Are Men Claiming to be American Airlines Pilots Hunting Down Abuse Victims?
I spent hours with law enforcement last night. I have great lawyers. Don't let the cowards intimidate you.
Edit 4/28/25: There are no “American Airlines male pilots.” I’ve gathered proof it’s mostly one person trying to scare, intimidate, menace and harass me. Stay tuned for a future post about my journey battling a cyberstalker.
Trigger/content warning: Some discussion of sexual assault and abuse
The Streisand effect: an unintended consequence of attempts to hide, remove, or censor information, where the effort instead backfires by increasing public awareness of the information.
WARNING: If anyone contacts you fishing for information and claiming I gave them your details or anything about you at all, don’t fall for it.
Over my dead body would I compromise or otherwise breach the privacy of a sexual assault victim/survivor, nor anyone I know for that matter. This protection is unconditional.
I would not, have not, will not give anyone’s information out to anyone, let alone to bullies who have emailed me to say they’ll be “investigating” on their own. Can you see the Lifetime movie now? The Pilot Detective: Scaring Flight Attendants into Pretending Their Private Trauma Never Happened.
What you’re about to read is from the abusers’ playbook. It is not new, or special, or original. But it is damaging, and there are consequences. Last night I had the “If anything happens to me, check out these people” conversation with law enforcement and today, I spoke with attorneys.
I gave them four names.
If American Airlines captains, past or present, are hunting down, harassing, intimidating, contacting without consent, or otherwise probing for information about women’s traumatic and very personal sexual abuse and assaults as these men have intimated to me, that is serious. It needs to be called out and stopped. (CC: American Airlines media relations).
If their tactics result in sexual assault victims and survivors being afraid to speak out, that is real damage. It’s like 2000 all over again, and women raped by Sten Molin are being ganged up on so they shut up.
It’s not going to work on me.
More on what they wrote to me about their plans below.
But first, I’m going to put a few things on the record so no one can say they didn’t know.
I’ve been told a pilot is writing that I sent him explicit sexual emails. This is false and defamatory. (I’ve stayed away from Reddit except to gather screenshots for my case, and I have enough now, so I’m sure there’s more drama out there I haven’t seen).
The self-identified pilots have targeted me on multiple platforms saying I had sexual relations with Sten Molin. I did not. This is false and defamatory.
An American Airlines captain is sending harassing, sexually charged Tweets to me. American, you should be embarrassed to have covered for men like this for so many years. This juvenile behavior does not reflect well on you.
They say I wrote an explicit, pornographic and by all accounts stomach-churning scene about myself. I did not. Someone else wrote these scenes in my name, and everyone knows that now. Saying I wrote those passages is false and defamatory.
For over 2 years I’ve been building a case with law enforcement in two countries, sharing evidence of abuse and cyberstalking. This latest round, largely by pilots, has forced me to shut down several social media channels. I am an author with 13 books on sale. That is how I make my living. Having to take down my #1 marketing tool has created real monetary damages.
Anyone claiming that I have ever masqueraded online as victims or other accounts are lying. Subpoenas leading to IP addresses will bear this out. If it doesn’t have my name on it—or it does, but you can’t find it anywhere other than in screenshots—I didn’t write it. If you’re claiming I did, show me where to find it online.
They post collages of my face with a dog and commenters say I look like Ron Jeremy. I suppose this is a matter of opinion.
When the original faked screenshots went around in 2021, I wish more people had questioned why a married children's book author who'd just published a book about inspirational women making history in the U.S. military would put out repulsive pornographic stories about herself.
I wish I’d asked why they were all going off screenshots when they could’ve clicked on the link to the story on Medium.com.
My mother read the original story about my blind date with Molin. My husband. Respected journalism colleagues I’ve worked with from local newspapers to New York Times reporters to fellow newsmagazine alumni.
Someone close to Molin on the Greenwich side of his life read them and responded in writing what a nice tribute they were.
The Facebook post I put up at the time got lots of nice responses about how it was a fine tribute to Molin.
So, no, I’m not out there writing explicit, repulsive stories about a man I never had a physical relationship with. I hate having to put that here. But for the record, here it is.
What’s sad is that these men with serious SDE (Google it) are losing their rag when really, we are beyond Sten Molin. Many of his victims, I’m told, have signed NDAs and settled for good money with American Airlines, which has never denied this nor have they responded to multiple specific requests for comment over two years.
