Estes Carter Thompson former American Airlines flight attendant pleads guilty to secretly filming young girls using bathroom with admission raising disturbing questions as to how the worker’s employer seeming negligence and indifference facilitated the attendant’s egregious behavior.
A former American Airlines flight attendant in a plea deal has admitted to filming young girls using airplane lavatories and collecting a massive trove of child illicit material. But perhaps even more troubling is the attitude of the man’s employer in addressing the sexual crimes.
Estes Carter Thompson III, 37, faces up to 20 years in prison for child exploitation after he was caught trying to secretly film a 14-year-old passenger with an iPhone taped to a toilet seat, The Boston Globe reported.
American Airlines flight attendant scheming and predatory
The bust led to investigators finding secret bathroom videos of girls aged 7, 9, 11, and 14 in Thompson’s iCloud account taken on different flights in 2023 he worked — plus a hoard of child p*rn generated using AI.
Thompson’s devious actions were exposed in September 2023 during a Boston-bound flight after he escorted a 14-year-old passenger to the lavatory, only to demand that he first to wash his hands, mentioning that the toilet seat was “broken,” only to secretly install a hidden camera according to prosecutors.
The unsuspecting victim then found an iPhone haphazardly concealed under red maintenance stickers on the underside of the toilet seat. She took photos of the hidden camera, returned to her seat, and showed them to her parents.
When the girl’s father confronted Thompson, he locked himself in the lavatory and restored his phone to factory settings, prosecutors told the US District Court in Boston.
Investigators later found more red stickers in his suitcase, and a search of his iCloud account revealed more recordings of four other underage girls, photos of an unaccompanied 9-year-old asleep in her seat, and a trove of hundreds of sexually explicit, AI-generated images involving children, prosecutors told The Globe.
‘All minor victims involved in this matter have been identified and their families have been contacted by law enforcement,’ prosecutors told the court.
American Airlines blame child victim for her own sexualization
Thompson, who is from Charlotte, NC, pleaded guilty to charges of attempted sexual exploitation of children and possession of child p*rnography depicting a prepubescent minor.
Those crimes carry maximum sentences of 30 and 20 years, respectively, although with the plea deal, prosecutors will likely seek a sentence of 15-20 years behind bars.
‘I expect the defense will seek a 15-year sentence,’ Thompson’s federal public defender, Scott Lauer, told the Globe in a statement.
In addition to the jail time, Thompson could be forced to pay $250,000 in damages.
The families of two victims have filed suits against American Airlines for allowing their employees to prey on the girls.
The family of the girl who caught Thompson in the act accused the airline of negligence for not confiscating the employee’s phone after the girl’s father notified airline staff, allowing him to destroy evidence.
The family of a 9-year-old victim who Thompson secretly recorded in January, 2023, also sued American Airlines, but the airline initially tried to blame the girl for using a lavatory ‘she knew or should have known contained a visible and illuminated recording device.’
Attitudes that perhaps may have emboldened the pervert employee in the first place. Which is to wonder, how much further would the rogue employee have gotten in his predatory behavior had he worked for another airliner? Or is the airline industry a waiting vessel for opportunistic sadists?
American Airlines later apologized for the response and fired the legal team behind it.
‘We do not believe this child is at fault and we take the allegations involving a former team member very seriously,’ the airline later said.
