'The Only Way These Women Are Going to go on the Record...
Is if they all jump together.' — from "She Said," a new movie about assault victims rising up
Contact me at MeTooAirlines at Proton.me if you’re considering speaking to the documentary producers. You won’t have to show your face on camera and they will protect your identity. (I have responded to everyone who’s written to me, so if you don’t see it, check your spam folder).
TRIGGER WARNING: Discussion of rape and assault.
The trailer for “She Said,” the movie based on the book of the same name about two New York Times reporters who helped Harvey Weinstein’s victims unmask and stop a predator, rolled through my social media feeds today. The first lines were hauntingly familiar because they’ve lived in my head practically word for word over the past few months:
Reporter 1: “The only way these women are going to go on the record…”
Reporter 2: “…Is if they all jump together.”
(Play the 0:02--:07 mark in this video)
The women in this scene are talking about Weinstein’s assault and rape victims, who were pressured into signing NDAs to silence them with onerous and sometimes outrageous conditions attached to the settlements. Many, if not most, say they felt they had no other choice but to sign.
There are more than a few of you who are victims of the late American Airlines F.O. Sten Molin (and allegedly other pilots who are still employed at the airline) and have said you want your story to be heard. It’s hard, though, isn’t it? It must feel impossible sometimes.
As you know, there is a television documentary (a docuseries) in development about the dark side of life as a flight attendant, and the producers have said they view FAs as the “forgotten heroes of the airline industry” and will portray them as such in the series.
At this stage, a handful of assault victims are now either talking to producers—who have promised to protect your identities—or have contacted me about doing so.
I know there are more of you, and you have told me you feel safer in numbers. I hope you all jump together.
The other numbers (so far)
I spent a couple of days finally sifting through every bit of correspondence I’ve received on every platform from day one, including reams of emails. Accounting for redundancies across various platforms, here are the numbers of victims that we know about so far:
51 distinct victims in total reported stalking, rape, sexual assault (being pressed into a wall, suffocated on a bed, crushed in the galley, and more), harassment, bullying and/or retaliation by Molin and/or in a few cases, other pilots he flew with who still work at American or other airlines.
Of the 51, at least 17 women and girls were raped, some of them multiple times (13 of those are/were flight attendants; 3 of the 17 are statutory rapes of girls under the age of consent).
An additional 3 to 6 witnesses wrote to validate and back up the abuse they saw when working with Molin and Co.
Several of you wrote to me privately in the past 10 months telling me you want your story to be heard. You told me you contacted journalists over the years, sent them photos and email and evidence, but you were ignored.
You say you reported your assault but were not believed.
We believe you. We hear you.
This count represents far too many victims. Every single one represents a human being, a trauma imprinted on a psyche, and a life changed forever. One is too many. But 51 and counting??
Sadly, this is not unusual
Do you know what the world’s most prolific predators have in common?
A few things, actually, but here’s the big one: They operate within an institution that protects them and provides cover so the predator can continue assaulting victims for years or decades. Every time the offender gets away with assaulting another victim, we have to ask ourselves, who else is partially responsible for the next person he attacks?
Jimmy Savile assaulted some 450 victims. Savile is dead, but the investigation goes on. Know why? He couldn’t have done it without cover from the BBC. “Serious failings at the BBC allowed Jimmy Savile and Stuart Hall to sexually abuse nearly 100 people without detection for decades, according to two damning reports. Dame Janet Smith…found that despite what had happened with Savile and Hall in previous years, those who worked at the BBC were still worried about reporting potential abuse and taking on the broadcaster’s stars. She concluded that “an atmosphere of fear still exists today in the BBC possibly because obtaining work in the BBC is highly competitive and many people no longer have the security on an employment contract.” (The Guardian).
Larry Nassar sexually abused more than 330 gymnasts. He was convicted, which meant the investigation could turn to the institutions that harbored him: Michigan State University, USA Gymnastics, and even the FBI, which survivors have sued, saying the agency failed them and allowed “avoidable trauma” to occur because many were assaulted by Nassar after July 2015, when the FBI Indianapolis office was first alerted.
Dead pedophile and rapist Jeffrey Epstein left behind untold numbers of victims. They deserve justice. Protecting the reputation of a dead man is not a reason to ignore, stifle or silence his victims. The latest number I could find was his estate has paid off some 150 victims—so far.
Child molester Jerry Sandusky is in jail for life, convicted of 45 counts of child sexual abuse. Those who enabled him were also called to account. Hall of Fame head coach Joe Paterno was fired, and Penn State, where Sandusky perpetrated many of his crimes, paid more than $100 million to people he abused. The president of Penn State did prison time for endangering the welfare of children over his response to a 2001 report that Sandusky was seen showering alone with a boy. No one reported it to police, and the president wrote in an email at the time that “the only downside for us is if the message isn’t ‘heard’ and acted upon, and we then become vulnerable for not having reported it.”
