The following is a guest post by Shaun D., a We Won’t Fly reader and survivor of sexual assault. As NewsWeek and Therapy Soup have mentioned, this new TSA security theater can be especially traumatizing for survivors of sexual assault.
To properly write an op-ed regarding the never-spoken-of insensitivity, and depravity, of the TSA palm and finger fondle security grope. I must at least gloss over my story.
I was 17 with a crush, a virgin. He was older. You know how the story should have gone; it did not go that way, and that was all she wrote. There are millions of stories just like mine, the only difference is in the details. There is NO way of knowing, because not many at all, ever report it to a government agency. This unknown number of people are going through unnecessary open-palmed, fingers groping, feel ups. Breast, buttocks, your testicles, you name it.
The gravity of sex crime is such that, it often takes people years to even say the word (assault or rape). Normally after another trauma, car accident, death of a loved one etc…..then the sexual-sins come back to haunt them. Many triggers cause the victim to feel, all of the sudden, out of control like they did while they were being abused. This leads to, in varying degrees: panic attacks (i.e., high blood pressure, sweating, nausea, diarrhea, inability to concentrate, absolute fidgetiness, non-functioning, etc.).
Many assault victims suffer, when their memories are triggered (especially by inappropriate touch by a person perceived by the past victim, to be in a place of power).
There are pretty universal triggers for the onset of these symptoms (although individuals do vary) this one however goes for everybody. Being fondled by someone, in the areas you were always taught were “bad touch” spots, by a person in power (power being key). Breast twists, buttocks felt up, and yes, your pants pulled up until they can reach your crotch, down your inner thighs, you get the picture.
Molestation over the clothes of people, past victims or not, is not acceptable. If you were not wearing a TSA badge, you would be in prison!
Every time a TSA agent utilizes the “New Pat Downs” they are creating more and more victims. No one deserves to have their dignity taken away, behind a curtain or not.
Don’t we have the right to no unlawful search and seizure? Since when has anyone in this country been ok with one person touching another, especially, in places we are taught since childhood are “bad touches”. Where is the hollering about this! Do we not have any dignity left, to let a complete stranger do to you everything but penetrate? When is enough?
When will you have compassion for those that have had terrible sexual experiences, not to mention all the people who have not been victimized but are having to shred every bit of dignity to get on your monopolized fly-bus.
TSA officials you should be ashamed of yourselves for just “doing your job”.
Something is VERY VERY WRONG HERE! PEOPLE SPEAK UP!!!!!! WE NEED YOUR VOICE NOW!!!!!
There is so much more to the TSA issue, this is just the beginning of my rail against the TSA. Let this be the first focus.
{ 32 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you for speaking up. This needs to be heard. I don’t know how in the world the TSA thought this would be okay….
And I would just like to add, that the TSA employees probably don’t change their gloves and wash their hands between each person. They are probably passing Hep B around…it can survive on gloves for 72 hours…
Great post! I agree that this is trauma on top of trauma for someone who has been violated in the past and a new trauma for many that haven’t. What kind of message are we sending to children in this country when we tell them nobody is allowed to touch their private areas, and then we allow people with authority to break that rule? Not only does kind of search this violate us, it desensitizes people and blurs the boundary lines of what is acceptable and what isn’t.
Have not enough precious things we regarded as good family and single life been destroyed? Blurs between what makes a healthy relationship or one that is only casual, temporary, self-centered. Blurs between couple communication or abuse. Quality parent time with their children or only an hour or two together on weekends. Sharing dinner time around a family table to talk, or everyone simply snacking on non-nutritionally balanced foods at will. Safety at school and the city park or frightfulness to leave your child alone even in his own yard at home. Appropriate dignity and control of your own body or government intervention about pregnancy, health insurance companies wanting disclosure about past medical conditions, electronic medical charts blatantly displaying your “Substances and Sexuality”, and now airport searches. Did God intend for human life to be so torn and violated? I don’t think so.
