After pleading guilty to touching an American Airlines flight attendant during a flight from Cancun to Miami in August 2021, Aman was sentenced to six months in federal prison.
Enio Socorro Zayas, a Canadian citizen, struck a plea agreement in October, admitting to one count of assault under the United States’ special aircraft jurisdiction.
Zayas was sentenced to six months in prison and a year of supervised release by a federal judge in the United States on Monday.
Zayas allegedly grabbed a female flight attendant on American Airlines aircraft AA1723 from Mexico to Florida on August 6, 2021, according to an FBI affidavit given to the court.
When the flight attendants were performing the service, Zayas was clearly asleep, so the victim placed some snacks in his lap and continued serving other customers.
A hand “grabbed the bottom of her thigh and moved upwards towards the lower area of her buttocks before rubbing vigorously from side to side,” she said.
Other passengers stepped forward as witnesses when the flight attendant turned around and chastised Zayas.
A significant survey of US flight attendants indicated that two-thirds had encountered sexual harassment during their employment as pilots, and nearly one-in-five had suffered physical sexual harassment from passengers in the previous year.
Concerningly, 68 percent of flight attendants indicated they don’t see their airlines addressing workplace sexual harassment.
Last year, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair Peter DeFazio presented the Stop Sexual Assault and Harassment in Transportation Act to protect passengers and airline employees from sexual assault.
The law would oblige airlines and other public transportation companies to adopt formal policies, training, and reporting procedures for sexual assault and harassment, as well as a new set of civil sanctions for those who commit such crimes.
The Department of Transportation would also be forced to create its own definition of sexual assault and, for the first time, begin collecting data on sexual assaults that have been reported.
The bill was introduced in October of last year but has yet to go forward.