Southwest Airlines pilot Christine Janning details in a new lawsuit how she was sexually assaulted mid-flight by her superior officer, Captain Michael Haak, and says in court papers that there are more of his victims out there. Her court filing tells us her assailant, convicted sex offender Haak, was free to assault her even though there were several past “complaints and other instances of sexual assaults and sexual harassment performed by Cpt. Haak.” (Southwest has not responded to requests for comment).
This brings me to a question I’ve wanted to post about for a while now: WHERE ARE THE HEROES within these organizations?
Where are the men inside American Airlines who have both power and a conscience? Do you think about your daughters, your nieces, your sisters, your mothers, your wives when you hear about abuse on flight attendants and others? Is there not one among you brave enough to stand up and stand behind these victims?
If you’re sitting on your hands knowing a cascade of sexual assault reports are coming in about pilots you share or shared a cockpit with, YOU. ARE. COMPLICIT. I’ve heard from at least one of you, but then you slunk away (we both know why). Shame on you for keeping silent. Shame on those who knowingly allow predators to continue working and getting off scot-free. (American has never responded to detailed requests for comment).
Yep, we can do hard things
The documentary project is well underway, so don’t delay if you’re thinking about sharing your experience. This is a chance to meet a moment that has never been presented to Molin’s victims before.
Think about what you wanted from all of this. Why you spread out and flooded various corners of the internet with stories about your attacker after I wrote those first two articles back in September 2021.
The stakes are high. There are real fears and real risks to speaking out, even anonymously. I’ve written before about American Airlines FAs Kimberly Goesling and Greta Anderson, both of whom were raped while working for American. None of these women have had an easy time of it.
The stakes are also high for other women and girls, too. As Jodi Kantor has said of her experience helping Weinstein’s victims expose him, there are predators out there who are still being protected.
We know there are plenty of offenders who still work for the airlines. And there are people still using intimidation to silence them.
“But when you look at them as a pattern, you see that [NDAs] have protected alleged predators again and again; not just in the Weinstein case—this is something much larger.” —Jodi Kantor to NPR
Takeaways from and parallels with “She Said”
I still haven’t read the book, and I plan to do that shortly. Some interesting quotes from the Times journalists can be found in this interview with NPR when the book came out. When they talk about how scary it was for the women to come forward, then explained how they made it to a place where they felt strong enough to do it, reminds me of that book Feel the Fear and do it Anyway.
JODI KANTOR: So here's the pattern we found again and again with these suffocating nondisclosure agreements that women signed—after an allegation of harassment or assault, a woman would go to a lawyer for help, and often that woman would feel like, OK, the lawyer's going to make this right. I'm going to get help. We're going to be able to rectify the situation in some way. And again and again, we found that what these women were told was, well, actually, your best option is a settlement, a confidential settlement.
And what that means is that the woman gets money, and it's essentially money for silence. It's hush money. And in most cases, she has to agree to really restrictive conditions in terms of who she can ever tell about this again. Some of the conditions we found in some of the Weinstein settlements were so extreme, like women not being able to tell therapists or accountants about what had happened without special permission. Rowena Chiu, one of the alleged victims, never told her husband what had happened to her.
And so in the moment, these settlements, these confidentiality agreements, can seem like the best available option because if you're a woman who's faced something like this, you get to keep your privacy, you get some recompense, financially. But when you look at them as a pattern, you see that they have protected alleged predators again and again; not just in the Weinstein case—this is something much larger.
The story of Zelda Perkins is both upsetting and inspiring, too. She was in her early 20s working for Miramax in the late 1990s in the London office and talks about how terrifying it was, how seedy, and how she made the move to speak out.
From an interview in The Lily:
For some of that time, she was Weinstein’s right-hand woman: When the film producer was in Europe for about a week each month, Perkins acted as Weinstein’s assistant, accompanying him to film screenings and award shows, she said.
But Perkins’s relationship with Weinstein changed forever in 1998, when she and Rowena Chiu — a fellow assistant to the producer — signed nondisclosure agreements following Weinstein’s alleged attempted rape of Chiu, which Chiu revealed to Perkins the day after it happened. Each woman received 125,000 British pounds, or about $168,000 today, as part of the agreement not to talk to family or friends about the alleged assault and to adhere to strict parameters that limited their abilities to confide in a therapist.
And while the agreement had certain requirements meant to safeguard other women, including that Weinstein be prevented from traveling with female assistants, those measures weren’t upheld on Weinstein’s end, Perkins said.
“Ultimately what it came down to was the only thing we had to bargain with was our silence,” Perkins recently told The Lily.
Zelda is a resource for victims, as well. She and Canadian law professor Julie Macfarlane co-founded Can’t Buy My Silence, an advocacy campaign aimed at ending “the misuse of NDAs to buy victims’ silence,” according to the campaign’s website, which also contains tips for people considering signing NDAs and a place for people who have been hurt by signing the agreements to share their stories, according to The Lily.
Whatever you decide to do, you’re amazing for speaking out for so many years even with the repercussions you’ve faced.
P.S. I believe you. And I’m not the only one.