Recent Incidents Put a New Focus on Sexual Assault on Airplanes
A middle-aged priest. A 26-year-old woman. A registered sex offender.
Three
seemingly very different people with one thing in common: All three
were accused of sexually assaulting fellow passengers on airplanes.
Even before Jessica Leeds alleged last week
that Donald Trump touched her inappropriately during a flight in 1979,
many frequent fliers had concluded that increasingly cramped planes with
fewer flight attendants walking the aisle seem to embolden gropers.
“Sexual
harassment and assault is happening on aircraft, and we believe it’s
happening more often because of the conditions on board,” said Sara
Nelson, the international president of the Association of Flight
Attendants-CWA union. She cited cramped, confined spaces; alcohol and
drugs; fewer flight attendants; and dark cabins on night flights as
factors that likely embolden offenders.
Prosecutors said that the Rev. Marcelo De Jesumaria testified that he considered his touching his sleeping victim
on a US Airways flight from Philadelphia to Los Angeles in 2014
“consensual because she did not reject his touches and he interpreted
her silence, because she was asleep, as ‘coyness.’ ”
The
woman said she awoke on the flight to feel Mr. De Jesumaria’s hand on
the top of her leg, and then on her breast, according to the United
States attorney’s office, Central District of California.
When Mr. De Jesumaria relaxed his grip, the victim went to the bathroom and used the call button to summon a flight attendant.
The flight crew reseated him between two male passengers, and law enforcement was waiting when the plane landed in Los Angeles.
Mr.
De Jesumaria, 47, who previously served in the Roman Catholic Diocese
of San Bernardino, Calif., was sentenced to six months in prison and six
months of home confinement after being convicted of abusive sexual
contact.
Mr.
De Jesumaria had not been seated next to his victim initially, but
switched seats by asking a flight attendant if he could “sit next to his
wife.”
Heidi Anne McKinney, 26, was charged
with touching another woman on the thigh and groin during an Alaska
Airlines flight from Las Vegas to Portland on May 8 this year.
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| Airplane - Left - Yoel Oberlander - Right |
In another case, according to a criminal complaint filed in United States District Court in New Jersey, a woman allegedly assaulted
by Yoel Oberlander on an overnight El Al flight from Tel Aviv to Newark
on May 29 was seated between him and her mother when he began to grope
her. She kept repositioning herself to shake his hand off her hand,
thigh and breast. It wasn’t until her mother awoke that she asked her to
switch seats, and eventually reported to the crew what had taken place.
Mr.
Oberlander, 35, was charged with one count of abusive sexual contact on
an airplane. He is a registered sex offender convicted in 2002 of
sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl in New York.
Just
how frequent sexual assault is during air travel is difficult to
determine, but F.B.I. investigations into in-flight sexual assaults have
increased 45 percent so far this year. The bureau said that it had
opened 58 investigations into sexual assault on aircraft from January
through September 2016, compared with 40 for all of 2015. That increase
doesn’t include incidents reported to local and airport police. It also
doesn’t account for the 75 percent of sexual assaults that generally go
unreported, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a division of
the Department of Justice.
Among the airborne sexual assaults reported to the F.B.I. this year was that of a 13-year-old unaccompanied minor
who may have been touched inappropriately by a man who had been
drinking at the Dallas airport before boarding an American Airlines
flight to Portland, Ore., and a woman who said she awoke
on a Virgin America redeye flight from Los Angeles to Newark to find
the man next to her massaging her genitals and rubbing his bare feet
against her.
There
is no centralized system for collecting sexual assault reports from
airlines, and no special training for flight attendants in handling
sexual assault.
“This
is a unique crime,” said Ms. Nelson, who in addition to her union
position is a United Airlines flight attendant with 20 years of
experience. “It’s really not the same as asking, ‘How much did that
person hurt you when they hit you on the head?’ ”
Unless
police are called to meet the flight, it is up to the crew to decide
whether to report disruptive behavior to the Federal Aviation
Administration. When disturbances are reported, there is no separate
category for sexual assault.
