A perverted American Airways flight attendant who confessed to taping his cellphone to the airplane bathroom’s lid to movie ladies as younger as seven years previous has been sentenced to 18 1/2 years in jail.
Estes Carter Thompson III pleaded responsible earlier this 12 months to recording 5 underage ladies over a nine-month interval — in addition to amassing a trove of AI-generated little one pornography.
The 37-year-old now-fired flight attendant apologized at his sentencing Wednesday, conceding that his wicked actions had been “selfish, perverse and wrong.”
Boston U.S. District Courtroom Decide Julia Kobick referred to as Thompson’s conduct “appalling” and mentioned the filmed youngsters’ “innocence has been lost” due to it.
Federal prosecutors famous that Thompson had been “recording videos of the children’s bodies in one of their most private moments, and then storing, editing, and revisiting those videos, all for his own sexual gratification,” in keeping with a sentencing memorandum obtained by Boston.com.
Thompson “robbed five young girls of their innocence and belief in the goodness of the world and the people they would encounter in it, instead leaving them with fear, mistrust, insecurity, and sadness,” prosecutors mentioned.
The North Carolina native was arrested in September 2023 on a Boston-bound flight after he escorted a 14-year-old passenger to the bathroom — however requested to enter first to scrub his fingers, mentioning that the bathroom seat was not working, prosecutors instructed the US District Courtroom in Boston.
The woman then discovered an iPhone crudely hid beneath pink upkeep stickers that mentioned “seat broken” on the underside of the bathroom seat.
The teenager snapped photographs of the hidden digicam, returned to her seat, and confirmed them to her dad and mom.
The ladies’ father confronted Thompson, who hid himself within the rest room for the rest of the flight and deleted all of his cellphone’s information.
Investigators found extra pink stickers in his suitcase, and a search of his iCloud account revealed extra recordings of 4 different underage ladies — ages 7, 9, 11 and 14 — in addition to photographs of an unaccompanied 9-year-old asleep in her seat, and a hoard of sexual AI-generated photographs involving kids.
He pleaded responsible in March to expenses of tried sexual exploitation of youngsters and possession of kid pornography depicting a prepubescent minor.
Thompson will serve his sentence at FMC Butner in North Carolina and intends to bear remedy for intercourse offenders.
Along with the 18-plus years behind bars, he should additionally serve 5 years of supervised launch.
Thompson was instantly fired by American Airways after the incident, however the firm continues to be going through a civil lawsuit from one of many victims.
Paul Llewellyn, whose Texas-based legislation agency Lewis & Llewellyn is representing the kid’s household, instructed Boston.com it’s “deeply troubling” Thompson was capable of exploit his place “in such a calculated and invasive way.”
“American Airlines owes these families — and the public — answers and meaningful reforms to ensure this can never happen again,” he mentioned.
With Publish Wires
