It’s not shocking to anyone in the airline industry. Like with Russell Brand it’s been an open secret for years. These guys hide in plain site. They are protected by very powerful entities like AA or in Brand’s and Saville’s case the BBC. Someone wrote this elsewhere, but it is a truism, that if it takes a village to raise a child it also takes a village to abuse one. Hope you got my email Sara. Thanks.
That tragic accident (I won’t identify which one but you can probably guess) was unnecessary, foreseeable and entirely preventable.
I have decided to not use my real details. I am glad people are remaining anonymous as I don’t want to post under my own name. Sorry guys. What nightmare. All these horrible things that Sten did and I feel very fortunate VERY fortunate to have escaped relatively unscathed. I was 16 and working near the airport, Sten used to come in and we got to chatting. His asked me about my Scottish accent, I told him I wanted to be a FA, loved horror films. The usual mundane stuff. He invited me to see a screening of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 2000, so I went along because I thought he was hot. He was a strange ranger. On the way there he played love songs in the car, told me he was a very “passionate” person, he had a female relative who had been “brutally” raped which made him “uniquely attuned” to the suffering of women. He played Kate Bush Wuthering Heights, told me he felt like “the dark and brooding” Heathcliff and loved literature. At the cinema he told me to pretend I was 20 if people asked and that we were boyfriend and girlfriend. During the film he initially touched my hand, then squeezed my hand, arm, shoulder, then leg. Then told me to sit on his lap during the film as it was “getting scary”. He put his hand on my private area and touched me there for the final 20 minutes or so of the film. He never looked at me but kept his head forward watching the screen. He pulled me back into him and whispered it’s ok over and over as if comforting me because we were watching a horror film. He drove me home, acted like nothing had happened. I never told anyone what he did because I felt dirty, disgusting and embarrassed. But the shame is all yours, isn’t it Sten?
I mean I can just say I am so sorry this happened to you, and so young. I'm out of words at this point. In New York, 16 is a child. He was a pedophile. 17 is the age of consent there. Two of these points were clearly a part of his MO and ring very familiar to me. I was old when we went away for that weekend (26-ish?) but he was very big on making you listen to *his* music, getting weirdly excited about it and talking you through it. With me it was The Beautiful South and Peter Gabriel. Other women (victims) have said how odd, he told them he was into heavy metal, hard rock, and/or obsessed with Ofra Haza and made up a whole scenario where he had an affair with her. But then again he was a pathological liar who morphed his personality to match whomever he was with at a given time. He also told me to lie at his friend's wedding to say we'd been dating for a few months even though I literally met him that day on a blind date after a mutual friend who trusted him set us up (she was nowhere near the airline industry, so she was involved in his other life).
Let me guess he played Mini-Correct? He played that for me in the car before he assaulted me too. I am so sorry he did that to you. I am so sorry for all of us.
Oh, wow. That's sickening; he truly did have an arsenal of MOs he'd pull out in different situations. I didn't know that song but I looked up the lyrics and it's just wrong. With me it was You Keep it All In and i laughed, but i was like dude, the 80s called, why are you acting like this is new? I thought it was a bit dorky. I should clarify I was not one of his victims--I was with him as a part of his other life, where I guess he knew he couldn't get away with what he did as an all-powerful pilot or as a groomer of underage girls. Everyone in that life knew he didn't serve in the Navy or lose a friend in a training accident (because that's the plot of Top Gun), didn't go to Yale or MIT, etc. At some point soon i'll pin a guide and backstory to how The Landing came to be and how his victims set me straight after I wrote a glowing series defending his flying and his character so everyrone who stumbles across this will know the sequence of events.
I got the Top Gun story. And something about his father being a refugee from East Germany hunted by the Stasi. Do you remember the black Torana? And those fricken shades he always wore. He thought he looked cool but he looked like such a wanker.
i had one pilot he flew with write to me about the stasi and escaping and how his father was later stuck flying old planes out to the boneyard or some gobbledygook. It was quite a shock when this male pilot learned SM's father was a pilot for Eastern airlines and got a psychololgy degree from University of Buffalo. I also heard one who was told SM was going to be an astronaut but failed the medical or something
Flight Attendant here. I flew with Sten Molin. I want to jump in here not to defend what he did, but to defend those who worked with him as part of his crew. Many of us did not know the mind blowing extent of what he did. It is mind blowing! I am reading all of this with my mouth agape. Had I known I would have stepped in. Sten was charming. He was nice, but was also known as one of THOSE pilots. Eye roll. None of us knew this other big end of town sexual stuff. Most of us at American Airlines are good people. Hard working decent people. Ed States was a wonderful soul. This big end of town sexual stuff we didn’t know. I am talking about crew here, who knows what management knew? We knew about the girl. Sten said she was 18. How were we to know any different? 18 and with a guy in his 30s. Creepy but not illegal. She looked pregnant and who would have thought he would bring a pregnant child with him in a plane???! We would have stepped in. I just don’t want us all painted as terrible people who knew what Sten was up to and turned a blind eye to it all. We honestly didn’t. We didn’t.
