The parents of an 11-year-old girl who was secretly filmed by a flight attendant while using an airplane bathroom are suing American Airlines for negligence after their daughter was left “deeply scarred” by the incident, leaving her afraid to use public restrooms.
Ex-American Airlines flight attendant Estes Carter Thompson III was jailed for 18 and a half years last month after he pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation of children and possession of child pornography.
Thompson was caught after attempting to film another victim during a flight from Charlotte to Boston in September 2023, when he concealed his iPhone under a large sticker on the toilet seat in the First Class bathroom.
The 14-year-old girl was immediately suspicious of the sticker and discovered the iPhone hidden underneath. She informed her parents, and Thompson was swiftly taken into custody after the plane landed in Boston.
The FBI took over the investigation, and forensic experts uncovered sexually explicit images of three other young victims aged just 7, 9, and 11, on Thompson’s iCloud account.
In October 2023, the FBI traced the parents of the 11-year-old victim in North Carolina and visited them at the family home, where they showed the girl’s mother photos of their daughter’s bare buttocks and genitalia.
The images had been secretly recorded by Thompson during an August 2023 flight from Orlando to Charlotte, where the family had been on vacation for a specila trip to Disney World.
The FBI urged the girl’s parents to tell her about what had happened, warning them that their daughter might grow resentful of them if she were to learn the truth at a later age.
After consulting with a therapist, the girl’s parents shared the news with their daughter.
She has been left “deeply scarred” from learning what occurred on American Airlines flight AA-2080 and has suffered “severe negative side effects,” including post-traumatic stress disorder, stress, and anxiety.
Nearly two years later, the victim is still afraid to use public bathrooms and is still seeing a therapist to deal with the trauma.
Thompson will be back in a Boston courtroom in October to learn how much he has to pay each victim in restitution for his crimes, but the family of the 11-year-old victim believes that American Airlines should be held accountable for Thompson’s crimes.
In a new lawsuit filed in a North Carolina district court, the family accuses American Airlines of negligence, claiming that the carrier should have known that Thompson was “engaged in improper behavior” on its flights.
For example, the lawsuit alleges that American Airlines failed to conduct a proper criminal background check on Thompson prior to hiring him and that a lack of proper supervision allowed him to commit his crimes unchecked.
The lawsuit also alleges that American Airlines failed to train flight attendants to identify suspect behavior by coworkers, and that if it had done so, then other crew members would have reported him much sooner.
Last year, the parents of the nine-year-old victim also sued American Airlines for negligence. American Airlines attempted to have the lawsuit dismissed, arguing that it can’t be held responsible for criminal actions perpetrated by its employees.
The carrier, however, sacked a law firm it had initially hired to fight the lawsuit, after its attorneys claimed in one submission to the court that the victim was to blame, she should have known that the bathroom had been “compromised” with a recording device.
