“...a person who is asleep next to you who you don’t know and who is unaware can translate itself in your mind to ‘this is a sex object’...”
that you’re with strangers, therefore you’re not accountable. You’ve got a sense that you’re next to somebody, very close, in a way that you’re really only next to people that you are sexually intimate with. There is an 18 inch rule - are you close enough to touch without reaching out? Are you close enough to smell? And yes, on an aeroplane you are both of those. And you’re spending time with somebody doing intimate things like eating and sleeping, so there’s a facilitation of intimacy even though it’s not a real intimacy.” Practical elements, from the layout of the plane to the activity of the cabin crew also play a part. Quilliam explains: “The chair backs are high, you’re hidden from view; the only people who can really see you are the staff walking backwards and forwards and the people along the line, but actually it’s not easy to see along the line so there is a sense that you’re able to take a risk – there’s less fear of being monitored, there’s less fear of being caught.” The final stage, Quilliam explains,
in triggering somebody to “go over the edge” and carry out an act of frotteurism or another form of sexual assault
is likely to be
“situational opportunity”. Often, this may arise because “the person next to you either falls asleep or appears to be asleep, and therefore gets reduced from a human being to a sex object, almost literally – something that you can rub up against.” She explains: “a person who is asleep next to you who you don’t know and who is unaware can translate itself in your mind to ‘this is a sex object that I can actually rub up against’.”
She also says that the additional element of passengers consuming alcohol or sleeping tablets in-flight is “clearly important”. Both, she says, can produce “an altered state” in which inhibition is lowered in the perpetrator and the awareness and alertness of the victim are diminished. Indeed, in the Hawaiian Airlines incident cited above, the victim had consumed a spoonful of liquid Nyquil in order to help her sleep before the assault took place. The incident prompted FBI Special Agent Tom Simon to say: “To state the obvious, a woman should be able to fall asleep on an airplane without being groped by her seat mate…let’s just say that it’s not the FBI’s job to tell a 22-year-old man to keep his hands to himself”.
Susan Quilliam
Understanding this chain of events could be extremely useful in helping airlines to tackle the problem and to exercise increased vigilance at times when passengers may be particularly vulnerable. Quilliam notes: “It’s particularly likely to happen when the lights are down and most of the other passengers are asleep, so they’re not monitoring you and the cabin crew have withdrawn and are absent. It’s less likely to happen round about take off when everybody is alert, less likely to happen during
"To state the obvious, a woman should be able to fall asleep on an airplane without being groped by her seat mate", Tom Simon, FBI
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December 2012 Aviationsecurityinternational
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