Thanks for commenting, and for subscribing. Ultimately the only person responsible for Sten Molin's many crimes was Sten Molin. I haven't seen much witness (or alleged witness) blaming around my pages...have you been seeing that elsewhere? As someone who was briefly attacked by 1 or 2 people early on because I "should have known" about his many crimes, I completely get it. Serial rapists, pedophiles and serial killers are the same in this way. They lead double lives and they get off on it manipulating and tricking everyone around them. They fool the parents and the bosses and the people from the hometown, and when their victims try to speak up they're shouted down by "NOT HIM! HE'D NEVER DO THAT!" But of course he would. I will say some people he worked with did know. Some tried to speak up but were threatened and/or retaliated against. Some reported him--same thing. I have been told of more than one senior FA where the younger junior FA reported a Molin assault to her. The senior FA basically laughed and went and told Sten. That is so dangerous it's unthinkable. The internalized misogyny in "pick me" girls/women is real. As for the pedophilia side of him, you know who did know she was underage? Her parent. And American Airlines, which employed her in their "summer intern" type program for teens. They have reportedly paid off a bunch of his victims and had them sign iron-clad NDAs. I have asked AA about this multiple times and they have never denied it. But they can't silence those victims in his basement back in Greenwich. I'm looking into that now. Andee was not the only one, as we know. I still feel sick to my stomach I ever spent a weekend with that slimy, evil creep. But you didn't know. This is not on you. Anyone who says otherwise needs to go away.
Oh my gosh, andee. I am so sorry this happened to you. Your story reads like a horror movie, and at times I had to pause before reading further. You did not deserve that and you were let down by everyone around you. Thank you for sharing this story here. Every time a victim does so, there is someone, often many someones, who feels less alone and more understood. I promise you that. If there is anything at all I can do, please feel free to contact me anytime. I am working on a book about this topic and if you'd like your story included, you can email me anytime for that as well.
Ugh. I follow a lot of SA victims on Twitter and the story is always the same. The assault is enough to do you in, and then everything around it just makes it so much worse. People not believing, people minimizing, excusing. Again, I'm so sorry you had all of that happen. I will email you offline about the book.
I got a lecture about how young girls should be with a close friend the “first time”, someone they know and trust. Someone who “knows how to handle a woman”, because teenage boys just want to hurt girls, are rough and cruel and don’t know what love is. Across early 2000s I had I guess consensual sex with him on multiple occasions. I was 15 and I didn’t say no or put up a fight. I had a crush on him. I thought at the time it was what I wanted. I cared for him and I loved him until I grew up and learnt a few things about the world.
Very familiar. It’s called PTSD. I went to a shrink who was very honest and flat out told me it was near impossible to treat. I know how long my assault went on for because I was watching a movie, so I can time it that way. People give u advice on it all the time and I’m like dude I have tried everything. He was f—-ed . The shame is all his, but we bear it don’t we? I went to a shrink and I told this person who attacked me, his name, occupation, flight 587, because I thought they might do the reporting to police on my behalf. Instead I was laughed at. Oh no no no no no can’t be him. I am thinking to myself would Molin have had a #MeToo reckoning? Would it have all come out? You can’t keep something that massive under wraps forever. No one wants to touch this story now with a ten foot barge pole because of AA and Flight 587. He’s that poor pilot. The corporatists done him wrong attitude. But I’ve heard even ground crew knew he was f——ed. It was this massive open secret, this massive open secret that no one will touch with a ten foot barge pole. He’s also got a kid’s boat dedicated to him, so I copied everything here and I am going to send that off. So before you didn’t know, so well now you do kind of thing. Sending love. Be strong. Be brave.
I'm shocked there are yet more victims coming forward. How did you all find your way here?
It’s not shocking to anyone in the airline industry. Like with Russell Brand it’s been an open secret for years. These guys hide in plain site. They are protected by very powerful entities like AA or in Brand’s and Saville’s case the BBC. Someone wrote this elsewhere, but it is a truism, that if it takes a village to raise a child it also takes a village to abuse one. Hope you got my email Sara. Thanks.
