Bus Passenger Says Greyhound Did Little After Man Sitting Next To Her Exposed Himself

CHICAGO (CBS) -- A Chicago student is still shaken after a troubling ride on a Greyhound bus ride during which the man sitting next to her exposed himself and more.

What's worse, Greyhound's response didn't make her very happy, CBS 2's Kristyn Hartman reports.

"Going Greyhound" is something 22-year-old Lydia Young wishes she wouldn't have done.

Early this month, she was traveling from Milwaukee to Chicago when, she says, the guy sitting next to her rubbed her leg and put his hand on her thigh a few times.

Then, when the bus was getting close to the city, she says he exposed himself before touching himself right in front of her.

"He has his 'area' out -- full blown, you can see it," says Young, who felt paralyzed.

"I was shaking, literally, the whole time," she says. "The last thing I wanted to do was make this guy angry because he was already doing something abnormal and crazy."

So, she snapped a picture of him and waited to report it to a Greyhound staffer the moment she stepped off the bus.

Unfortunately, she says, the Greyhound employee "treated it as a joke."

"He chuckled just a little bit and smiled at me and he was like, 'You should have told me this right away,'" Young says.

He referred her to security. She says one guard was with her to call police, who responded. But that was after another guard spoke with passenger and told her he took care of it.

Young says the bus company should have taken the matter more seriously.

Greyhound contends it did. In a statement, a representative disputed Young's story, saying, "Once the team was made aware of the incident, the individual was seen fleeing the terminal."

Transportation expert Joe Schwieterman of DePaul University says bus riders can learn from the unpleasant experience.

"Awkward as it is, the person needs to get up, needs to contact the driver," he says.

Young says in retrospect she should have called police from the bus.

Greyhound says passengers should alert the bus driver if someone on the vehicle behaves inappropriately.