Family of child recorded in airplane bathroom sues American Airlines

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (CN) — American Airlines negligently retained a flight attendant who was filming children in plane lavatories, a victim and her family said in a lawsuit filed Wednesday.

The victim, who is still a minor and who filed under the pseudonym Jane Doe along with her parents, flew from Orlando, Florida, to Charlotte in August 2023 when she was secretly filmed in the plane bathroom by Estes Carter Thompson III, an American Airlines flight attendant. The airline should have known that he was a danger, she said in her suit, because federal law enforcement had confirmed that he had previously recorded other children using the bathroom in the months prior to her flight.

The FBI informed her family in October 2023 that the agency had recovered photos from Thompson’s iCloud account, turning a Disney World trip into “a parent’s worst nightmare” that has impacted her ability to function, the plaintiffs said. They added that the 13-year-old girl worries about being in public restrooms alone, searches them for cameras and is afraid to fly.

American Airlines should have developed policies to ensure that Thompson’s behavior was not allowed to continue “over months with no intervention,” she said, including preventing flight attendants from using their personal recording devices on flights.

“Prior instances of flight attendant Thompson’s misconduct with other minors occurred several months before Jane Doe’s Aug. 15, 2023, flight,” the family said in the suit. “Yet, American Airlines had done nothing to ensure Jane Doe’s safety.”

American Airlines “provided and/or allowed Thompson with the opportunity to photograph and video minors,” they said in the suit, and failed to train other flight attendants to recognize warning signs of activities that might harm passengers. The airline was negligent in its hiring, retention and supervision of Thompson, they claimed in the suit. Its handling also caused the victim severe emotional distress, they said, and she suffers from symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

“At his recent sentencing, Thompson apologized to the victims and their families,” Paul Llewellyn, counsel for plaintiffs from San Francisco’s Lewis & Llewellyn, said in a statement. “After nearly two years, American Airlines still hasn’t. How many lawsuits will it take before the airline accepts responsibility for what happened on its flights? When children are sexually exploited on your watch, silence speaks volumes.”

Thompson is serving an 18-year sentence with five years of supervised release after pleading guilty to one count of sexual exploitation of children and one count of possession of child pornography depicting a prepubescent minor. He was caught attempting to record a 14-year-old passenger while she used the bathroom by taping his iPhone to the underside of the toilet seat using “inoperative equipment” stickers. The passenger reported this to her parents, who reported it to other flight attendants.

“American’s core mission is to care for people — and the foundation of that is the safety and security of our customers and team," an American Airlines spokesperson told Courthouse News. “We are reviewing the complaint, and we take the allegations involving a former team member very seriously.”

In a separate lawsuit against American Airlines filed in 2023, the 14-year-old victim’s family claimed that Thompson was then allowed unrestricted access to his phone for an hour, giving him time to erase the evidence and reset the device to factory settings. The family and American Airlines settled the case in February. The details of the settlement have not been made public.

Thompson preyed on four minor victims, the Department of Justice said, who were 6, 9, 11 and 14 years old, by hiding his phone in plane lavatories. He also had hundreds of AI-generated images of child sexual abuse material on his iCloud account.

The family of the 9-year-old victim filed suitin Texas in February 2024 against American and Thompson.

Pseudonymously identified as Mary Doe, she was flying to Los Angeles for a gymnastics competition when she was secretly filmed, and her family was notified almost a year later by FBI agents. Other flight attendants should have noticed that Thompson was cutting pieces of red catering tape, bringing it into the bathroom and loitering around the bathroom before entering it immediately after she exited, she and her parents said in the suit, in which they asked for more than a million dollars in relief.

American Airlines knew that multiple employees had complained about Thompson’s sexual misconduct prior to his filming of Mary Doe, her family said in the suit, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection had stopped him for possessing inappropriate material prior to his filming of Mary Doe. The airline was negligent in its hiring, supervision and retention of Thompson, they said. They also asked the court to find Thompson liable for intruding on Mary Doe’s privacy, which has left her fearful of using bathrooms outside of her home.

In a court filing, American Airlines initiallysaid that injuries that Mary Doe suffered were caused by her own negligence, before filing an amended response without that defense. It later replaced the legal team on the case.

“Every area of the child’s life has been affected by defendants’ actions and inactions,” her family said. The case appears to be proceeding toward trial.

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