American Airlines issued a response after being sued by the family of a 9-year-old girl who was recorded in an airplane bathroom by a flight attendant.
The family’s attorney said he received a response from American Airlines saying the 9-year-old’s injuries or illnesses were caused by her “own fault and negligence… use of the compromised lavatory, which she knew or should have known contained a visible and illuminated recording device.”
The girl’s mother was outraged by the company’s response.
“I was beyond appalled when I heard that they were placing the blame on a child, that she should’ve been aware that there was a camera in the lavatory. I couldn’t even believe that they were saying something like this,” the girl’s mother said.
The flight attendant named in the lawsuit is Estes Carter Thompson, who just this week pleaded not guilty in federal court in Boston to charges related to a similar incident.
Prosecutors said Thompson secretly recorded a 14-year-old girl last September while she was using the bathroom on a flight to Boston.
The 9-year-old’s family said Thompson did the same to their daughter, months earlier, on their flight to Disneyland. They said FBI agents came to their door and “…informed the child’s mother that still images and videos of her child’s face, her unclothed buttocks… had been stored and recovered from the flight attendant’s iCloud account.”
“This is something, obviously, that has affected her the moment we had to explain it to her,” the girl’s mother said. “There’s a lot of confusion. She doesn’t understand why this happened to her.”
American Airlines then said the company’s initial legal response was a mistake, blaming an outside legal team. The company said it has now changed the wording, adding in a statement, “We do not believe this child is at fault and we take the allegations involving a former team member very seriously.”
The family’s attorney, Paul Llewellyn, said American Airlines should have “never taken this outrageous position in the first place.”
The FBI captured pictures of three other girls on Thompson’s phone. The 9-year-old’s mother said she’s telling her children to be aware of their surroundings in public.
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