Victims 'devastated' by train CCTV failures that allow sex offenders to go untraced

Sex offenders on trains are escaping justice because of serious issues with CCTV on the rail network, a BBC investigation has revealed.

One woman who was sexually assaulted on a train told us she was "devastated" to be told that police could not trace her attacker because the incident was not captured on camera.

In hundreds of cases of alleged sexual harassment or assault, British Transport (BTP) officers in England, Scotland and Wales say they struggled to gather evidence from CCTV footage collected from trains and stations.

The Rail Delivery Group, which represents train companies, says the industry takes sexual harassment and assault cases "very seriously".

File on 4 Investigates has also been told that BTP has no control over the maintenance of CCTV cameras on the rail and London Underground networks, and that there is no legal obligation on rail operators to have working CCTV cameras on passenger trains.

We shared our findings with Claire Waxman, the Victims Commissioner for England and Wales, who is now calling for operational CCTV to be mandatory for train companies.

"I don't see how else we will keep people safe in those spaces and on public transport," she says.

Warning: This story contains details some may find distressing.

Beth Wright was sexually harassed by three men on a Tube train in central London.

"They started offering me sweets and then very quickly it progressed into, 'would you like to have sex with my friend,'" says the 27-year-old. "One of them came over to me and tried to sit next to me and touch my leg. It was really intimidating."

Other passengers boarding the train eventually intervened, and Wright reported what happened to police, but the offenders were never found.

She says officers told her there was no CCTV from her train carriage, and the camera at the station where the men had left the train was broken, so there was no way her assailants could be identified.

"I just felt quite devastated, quite crushed, because I'd done all the right things," she says. "I'd gone and reported it immediately, I was able to give a description of these men, and you just expect things like CCTV are going to work and be in place."

The experience had a profound impact on Wright.

"To be frank, it's changed my life. I actually moved, I now live in Brighton, which is for me much safer," she says. "I still worry every time I travel into London."

The BBC made a Freedom of Information request to British Transport Police for details of alleged sex offences where CCTV was mentioned in the log. There were more than 560 reports across Britain where police requested train or station CCTV as part of their inquiries.

In more than 250 of these, the incident had not been recorded, there was a system fault, the footage was of an unusable quality, or it had already been overwritten.

A significant problem for the BTP is that, although its jurisdiction spans more than 10,000 miles of railway track and 3,000 stations, platforms and transport hubs, it does not own or control any of the CCTV cameras in operation in these locations.

Data gathered by File on 4 Investigates revealed that CCTV cameras at one major train company had been out of action for a combined total of more than 81,000 hours (nine years) in 2025.

That company also had one single camera that was out of action for 152 days - more than five months. Another company's outages totalled more than two years.

As the law stands, rail operators are not legally obliged to have working CCTV on all trains and stations. What is more, they can decide the period for retaining footage, which can result in evidence being deleted within a short space of time.

Our investigation found that for one train company, the maximum period of time for retaining footage was 48 hours.

What is more, there are three major Tube lines in London with little or no CCTV camera coverage in train carriages.

Transport for London (TFL), which runs the Tube, says these lines have some of the oldest trains on the network, so "are unable to support on-train CCTV" that meets "the requirements needed for prosecution by the police".

TfL says it is working to improve the network, with plans to buy new trains with on-board CCTV cameras on two of the three lines.

On the day Rebecca Horne was sexually assaulted, she had hosted an event in the Houses of Parliament to celebrate International Women's Day.

But on her journey home to Essex, the 39-year-old was cornered by a man in a train carriage.

"He really invaded my personal space. Then he started to touch and grope me and he was rubbing his genitals against me," she says. "There wasn't anywhere for me to go and I just felt terrified. I was too scared to call him out or to ask for help."

Later that day Horne reported the incident to the police.

A few weeks later, she says she received a call from officers to say there was no CCTV footage of the attack.

"I could hear the frustration in the officer's voice," she says. "He was really cross, really empathetic to my situation, but upset that this crucial piece of evidence wasn't available."

Horne says the news was "really heartbreaking". She had put herself through a "horrible situation", writing victim impact statements and speaking to multiple officers about the assault - all apparently for nothing.

Horne's assailant was later caught by police after she spotted him at a station.

He pleaded guilty to sexual assault, and was given a community order and required to carry out unpaid work.

Claire Waxman is concerned that it would not take much for offenders to find out where cameras were not in operation, or where they were broken.

"Those are the areas that they will go," she says. "We're talking about sexual predators - it's absolutely crucial that the train companies are on top of this."

There is also the risk that if sexual offenders are not stopped, their crimes will escalate, according to Prof Katrin Hohl, an independent government adviser on criminal justice responses to sexual violence.

"If someone exposes themselves indecently, they might also be committing other types of sexual offences," she says.

In a statement, the Rail Delivery Group said: "British Transport Police's solve rate remains significantly higher than the national average, with 21.85% of rape cases and 20% of sexual offence cases solved, compared with a national rate of 2.8%."

It added that the rail industry was investing in enhanced CCTV coverage and technology to aid and support police investigations, as well as a broader range of safety measures, including improved incident reporting, intelligence sharing, and a national training programme for frontline rail employees.

The minister for victims, Alex Davies-Jones, told the BBC that the government was investing nearly £17m to improve British Transport Police's access to station CCTV, and increasing its budget to more than £481m over the next three years.

If you have been affected by the issues raised in this story you can visit BBC Action Line