Brooklyn Woman Mocks Alleged Subway Masturbator In Guerrilla Campaign

SOUTH STREET SEAPORT, NY — A middle-aged Brooklyn writer named Deb, who did not want her last name published because "people are insane" (fair) but whose identity has been confirmed by Patch, launched a guerrilla, one-woman perv-shaming campaign in the South Street subway station this week. In a series of tongue-in-cheek flyers posted throughout the station, Deb mocks a man she claims masturbated next to her on an uptown 1 train last Sunday night — "a deterrent," she said, "for all the other perverts" lurking in the NYC subway system. (Scroll down to see one of the flyers in full.)

"It's hard to humiliate these guys," Deb told Patch. "But humiliation is a really useful tactic when people try to intimidate you."

According to Deb, a man in his late 20s or early 30s sat down right next to her in an otherwise empty train car at the South Street station around 8:30 p.m. Sunday — then took out his penis and began masturbating.

"Immediately, I snapped a picture," the Brooklyn Heights resident remembered. "I said, 'You are going to be famous.'"

(Patch has taken one for the team and reviewed the photo evidence. We can can unfortunately confirm the man Deb photographed was fully exposed at the time. And although she hasn't yet filed an official police report, an NYPD spokesperson said detectives "have been notified" about the alleged 1 train masturbation session and will look into it further.)

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When the alleged masturbator wasn't put off by Deb's smartphone photography, she said she "started completely going off" — yelling at him, taking more pics and threatening to post them on Facebook so everyone would know what he'd done. After a few minutes of this, she said the man finally got up and "sort of strolled" out of the train car.

Deb did end up posting a photo to Facebook, albeit with the nasty bits cropped out.

And by Monday, the self-described "playwright and essayist" had likewise printed the compromising photo, along with some choice descriptions of the suspect's manhood, onto a set of flyers — a clever and extra-humiliating twist on those classic subway perv "wanted" ads issued by the NYPD. She then posted the flyers at all the entrances to the South Street subway station.

One of Deb's flyers is pictured below. (Although we're all about shaming the city's alleged subway pervs, we've censored the man's face for now until cops can confirm they're considering him a suspect.)

Deb said she found writing and posting the flyers to be "cathartic and empowering" after such a "violating" encounter.

Misdemeanor sex crimes in NYC, including reports of groping and masturbating on the subway, are up 13 percent so far this year compared to last year, according to the NYPD. The department's chief of detectives, Robert Boyce, announced earlier this week that of 17 suspected serial sex criminals identified by a new Transit Sex Crimes detective squad formed last year, six are still on the loose.

Unlike the "wanted" flyers posted by police, Deb said hers are less about tracking down another alleged subway masturbator and prosecuting him under the law, and more about shaming her violator — and others like him — on a public stage.

"This is really for him and for people that know him," Deb said. "Let him get fired. Let him lose his job. Let his wife see it. Let his daughter see it."

"And in general," she said, "this is for perverts."

While writing her "little ode to a little d----," Deb said she tried to dig into the psyche of the city's subway pervs by targeting and mocking their very tools of violation.

"I was thinking, 'What can I say that will make people look at this? And what will humiliate him the most?'" the author told Patch. "Because I want him to be utterly humiliated — and I want men to know women are going to do this."

Think you may know the guy on Deb's flyers? Reach out to simone.wilson@patch.com, and we'll see that your info gets to the proper investigators.

This story has been updated. Photos by Patch