I called a friend, to make him think someone was expecting me and I talked to my friend until we got close to my home and I got out early,” she says. While she reached her apartment safely, she saw the driver had parked his car near her building and wasn’t moving. When she called Yandex support to complain, she also received a promise the company would react and a coupon for seven lari.

Chai Khana reached Yandex for an interview about the women’s experiences and was directed to the PR department’s email. The PR department did not respond to multiple email requests for comment. 

When Natia realized they would not do anything about the man, she decided to post her story as a warning to other passengers. Then she called the police, but they were less helpful than she hoped.

“They started joking that I misunderstood something, coming up with excuses for him,” Natia says. “Once they found out everything I’d done to ensure my safety, like finding his information and contacting the support chat, they joked that I posed more danger to him, than him to me.” 

She then contacted Sapari, a women’s rights and legal aid organization, which helped her adequately report the incident. “The female officers at the station were very understanding and helpful,” Natia says, adding however that, as is customary for the first offense, he was only given a warning.

“I was really surprised that my story on Instagram spread so widely, a lot of people reached out to me with the same exact stories as me. It made me realize that there’s actual danger, because the driver himself didn’t seem of sound mind and the company was freeing themselves from the responsibility,” she says.

“I have often seen stories and posts of similar content before and ignored it, but now I understand how much it matters to speak up.” 

Up until 2019, victims of sexual harassment didn’t really have anyone other than their surrounding public to depend on for support, as Georgia didn’t have any laws regarding sexual harassment cases. 

The 2019 law, grants legal protection to victims of sexual harassment. The law includes fines, community service, or imprisonment for up to 10 days for the first time offenders, depending on the severity of the offense. Victims of sexual harassment report the crime to the 112 emergency service and are expected to provide evidence of harassment in form of photo, video, witnesses and/or physical evidence to open a case against the offender.

The law itself works effectively, according to Mari Varamashvili, a lawyer at Union Sapari.  She says when there is evidence and the offender is identified “it’s a done deal, the case can be made.”

But she notes it’s often difficult to gather yourself to get evidence, when you’re in a stressful situation. People’s first instinct is to get away, not stay and gather witness testimony or photographs. Also, she notes that not everyone realizes right away when they have been the victim of harassment. A lesser known stress response, called freezing, happens frequently: due to stress, a person simply fails to act at all. 

Keti* also recalls an incident when she was waiting for the bus outside her school. A stranger sat near her and started masturbating. The teachers standing nearby just walked away, leaving her alone with the man.

“If they had said something, anything, like ‘Get up and leave.’ I’d have done it, but I was so confused I was frozen, I had no idea what to do,” she says. “Thankfully my bus came soon enough and I got on it, escaping.”

Varamashvili says this is a common reaction, especially for children. 

“It’s generally hard to identify this act…some minors just don’t know what’s going on. They know that what’s happening to them is bad, it puts them in danger, but they don’t know what to do and don’t feel the support from the public, so they choose to stay silent,” she says. “The same goes for many adults in the same situation.”

Fear of lack of support from the bystanders can be very disempowering for a person experiencing sexual harassment.

Ida Bakhturidze, the co-director of Women in Europe for a Common Future, a nonprofit network that works toward gender equality, says the stereotypes that many girls are raised with in Georgia—be silent, do not cause a scene—create the “perfect grounds” for widespread sexual harassment. “They teach girls and women to be silent, to not speak up, so they can be the stereotypical “Good Girls”, which means being docile…if you’re being harassed, that makes you a “Bad Girl,” she says.

“It’s a very well put together system. Society silences the victims, so the sexual harasser knows that their victims won’t speak up. The ideology that if you’re being targeted for assault—it’s your fault for acting a certain way, for dressing a certain way—is often taught to children by adults and this causes a very bad situation in the end. Our current attitude as a society towards this problem creates a very hospitable environment for this issue to exist.”

She notes that these tendencies are very apparent once victims start speaking up, especially if they are accusing a man in power. 

“We can all see what kind of discourse follows,” Bakhturidze notes. “It doesn’t matter what the victim was wearing, how they were behaving, what kind of person they are—the offender never has the right to do what they did.”

She notes that younger generations are speaking up more about sexual harassment and their rights.  

“In the past it was total silence, the words “sexual harassment” weren’t even uttered by many generations of women. We didn’t speak about this phenomenon, we didn’t even know it existed,” she says. “We thought these kinds of things happened to certain girls and it wasn’t widespread. But then, when we started talking about it, as it turned out, it was not just widespread, it was a social phenomenon. So widespread that one in five women say that they’ve been sexually harassed.” 

Bakhturidze stresses that more education, and more publicly available information will be key to addressing this phenomenon. 

“The law we have in Georgia is relatively new, it requires informational campaigns…to raise awareness of its existence and awareness of the issue in general. This should be done by the government, as they have the appropriate resources for it,” she says.

“Aside from the government, we should also teach our children about these things, explain to them…to speak up, or who they should reach out to if they feel like they’re in danger…We can’t guarantee that it won’t happen—these things happen everywhere—but we should employ all means we can to fight against this issue.”

*Names of respondents have been changed to protect their privacy.

This article was produced in the framework of Chai Khana Fellowship program - Summer-Autumn 2023