That tragic accident (I won’t identify which one but you can probably guess) was unnecessary, foreseeable and entirely preventable.
That is fascinating...
Pin ‘em everywhere
I have decided to not use my real details. I am glad people are remaining anonymous as I don’t want to post under my own name. Sorry guys. What nightmare. All these horrible things that Sten did and I feel very fortunate VERY fortunate to have escaped relatively unscathed. I was 16 and working near the airport, Sten used to come in and we got to chatting. His asked me about my Scottish accent, I told him I wanted to be a FA, loved horror films. The usual mundane stuff. He invited me to see a screening of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 2000, so I went along because I thought he was hot. He was a strange ranger. On the way there he played love songs in the car, told me he was a very “passionate” person, he had a female relative who had been “brutally” raped which made him “uniquely attuned” to the suffering of women. He played Kate Bush Wuthering Heights, told me he felt like “the dark and brooding” Heathcliff and loved literature. At the cinema he told me to pretend I was 20 if people asked and that we were boyfriend and girlfriend. During the film he initially touched my hand, then squeezed my hand, arm, shoulder, then leg. Then told me to sit on his lap during the film as it was “getting scary”. He put his hand on my private area and touched me there for the final 20 minutes or so of the film. He never looked at me but kept his head forward watching the screen. He pulled me back into him and whispered it’s ok over and over as if comforting me because we were watching a horror film. He drove me home, acted like nothing had happened. I never told anyone what he did because I felt dirty, disgusting and embarrassed. But the shame is all yours, isn’t it Sten?
I mean I can just say I am so sorry this happened to you, and so young. I'm out of words at this point. In New York, 16 is a child. He was a pedophile. 17 is the age of consent there. Two of these points were clearly a part of his MO and ring very familiar to me. I was old when we went away for that weekend (26-ish?) but he was very big on making you listen to *his* music, getting weirdly excited about it and talking you through it. With me it was The Beautiful South and Peter Gabriel. Other women (victims) have said how odd, he told them he was into heavy metal, hard rock, and/or obsessed with Ofra Haza and made up a whole scenario where he had an affair with her. But then again he was a pathological liar who morphed his personality to match whomever he was with at a given time. He also told me to lie at his friend's wedding to say we'd been dating for a few months even though I literally met him that day on a blind date after a mutual friend who trusted him set us up (she was nowhere near the airline industry, so she was involved in his other life).
Let me guess he played Mini-Correct? He played that for me in the car before he assaulted me too. I am so sorry he did that to you. I am so sorry for all of us.
Oh, wow. That's sickening; he truly did have an arsenal of MOs he'd pull out in different situations. I didn't know that song but I looked up the lyrics and it's just wrong. With me it was You Keep it All In and i laughed, but i was like dude, the 80s called, why are you acting like this is new? I thought it was a bit dorky. I should clarify I was not one of his victims--I was with him as a part of his other life, where I guess he knew he couldn't get away with what he did as an all-powerful pilot or as a groomer of underage girls. Everyone in that life knew he didn't serve in the Navy or lose a friend in a training accident (because that's the plot of Top Gun), didn't go to Yale or MIT, etc. At some point soon i'll pin a guide and backstory to how The Landing came to be and how his victims set me straight after I wrote a glowing series defending his flying and his character so everyrone who stumbles across this will know the sequence of events.
Ah yes I heard this one from 1 other person I think. No matter what evidence they were presented with, the fact that it spoke such good French convinced them it had to be true. Start here. https://medium.com/@sarahammelbooks/a-brief-biography-of-american-airlines-first-officer-sten-molin-e9de9e407086 The evidence is incontrovertible
I got the Top Gun story. And something about his father being a refugee from East Germany hunted by the Stasi. Do you remember the black Torana? And those fricken shades he always wore. He thought he looked cool but he looked like such a wanker.
i had one pilot he flew with write to me about the stasi and escaping and how his father was later stuck flying old planes out to the boneyard or some gobbledygook. It was quite a shock when this male pilot learned SM's father was a pilot for Eastern airlines and got a psychololgy degree from University of Buffalo. I also heard one who was told SM was going to be an astronaut but failed the medical or something
I got the Top Gun story.
OMG the bloody music. Strewth. Creedence and Skynyrd. Sweet Home Alabama.
