Open admission that women are targets of airport groping
Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
Tuesday, Dec 14th, 2010
A California woman is suing the TSA following an incident at Albuquerque International Sunport where she was subjected to an invasive breast groping in full public view by the TSA, despite making it known that she had been forced to undergo a mastectomy last year.
Adrienne Durso describes how a female TSA officer pulled her out of line after she had gone through the metal detector and proceeded to pat her down, “Heavily concentrating on my breast area” in a search that “just seemed to go on and on”.
Relating her story to KOB Eyewitness News 4, Ms. Durso explained how she was made to feel humiliated in front of her seventeen year old son and the rest of the queuing passengers.
“I felt as though I didn’t have any rights other than I had to stand there and let them do what they want to do to my body,” Durso said.
Feeling violated and embarrassed, Ms. Durso asked to speak to a TSA supervisor.
As if things couldn’t get any worse, when the supervisor arrived and Ms. Durso’s son asked why he had also not been subjected to the body search, the TSA agent told the boy “well you don’t have boobs”.
Following that statement, Ms. Durso decided to take legal action, with her attorney arguing that the incident is a violation of 4th Amendment rights and constitutes unreasonable search and seizure.
Details of the lawsuit can be accessed here.
“I thought, ‘you know, surely this story must mean something to somebody, maybe this will help somebody who is trying to change the situation at airports because I don’t think anybody should have to go through this,” Ms. Durso added.
Below is a KOB Eyewitness News 4 report on the incident:
Clearly the TSA supervisor who made the lewd statement is either just plain stupid or took such umbrage with a seventeen year old boy daring to question his actions, that he snapped back with the statement as a pathetic way of re-exerting authority, suggesting that ‘yes the TSA can grope your mom’s breasts if it wants to and there’s nothing you can do about it boy’.
There have been scores of complaints against the TSA recently by women who say they were singled out for enhanced screening based on their figures.
Eliana Sutherland recently flew from Orlando International Airport and told Local 6 News she felt the two male TSA workers were staring at her breasts and chose her for additional screening because of their size.
“It was pretty obvious. One of the guys that was staring me up and down was the one who pulled me over,” said Sutherland. “Not a comfortable feeling.”
Former Baywatch star Donna D’Errico also recently claimed she had been singled out for the same reasons.
Another disturbing incident, which is subject to an ongoing lawsuit, involved a 21-year-old college student from Amarillo Texas. The woman was passing through security at Corpus Christi airport on May 29 2008 when she was subjected to “extended search procedures” by the TSA.
“As the TSA agent was frisking plaintiff, the agent pulled the plaintiff’s blouse completely down, exposing plaintiffs’ breasts to everyone in the area,” the lawsuit said. “As would be expected, plaintiff was extremely embarrassed and humiliated.”
TSA workers continued to laugh and joke about the incident “for an extended period of time,” leaving the woman distraught and needing to be consoled. After the woman re-entered the boarding area, TSA workers continued to humiliate her over the incident.
“One male TSA employee expressed to the plaintiff that he wished he would have been there when she came through the first time and that ‘he would just have to watch the video,’” the suit said.
The woman filed an administrative claim against the TSA but was forced to launch a full lawsuit after the agency failed to respond.
The incident bears similarities to a 2002 case involving a pregnant woman who had her breasts exposed by TSA agents in public. Her husband was thrown in the airport jail for complaining about the treatment of his wife.
Other cases involve TSA agents making comments about the size of private parts, subjecting those involved to trauma and humiliation.
Despite these and thousands of other complaints against the TSA, and the fact that police are being called to look out for over enthusiastic TSA gropers, the agency still maintains that no fondling, groping or squeezing is taking place at airports at all.
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