I have not flown sense 9/11. The very Idea that a perfect stranger running their hands up and down my body will make me “safe” is sickening to me. It is about time the american people came out of shock and started standing up for their rights.
My true hope and prayer is that, empathy prevails. That people realize that molestation at the gate makes no one any safer, than just walking through the metal detector. It is unnecessary and intrusive to an abusive degree. I am not alone. Millions suffer every time they fly. Somebody has to speak for them. Kudos to you George.
I’ve had panic attacks just from being pulled over by aggressive police officers, due to similar events in my past. Thankfully, although the first cop involved was obviously clueless and became more aggressive and threatening with his interrogations (of course making things worse), the second cop on the scene seemed to figure out what was going on and helped me calm down. I somehow don’t think TSA employees would recognize this kind of thing at all.
I can’t even imagine how I would react to a TSA “pat down”… safe to say I would be immediately arrested for becoming suddenly and extremely violent, or my husband would be. At the very least, he would be restraining me like a straight jacket while I had an all-out panic attack right out in the security area, with my kids crying because they didn’t understand what was going on.
Needless to say, we won’t be flying any time soon…
Our guest tells us that sans the TSA badge these people would be in jail. This is not true. They would simply be in another position of power like school teacher, police officer, or day care. Always look on the bright side of life.
Yes, but a police officer would be doing it because you had been or were about to be arrested, so there would be reasonable grounds for a search, which I find entirely reasonable. Is wanting to take a plane ‘reasonable grounds’ to treat me like a criminal? Nope. And my kids would grow up knowing that I had told them that if a teacher ever tried to touch them like that, they had my permission to fight back.
School teachers and day care providers must pass vigorous background checks before their first day on the job. I know this first hand, being a former day care provider and a current state-certified teacher. The occasional bad player always makes the news in a big way, specifically because it is so rare. And believe me, any teacher who touched a student in this way would be thrown in prison for a very long time.
What kind of background checks did your TSA agent get before they were allowed to grope you?
Yes. As a victim of molestation (childhood and adult), reading about the assaults TSA perpetrates on passengers brings up some anxiety. The last time I flew (which was well before the “enhanced” pat-downs and digital strip search, but after 9/11) I dealt with severe anxiety for several days before my flight, because of fears I would be pulled out of line and forced to strip down.
Nowadays … I don’t know what it would take for to voluntarily go on a commercial flight. The thought of either being digitally rendered nude for strangers, or having strangers groping me against my will… makes my mind go blank and numb. I will not be flying commercially again until this stops, because I don’t have the mental and emotional strength to go through the screening, or try to deal with the thought of it before or after the experience. I fear for my hard-won sanity and balance under such conditions (and I’m not saying this as a metaphor/joke, either).
It takes a lot of strength and courage to speak out about this, that a lot of people lack who’ve been victimized in this manner. Thank you for writing about this.
False Ma’am. If a TSA officer touches you open palm to any part of your body that is considered private that is against the law. These words are actually spoken in the briefing they should be given before they touch you. You can request that they inform of what theyll be doing and they must by law. If you feel that you were touched inappropriately then simply request a law enforcement official. SIMPLE. Also You may request many things before your patdown even begins. And if none of your requests are met simply ask for a Supervisor or police officer. You have the right to a private screening, change of gloves, to have your property visible and so on. Also you right to ” unlawful search and seizure” is absolutely correct, but what you fail to realize is that once you enter the checkpoint, there must be signs visible stating that you are voluntariy submitting yourself and belongings for screening. Ive been to over 40 airports and have yet to miss one. That covers them in the fact that by placing your belonging down, you are voluntariy submitting to screening. Is it their fault you are ignorant and do not know the rules? Learn to be informed and not play the victim. I have 4 years as Army Military Police and im tired of these “victim” games and about the tyranny of the TSA. good day maam. Consider yourself informed and if you dont like it, drive. I personally like getting on a plane and not being blown to pieces. And if that means i gotta be bothered with security for a few mins each flight, then i welcome it.
arm pilots, walk through metal detectors. that would solve it. There is no reason for every person who wishes to enter a plane to be accosted like a prisoner entering county jail.
