"They could have had some weapon with them. I have a very different view of a young teenage girls now," she said. "When I originally stood up for myself I thought, 'They're just young girls', you know? Now I've totally changed my view. They are capable of everything." Kate, who did not want to be identified, was sitting at the back of the bus when the group of about five girls, thought to be aged between 13 and 17, began racially abusing her about 6.30pm on Saturday, saying: "Asian c---, go back to your own country". Kate, who moved to Australia from China eight years ago and is an Australian citizen, said she turned around to the girls, who were drinking alcohol, and reacted to their verbal abuse. "I said, 'Young lady you need to behave yourself'," Kate said.

"I turned back to try to get the driver's attention and they took my wallet. Then I started yelling: 'They stole my wallet, somebody call the police."' Kate saw her wallet beneath the seat of one of the girls. She crouched down and retrieved it, but as she got up one of the girls kicked her forcefully in the stomach twice. "At that point, I was beyond stunned. I couldn't believe that, at such a young age, they were capable of doing this, stealing other people's property and physically attacking me," Kate said. I couldn't believe that, at such a young age, they were capable of doing this, stealing other people's property and physically attacking me. "I still couldn't punch back, I simply couldn't do it."

Unlike in some other recent racist attacks on public transport, the bus driver and other passengers then stepped in. On Monday, the driver was praised for ejecting the girls, while other passengers on the bus lent verbal support to the driver's actions. The girls got off, only to chase the bus and throw rocks at it. They spat in the face of one other passenger who was helping Kate in the wake of the attack. Kate, who got her purse back, said the attack was captured on CCTV, and she had reported the incident to police. She said the bus driver and the police knew who the girls were. But given the girls' age, they probably would not face any serious consequences for their actions.

"It's not right, it's not tolerable. They enjoy it, because they know they can get away with it," she said. "I feel pity for them, because they're at such a young age and life seems already ruined, and I feel like it's society's failure." The incident is the latest in a string of racist verbal attacks on public transport. On Easter Saturday, a man abused an Asian couple on the 470 bus from Circular Quay to Lilyfield, and a woman who tried to intervene said most passengers ignored what was happening. In March, a video filmed on a Perth bus showed a woman verbally abusing another woman, who she refers to as Chinese, for speaking in another language. In February, ABC newsreader Jeremy Fernandez tweeted about being called a "black c---" who should "go back to his country" by a female passenger on a Sydney bus. He was told by the bus driver to move seats but refused to.

In November last year, footage of a racist attack on a French woman on a Melbourne bus went viral after she was called a dog by male passengers, threatened with having her breasts cut off and told to "speak English or die". *Not her real name.