Posted March 10, 2019 06:38:00 The last thing a woman should experience when they are on a flight is being sexually assaulted.
But when that’s what happened to a 21-year-old woman on a US Airways flight to the Philippines, the trauma has left her feeling shaken.
In a video posted on Facebook, Lauren Leibold describes how she and her friend were forced to perform oral sex on a man in the toilet seat of a US-bound flight from the Philippines to Dallas, Texas.
“I remember the feeling like I was going to explode,” Ms Leibolds said.
“We were in the seat, in the back of the plane, and I remember he was just kind of standing there looking at us.”
The flight had just landed, and Ms Leibrold had no idea what was happening.
“When I got off the plane I was just like, ‘What am I doing?’
I thought maybe I had a seizure,” she said.
The woman said the man was not a passenger on the flight.
“He just stood there, like he was waiting for me to leave the plane,” she told ABC Radio.
“And he just kind at that point just walked away.”
It’s a strange feeling to be in a situation like that.
“The woman was not aware of the severity of the situation until she was told by an airline representative, who then told her to report the incident to the police.”
The only thing I was really thinking about was whether or not I would go to jail, because I felt like that was a possibility,” she recalled.
Ms Leibows story is the subject of an investigation into a sexual assault in the Philippines.US Airways said the flight was in the midst of a scheduled stopover at Dallas.”US Airways is aware of a report of a sexual harassment incident involving a passenger,” US Airways spokeswoman Katie Crouch said.
Ms Crouch declined to say if the man had been on the plane.”
In the United States, all complaints of harassment are investigated, regardless of their origin,” she wrote in an email.
The US Department of Justice’s office in Washington, DC, said it would look into the case.”
There are no federal criminal charges pending against the alleged offender,” the department said in a statement.”
All allegations of misconduct should be reported to law enforcement.”US Airways has since suspended the passenger.”
As we’ve said before, we stand behind our passengers and are committed to making our flights safe and enjoyable for all of our customers,” the airline said in the statement.
Topics:sexual-offences,law-crime-and-justice,travel-and