A person is suing American Airlines, alleging that she was held accountable for being groped on a redeye flight from San Francisco International Airport and that the airport failed to stop a” known genital predator” from after abusing another person.
Barbara Morgan, of Windsor, California, was traveling from SFO to Dallas-Fort Worth on an economy class aircraft in April 2024, according to her lawsuit filed on Thursday in San Francisco U.S. District Court.
According to her complaint, the gentleman next to her in the windows seat started rubbing his shoulder against her part immediately after the cabin’s lights turned off. The woman allegedly placed her top knee in her vagina before fondling her genitalia, but the man was “undeterred,” according to the lawsuit.
Morgan yelled,” Stop!” The lawsuit claimed that the airline staff thrice but no one responded. No one seemed to notice that the majority of the other people were sleeping or wearing headsets, according to the complaint. Members of the flight crew did not leave, and she feared “escalating the position” by coming forward with the alleged incident, according to the complaint. She feared the gentleman would retaliate, and the lawsuit claimed that she spent the entire trip” clung to her perpetrator as she waited for the plane to land” and endured” severe emotional distress.”
Morgan immediately reported the alleged abuse to an American Airlines wall adviser, and cited Cherian Abraham, the alleged pedophile, who is also named as a plaintiff in the complaint.
Abraham’s commentator could not be reached. His attorney in a legal case involving a distinct reported flight accident declined to comment on the complaint or the prosecution. American Airlines did not respond to a request for comment right away.
The gate agent “engaged in target blaming,” asking Morgan why she hadn’t responded to the alleged incident while flying. Morgan expressed her fears, but the agent” told her there was nothing they had perform,” did not contact law enforcement, and instructed her to lodge an net problem with the airport.
Her problem the following day attracted a robotic answer promising follow-up, but after she failed to return calls for five weeks, she sent a comprehensive account of the alleged abuse to three United Airlines officials, including CEO Robert Isom, according to the lawsuit.
She emailed the airline’s consumer relations office the following morning to talk about the insufficient reaction and to inform that Abraham “would continue to abuse girls, women, and others if American Airlines failed to take action,” according to the lawsuit. Three days later, she received another automatic response from the airline.
According to the lawsuit, she was informed by an email from American’s client relations that the airline’s business security had been instructed to investigate the situation and did contact her. However, the lawsuit claimed that when someone called, they once more tried to shift the blame to her for not reporting the alleged rape while she was still in the atmosphere.
A little over a year later, Abraham, 54, of Texas, was detained in connection with another alleged fondling event on an American Airlines flight. On March 18th, he is accused of fondling the shoulder of a 22-year-old person while he was sat by the window and she was seated in the middle seat on a journey from Chicago to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, according to an indictment in provincial judge in Seattle. The woman, who is not named in the March 21 prosecution, reported the alleged incident to journey staff, who then moved her to a different desk. Abraham was detained on March 23 and entered a not-guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge of harsh physical contact.
If American had followed up on Morgan’s record, her complaint claimed, the reported incident on the Chicago-to-SeaTac journey could have been avoided.
Morgan further claimed that American was aware that Abraham had been accused of inappropriately touching a female customer on a trip in October 2023 when he groped her. The U.S. Department of Justice’s news about Abraham’s prosecution, according to Morgan’s complaint, involved an American Airlines flight, but the statement and court papers do not seem to mention the airport where the alleged incident took place.
The lawsuit makes reference to two additional lawsuits brought by people against British that claim the airport failed to stop them from being sexually exploited. Neel Elsherif claimed that a drunken man was standing next to her on a trip from New York to Milan on May 2024 and that he had mutilated for an hour when she reported it to the flight attendant, who said, “men only do things like that.” According to court documents, Elsherif’s promises have been refuted by the airport. That event is still pending in New York’s federal prosecutor. A person named Aubrey Lane filed a complaint in January settled because she claimed she was sexually assaulted on a redeye from Phoenix to New York in 2017 by a man who had been drinking and receiving more liquor from airport staff. The settlement’s conditions were kept secret.
American is accused of negligence in Morgan’s petition, and Abraham is accused of sexual battery. She wants unknown injuries.
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