Flight Attendant here. I flew with Sten Molin. I want to jump in here not to defend what he did, but to defend those who worked with him as part of his crew. Many of us did not know the mind blowing extent of what he did. It is mind blowing! I am reading all of this with my mouth agape. Had I known I would have stepped in. Sten was charming. He was nice, but was also known as one of THOSE pilots. Eye roll. None of us knew this other big end of town sexual stuff. Most of us at American Airlines are good people. Hard working decent people. Ed States was a wonderful soul. This big end of town sexual stuff we didn’t know. I am talking about crew here, who knows what management knew? We knew about the girl. Sten said she was 18. How were we to know any different? 18 and with a guy in his 30s. Creepy but not illegal. She looked pregnant and who would have thought he would bring a pregnant child with him in a plane???! We would have stepped in. I just don’t want us all painted as terrible people who knew what Sten was up to and turned a blind eye to it all. We honestly didn’t. We didn’t.
Thanks for commenting, and for subscribing. Ultimately the only person responsible for Sten Molin's many crimes was Sten Molin. I haven't seen much witness (or alleged witness) blaming around my pages...have you been seeing that elsewhere? As someone who was briefly attacked by 1 or 2 people early on because I "should have known" about his many crimes, I completely get it. Serial rapists, pedophiles and serial killers are the same in this way. They lead double lives and they get off on it manipulating and tricking everyone around them. They fool the parents and the bosses and the people from the hometown, and when their victims try to speak up they're shouted down by "NOT HIM! HE'D NEVER DO THAT!" But of course he would. I will say some people he worked with did know. Some tried to speak up but were threatened and/or retaliated against. Some reported him--same thing. I have been told of more than one senior FA where the younger junior FA reported a Molin assault to her. The senior FA basically laughed and went and told Sten. That is so dangerous it's unthinkable. The internalized misogyny in "pick me" girls/women is real. As for the pedophilia side of him, you know who did know she was underage? Her parent. And American Airlines, which employed her in their "summer intern" type program for teens. They have reportedly paid off a bunch of his victims and had them sign iron-clad NDAs. I have asked AA about this multiple times and they have never denied it. But they can't silence those victims in his basement back in Greenwich. I'm looking into that now. Andee was not the only one, as we know. I still feel sick to my stomach I ever spent a weekend with that slimy, evil creep. But you didn't know. This is not on you. Anyone who says otherwise needs to go away.
Oh my gosh, andee. I am so sorry this happened to you. Your story reads like a horror movie, and at times I had to pause before reading further. You did not deserve that and you were let down by everyone around you. Thank you for sharing this story here. Every time a victim does so, there is someone, often many someones, who feels less alone and more understood. I promise you that. If there is anything at all I can do, please feel free to contact me anytime. I am working on a book about this topic and if you'd like your story included, you can email me anytime for that as well.
Ugh. I follow a lot of SA victims on Twitter and the story is always the same. The assault is enough to do you in, and then everything around it just makes it so much worse. People not believing, people minimizing, excusing. Again, I'm so sorry you had all of that happen. I will email you offline about the book.
I got a lecture about how young girls should be with a close friend the “first time”, someone they know and trust. Someone who “knows how to handle a woman”, because teenage boys just want to hurt girls, are rough and cruel and don’t know what love is. Across early 2000s I had I guess consensual sex with him on multiple occasions. I was 15 and I didn’t say no or put up a fight. I had a crush on him. I thought at the time it was what I wanted. I cared for him and I loved him until I grew up and learnt a few things about the world.
ugh. Thank you for sharing. I hope you're doing OK.
Can relate.
He touched my private parts too. Your story is very similar to mine. The shame is all Sten’s. Not ours. Remember that.
Very familiar. It’s called PTSD. I went to a shrink who was very honest and flat out told me it was near impossible to treat. I know how long my assault went on for because I was watching a movie, so I can time it that way. People give u advice on it all the time and I’m like dude I have tried everything. He was f—-ed . The shame is all his, but we bear it don’t we? I went to a shrink and I told this person who attacked me, his name, occupation, flight 587, because I thought they might do the reporting to police on my behalf. Instead I was laughed at. Oh no no no no no can’t be him. I am thinking to myself would Molin have had a #MeToo reckoning? Would it have all come out? You can’t keep something that massive under wraps forever. No one wants to touch this story now with a ten foot barge pole because of AA and Flight 587. He’s that poor pilot. The corporatists done him wrong attitude. But I’ve heard even ground crew knew he was f——ed. It was this massive open secret, this massive open secret that no one will touch with a ten foot barge pole. He’s also got a kid’s boat dedicated to him, so I copied everything here and I am going to send that off. So before you didn’t know, so well now you do kind of thing. Sending love. Be strong. Be brave.
Awful. I am so sorry this happened to you.