“It’s
one thing to talk about the alertness to security concerns, but this is
a crime that has not even been specifically identified” by the
airlines, Ms. Nelson said.
An
American Airlines spokesman, Ross Feinstein, said that it is not up to
the crew to assess whether a crime, or what type of crime, occurred.
“We’re
reporting misconduct that occurred on the aircraft. It’s up to law
enforcement to determine if any criminal misconduct occurred,” he said.
Regardless of the situation, all conflicts on aircraft are handled the
same way by separating those involved, deciding if a diversion of the
plane is necessary, and calling ahead for law enforcement to meet it.
But the lack of data on airplane sexual assault makes it difficult to study.
“It’s
hard to assess what’s going on if we don’t know the extent of what’s
happening,” said Elizabeth L. Jeglic, an associate professor
specializing in sex offender policy and treatment at John Jay College of
Criminal Justice in New York City. She said she did not know of any
studies on airplane sexual assaults.
Still,
with about 712 million passengers on United States flights in the last
year, the number of passengers who are sexually assaulted is a tiny
percentage of overall air travelers.
Unruly
passenger behavior has been increasing worldwide, jumping 17 percent
from 2014 to 2015, according to numbers reported to the International
Air Transport Association by its 265 member airlines.
Alcohol
or drugs were identified as a factor in 23 percent of the 10,854
disruptive incidents last year, the trade association said.
Those
who commit sexual violence use alcohol to exploit their victims’
vulnerability and to lower their own inhibitions, said Laura Palumbo,
communications director for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.
“The third thing that people count on when alcohol is involved is that it will excuse their own actions,” she said.
Crew members already receive training on serving alcohol responsibly. The Air Transport Association is now calling on airport bars and duty-free shops to voluntarily follow suit so that passengers aren’t drunk when they board the plane.
Ms. Palumbo said that there were other factors involved in sexual assaults as well.
“You
don’t necessarily get to choose what your physical boundaries are from
the people around you because of the nature of transportation,” she
said.
Today’s
smaller seats — some only 16.5 inches wide — put airplane passengers
even closer together. (An effort by Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of
New York, to regulate seat size failed in the spring.)
“You have the close proximity, and with the proximity there is forced intimacy,” Dr. Jeglic said.
There
also are fewer flight attendants on planes to keep an eye on what’s
happening between the rows. Although the Federal Aviation Administration
specifies minimum crew staffing for each type of aircraft based on
evacuation times, airline cutbacks in the travel downturn following
Sept. 11 eliminated some flight attendants, according to a study by Diane L. Damos published in the International Journal of Aviation Psychology in 2013.
“If
there were more flight attendants who were able to monitor the cabin
and trained in what signs to look for, and we were actually able to
identify this as a potential threat on board the aircraft, we might be
able to better address this problem,” Ms. Nelson said.
The
flight attendants’ union has been working with members of Congress and
victim advocacy groups on legislation that would expand crew training to
include dealing with victims of sexual assault on a flight, as well as
to create new industry reporting standards. She said it was too soon to
provide specifics.
An F.A.A. spokeswoman said the agency wouldnott comment on pending legislation.
An
earlier effort by Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, Democrat from the
District of Columbia, failed in 2014. Her bill, “The Protecting Airline
Passengers From Sexual Assaults Act,” would have required the F.A.A. to
collect and publish data on sexual assault. Her office did not return a
phone call seeking comment.
The
National Sexual Violence Resource Center, which was involved in helping
the Transportation Safety Administration change its passenger screening
guidelines, has not been involved with the legislative efforts, but its
spokeswoman said that, based on other research, more can be done to
address airline sexual assault.
“There
is a strong body of research that lets us know when people are given
the tools to understand what sexual violence is, how best to intervene
in instances of sexual violence, and have training and policies as well
as those steps, it can lower rates of sexual violence and can be in the
best interest of passenger safety,” Ms. Palumbo said.
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