Police hunt man wearing Super Bowl baseball cap after woman sexually assaulted on Jubilee line train

By ROBERT FOLKER, NEWS REPORTER Published: 18:10, 21 July 2026 | Updated: 18:20, 21 July 2026 A manhunt has been launched by police after a woman was sexually assaulted on the Underground in East London. Police received reports that a female passenger was attacked by a man on the Jubilee line at around 7.30 pm on Friday, May 22.    The attacker left Stratford station following the incident and is yet to be found nearly two months on.  British Transport Police (BTP) has now released an image of a man in connection with their investigation. 'Detectives believe the man in the image may have information that could assist their ongoing investigation,' the force said in a statement. The man is wearing a black t-shirt, camouflage print trousers, sunglasses, and a distinctive red baseball cap with Super Bowl written across the front. He is also carrying a backpack with black straps and wearing white wired earphones. It comes as new statistics reveal that crime on London's public transport network has risen by almost 50 per cent since the pandemic - with 'unacceptable' levels of violence against women and girls, according to a devastating new report. Police received reports that a female passenger was attacked by a man on the Jubilee line at around 7.30 pm on Friday, May 22. British Transport Police (BTP) has now released an image of a man in connection with their investigation The London Assembly's Police and Crime Committee has published a new report that suggests people are increasingly anxious about using buses, Tubes and trains to get across the capital for fear of falling victim to crime. Around 48,000 crimes were reported across Transport for London (TfL) services in 2025 - up 46 per cent against a pre-pandemic average of 16,544. The figure was released as part of a new report examining the capital's approach to tackling spiralling rates of violence against women and girls (VAWG) and hate crime across the transport network, which the committee found 'unacceptable'. Its findings are calamitous for London's transport and policing bodies and for Mayor of London Sadiq Khan: the committee's chair, Marina Ahmad, said that while she expected 'to find a problem, what we found was a crisis'. Seven in 10 Londoners are choosing not to travel, or not to travel at certain times of the day, 'because they were worried about their personal security', Tricia Hayes of London TravelWatch told the committee. This may go some way to explaining why, as official TfL statistics suggest, passenger journeys fell by 2.4 per cent in the second half of 2025. Between 2023 and 2025, crimes reported on the Underground rose 12.5 per cent, while they rose 60.4 per cent on the newest part of the network, the Elizabeth Line, and rose 15 per cent on the Overground. Offences dipped three per cent on buses, 2.7 per cent on the Docklands Light Railway and 40 per cent on Trams in the same time period.  Violence, public disorder and criminal damage are on the rise, while thefts are down. Overall, crime on the network has risen almost eight per cent in the last three years alone. Your browser does not support iframes. The report focuses on efforts to tackle hate crime and violence against women and girls (VAWG). Of all public transport crime reports in 2025, almost a fifth, 4,593, related to VAWG and another 1,724 were incidents of hate crime. Only a handful of incidents ever led to a charge, and a suspect was not identified in 58 per cent and 66 per cent of VAWG and hate crime incidents respectively. The true number of incidents is likely to be higher: people are not thought to come forward to report them because they do not trust authorities to act. London TravelWatch estimates as many as 80 per cent of incidents go unreported. Almost half of travellers - 45 per cent - say they're either 'very' or 'fairly' worried about being harassed while commuting, and more than half say they have little to no confidence in TfL, the Met and the BTP to take action. It recently prompted a campaigner to call for the return of 'ladies only' carriages as seen in the early days of the railways. In a nod to the British Transport Police's oft-repeated slogan, Camille Brown quipped in her online petition to TfL: 'We always see it, we do say it, but it's still not sorted'. The Assembly committee has recommended TfL, the BTP and the Metropolitan Police establish a joint rapid response task force for hate crime and VAWG incidents as they happen, and to publish an annual survey on how it responds to those types of crime. Commander Clair Kelland, public protection lead for the Met, said in a statement to the Mail that the force was training officers in how to better respond to VAWG incidents. 'As this report highlights, there is more to be done to make women feel safer on transport in London, which is why we will continue to work closely with TfL, BTP and local partners,' she added. Your browser does not support iframes. The BTP said tackling hate crime and VAWG remained its 'top priority'. A spokesperson said: 'We know that reporting crime needs to be easy and discreet, and we're proud of our text 61016 service which allows passengers to report crime to us discreetly and for free. 'Last year we received a 20 per cent increase in reports, showing us that more passengers know how to report crime to us and have the confidence to do so, knowing they will be believed and taken seriously.' TfL launched a new campaign encouraging people to 'act like a friend' and intervene in incidents where it is safe to do so. It launched a dedicated taskforce to tackle hate crime and VAWG last year. It comes after a BBC investigation found that the British Transport Police is struggling to identify sex offenders because of faulty or non-existent CCTV cameras. Of 562 investigations into alleged sex offences reported in 2025 involving CCTV evidence, 250 either had no CCTV available, or was of unusable quality. Sorry we are not currently accepting comments on this article.