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Friday, June 3, 2011

Woman screams frantically for help over 'molestation' during airport security pat down





A woman screamed frantically for help in an airport terminal after claiming she was 'molested' by officials during a security pat down procedure.

The unidentified passenger yells hysterically that she has been molested after a female security staff member touched her breast during the screening process at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, Arizona.

Video footage filmed by her son shows the woman burst into tears after the alleged 'sexual assault', while other staff members tell her son to stop filming the distressing episode.

The woman, who was travelling with her son and husband, had refused to go through a full body scanner and was pulled aside to undergo the airport's pat down procedure instead.

When a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) official pats her down 'inappropriately', she bursts into tears and screams for help from police.

As she is surrounded by airport officials, she can be heard yelling: 'I've just been molested - for God's sake somebody help me.

'I can't believe he just touched my breasts - this is illegal.

'I can't believe he just did that to me, I want a police officer now.

'He just molested me - none of you care.'

While her son films her mother's outburst against staff, he is approached and told: 'I need you to leave - are you done with the screening process?

He is then told: 'You are not allowed to film, you need to leave.'

The woman's son can be heard replying: 'They didn't say anything about me filming, they just said to walk away.'

Staff then attempt to remove the man by wrongly telling him his filming activities are illegal.

A male member of airport staff tells him: 'I have told you it is against the law.'

The man stand his ground by responding: 'I'm in a public space. Show me the law or statute and I promise I will stop.'

Agents also threaten to confiscate the man's luggage, despite him already going through the screening process.

As airport officials eventually back away from him, the man says: 'This is not right, not right at all.'

Then, apparently talking to passers-by who ask why he is filming, he adds:

'They groped my mother. My mother has never had to go through the screening process.

'Noone has ever touched her like that in her life, and that's why she's screaming - because it's inappropriate.'

The man's mother is eventually led behind a security screen off camera, and is heard asking a police officer: 'Why won't you help me? You're a police officer why won't you help me?'

The family had been subjected to similarly 'invasive' security scrutiny at the same airport earlier in the year in a similar video.

On that occasion, they had protested against TSA that the security screening had violated their Constitutional Rights.

The incident is not the first time TSA officials have been accused of being heavy-handed.

Thousands of Americans have reacted furiously to the imposition of new airport security measures, including full body scans and hands-on pat downs.

President Obama was forced to publicly defend the security measures by saying: 'They tell me there's no other way'.

Last November Eliana Sutherland claimed the TSA's new security measures saw her picked out for further screening because of her breasts.

Another passenger who survived cancer said she was forced to show TSA staff her prosthetic breast, while pictures also emerged last year of a small boy being strip-searched at an airport.

Those who refuse the 'invase' pat downs risk arrest and an $11,000 fine

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