There are many other brilliant, powerful, inspiring women and men speaking out about abuse by colleagues in the airline industry and taking their cases through the courts as we speak. Women who work for Delta. Southwest. Ryan Air. JetBlue. WestJet. The list goes on. This is the only reason I’m still here.
If I never see or read that man’s name again, it would be a wonderful day. Sten Molin’s victims and survivors have said their pieces and many won’t be heard from again.
We’re ready to move on from him. He’s dead. I pitched the book I’m writing as the story of how The Landing came to be, and how Molin’s victims and survivors are sparking a change in the industry. After they came forward, so did women from other airlines, and many of them are featured here at The Landing. It is their stories we’re here to tell now.
Fragile Men are Lashing out. Don’t Buy Into It.
Someone should tell these guys about the Streisand Effect. The more drama they create, the more they bully women from the shadows because they’re too scared to put their names on their own claims, they’re amplifying the victims and survivors who have shared their stories. There are so many different accounts of Molin’s sexual abuse in various forms that I don’t have a full count yet of how many there are.
A man named Rob wrote me and said he’d been “a pilot on the Boeing 727. I flew with Sten Molin on plenty of occasions. I knew him well and considered him a friend. We socialised outside work and on layovers.”
He proceeded to tell me he was coming after women who shared their traumatic assaults. American Airlines? You got anything to say?
I only know of one “Rob” American Airlines captain who flew with Molin, but who knows if there are others.
Here is the NTSB’s docket for flight 587. Scroll down to “Operations 2 - Attachments A and B - Interview Summaries” to read American Airlines pilots’ testimony.
Another pilot, another cowardly bully who attacks from the shadows because of his fear of “the woke mob,” literally thought I was going to doxx rape victims:
Note that the difference between their screenshots and mine is that mine are backed up by IP addresses and email providers. Theirs are fake, and therefore there is no footprint beyond their own devices and IP addresses, and no one will be able to authenticate them because I did not create them.
One thing many people don’t seem to understand about the internet and social media is that you can go and go and go and abuse and troll with what feels like virtual impunity, like a bunch of you have—until there’s legal action. When that happens, the subpoenas go out to the platforms and email providers and then onto the internet providers for specific ISP information.
I have piles of examples of the sick messages they send me. I’m experiencing the abusers’ playbook; this is a textbook example of what it’s like to come forward as a sexual assault victim/survivor.
It’s striking for me to look back and see this comment from two years ago on Medium warning of this precise behavioral pattern:
I reported Sten Molin many moons ago and was shredded by American and his supporters. If anyone wants to do this, come forward, it will be a really rough ride, now that Molin is dead. Sten had and still has friends in low places. Really low places.
Caption: This space should be for a collage of women fighting retaliation, abuse and harassment in the airline industry, but to put their faces out there outside of very specific articles and without express permission can make them targets. So here’s a palate cleanser of kick-ass women and their male allies.
These pilots go by the standard abuser’s script, complete with threats and doxxing. Journalists have had to deal with this kind of intimidation forever, and there are some great organizations for women and independent journalists I’m beginning to reach out to.
Women and men in the airline industry have been telling me for over two years that this kind of coordinated, emotionally violent campaign is why they either didn’t come forward or backed down when they tried—except they experience it via physical intimidation in person, in cramped galleys or jetways or airplane aisles when no one’s looking.
Now I’m experiencing it myself, albeit without the physical real-time intimidation. Doesn’t mean I don’t feel it. I’ve had more than one death threat.
I have had a great experience corresponding with men in the airline industry. There are far more gems out there than rotten apples.
We’re going to need you to speak up.
If you want to be an ally, step in front of the abusers. Share the women’s stories. Step up. If you hear a man slandering a woman, be the one to tell him to grow up. To stop. To leave women alone.
It’s not about saving a helpless woman who can’t fight for herself. It’s about allyship and understanding what it must be like to be a young FA who doesn’t get the respect a pilot does; and for pilots who are an extreme minority in commercial aviation (women make up between 3-7% of commercial airline pilots depending to what stats you quote. Women of color make up 1%).
I know you’re out there. Let’s see what you’re made of.
That’s all for now.
-Sara
Well-stated, and extremely saddening. Wishing peace to you and all victims - and friends & family, who also are affected.