“If a TSA officer touches you open palm to any part of your body that is considered private that is against the law.”
Then why are there a plethora of stories – including those from the pilots’ and flight attendants’ unions – that completely rebut your claim?
“I personally like getting on a plane and not being blown to pieces. And if that means i gotta be bothered with security for a few mins each flight, then i welcome it.”
Does anyone actually Google “el al” or “israeli full body scanner” before commenting on this site? Taking aside issues of privacy or health concerns, the full body scanners and invasive “pat downs” are ineffective and costly. This isn’t coming from just me or this website. It’s coming from Israeli security administrators. This is one of the few areas where I will trust Israel.
The phrase in the 4th Amendment is “UNREASONABLE search and siezure,” not “unlawful.” The latter would mean that a law could be passed to mandate that you comply. The entire point of the 4th is that this is illegal, period, unless there is “probable cause.” Probable cause means the suspicion that you are guilty of a crime. So to search (or electronically strip) all people who pass through a given point, such as a checkpoint at the airport, even without probable cause, is unlawful under the constitution.
Don’t take the Constitution lightly. It is one of the great documents in human history, and it is the source of many of the “freedoms” we Americans are rightly proud of. If we allow our rights to be mitigated, then we will no longer be free.
As NPR and other news outlets have reported, TSA now has the legal right to touch any passenger with an open palm on any part of their person, private or not. This applies to men, women and children as young as 12 years of age. Please do your own research about the newly announced regulations before you take someone else to task for being, in fact, right.
The “law” means nothing to me. Its demeaning, and wrong on every moral level.
Rep. Ron Paul has introduced the American Traveler Dignity Act. As he explains it, ‘My legislation is simple. It establishes that airport security screeners are not immune from any US law regarding physical contact with another person, making images of another person, or causing physical harm through the use of radiation-emitting machinery on another person. It means they are subject to the same laws as the rest of us. Imagine if the political elites in our country were forced to endure the same conditions at the airport as business travelers, families, senior citizens, and the rest of us. Perhaps this problem could be quickly resolved if every cabinet secretary, every member of Congress, and every department head in the Obama administration were forced to submit to the same degrading screening process as the people who pay their salaries.’
Video: https://paul.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1796&Itemid=60
Text: https://paul.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1796&Itemid=60
correct video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-N5adYM7Kw
Exactly. Where is the hollering????
I would note that not only would TSA “pat-downs” qualify as sexual assault were they to occur anywhere other than an airport, “airport security” is simply impossible.
As a security expert, I’ve written an article on the subject, currently available at https://wrstone.wordpress.com, however the facts are these:
All access control is based on this concept: deny access to everyone but a select few.
The reverse (what “airport security” implements) is: allow access to everyone but a select few.
This is flatly impossible — and again, I point interested readers to my article on the subject, which goes into the matter in greater detail.
I used to think this was crazy talk, but I am coming around tom your point of view. If anything has made air travel safer since 9/11 it is the fact that passengers are not going to just sit there and let somebody take over the aircraft.
I accept that something might go wrong when I fly. We cannot reduce the risk to zero. We must not yieldnour constitutional rights because irrational fears.
kudos to you Mike.
So, how are we to determine that a terrorist isn’t smuggling an explosive hidden in a condom between his legs, or hidden in a sanitary napkin or even a tampon? By the way, there are retired US citizens caught all the time at the US/Mexico border smuggling drugs, so you can’t just “reverse profile” safe-looking people, or just white people, or just non-Arabs. I’m not ignoring how you feel, but put it into perspective. What if they let you go because you felt violated, and the person behind you got the same treatment, and blew up the plane? Who is going to answer for that? Hopefully, the recent lawsuit will get some judicial perspective on the the constitutional aspects of it, at least, but what about the practical? And don’t tell me that the TSA people are all perverts who enjoy this, either. That’s just stupid.
arm the pilots, arm the stewardesses. Problem solved. A metal detector sufficed before and it will now. The only problem is, everyone but the bad guys in the sky is disarmed.
Wham, bam, thank you, Ma’am. So, let people with bombs on the plane, and the flight attendants and pilots can just shoot them if they happen to blow up something without permission. You should fix the economy, too. And do Fox News while you’re at it.
“So, how are we to determine that a terrorist isn’t smuggling an explosive hidden in a condom between his legs, or hidden in a sanitary napkin or even a tampon? ”
These new measures can’t see a tampon as it is used inside the body; x-rays powerful enough to see inside the body would unequivocally be considered a health risk). Hiding something in a body cavity has already been done (rectal IED, fortunately bomber was too stupid to remove bomb from butt before exploding). Additionally, the new measures are unlikely to detect anything hidden inside a sanitary napkin, incontinence pad, or diaper.
The whole point here is that these scanners do very little to improve safety. In fact, the risk from dying from a terrorist on a plane is so extremely small that for any other aspect of life, we’d ignore it. The extremely low risk of getting cancer from one of these scanners is on the same scale as the risk dying from a terrorist. They are both extremely unlikely, but it also means we are merely trading one risk for another so in the end we aren’t any safer.
If we want to be safer, we don’t have to terrorize prior victims of sexual assault or invade privacy of the general public in such a terribly intrusive manner. Our money would be better spend on improving our intelligence and seamless communication between agencies. We had enough intelligence to stop the underwear bomber but we failed to put him on a no fly list (he was on some other terrorist list). We also somehow let him past security anyway, so all these measures are moot. The fact is that terrorists will always try to be one step ahead of security, so flagging suspected terrorists is the only way to improve saftey. Even then, there will always be some risk that something was missed, but to put it into perspective, you are more at risk for mechanical/weather/pilot error than terrorist plot.
I want to be very clear:
Had the Bill of Rights been enforced on 9/11, the only people dead would be the terrorists.
For 74 years, from the day the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk until 1978, any American could board any aircraft they liked with any form of weapon: knife, pistol, or rifle.
In 74 years, not one individual was ever harmed by this.
There were successful skyjackings, but these were largely due to the FAA’s policy of complying with hijackers.
They would not be successful today. Armed passengers would overwhelm an armed terrorist rather than risk another 9/11.
Enforce the Bill of Rights and the TSA can be disbanded and ALL “airport security” torn down.
THank you for that!
Very good article, and I’m sorry for what you went through. As a survivor of sexual violence myself, I had a very strong reaction, bordering on a panic attack, simply hearing the TSA employee’s description of the procedure in the “don’t touch my junk” video.
That being said, I survived far worse than what the TSA can do to me. I will go out of my way to ensure I get the gate rape treatment every single time because it takes so much longer and makes the new regulations that much harder to enforce. I’d invite my rapist into my home if it would bring down the TSA. I’m that pissed off. What one guy did to me was bad. That the government can callously and systematically assault all of us, and we’re the criminals if we have a problem with it, is worse.
Here’s a cute forward:
Here’s the solution to all the controversy over full-body scanners at
the airports:
Have a booth that you can step into that will not x-ray you, but will detonate
any explosive device you may have on your body. It would be a Win-win
for everyone, and there would be none of this crap about racial profiling
and this method would eliminate a long and expensive trial. Justice
would be quick and swift. This is so simple that it’s brilliant. I can see it now. You’re in the airport terminal and you hear a muffled explosion. Shortly thereafter an announcement comes over the PA system, “Attention standby passengers. We now have a seat available on flight number 4665 …. Paging maintenance. Shop vac needed in booth number 4.”
If only so many people cared about the tens of thousands of civilians we are murdering overseas. Those people live through bombing raids and gunfire, suicide bombs and we are all worked up over being searched and scanned. US airports are still some of the least invasive.
Thank you for bringing attention to this problem. I gave up flying a year ago since I can’t deal with naked pictures or with having my breasts squeezed by TSA. (That would hurt like hell, too.)
I will write my representatives and add my voice to getting this changed.