TSA Strip Searches a 97 Year Old Woman

TSA Strip Search - NO ‘TLC’ FROM THE TSA,” By, SUSAN SACIRBEY
Just when I think TSA cannot get any lower.

http://www.filmannex.com/posts/blog_show_post/no-tlc-from-the-tsa-by-susan-sacirbey/32501

 

I'm not saying this story isn't true but I'm having a hard time understanding why any daughter would let a TSA agent wheel their 97 year old mother out of her sight to do God knows what to her. The difficult thing is going to prove this happened as there were no witnesses except the TSA agents and you know they aren't going to admit they strip searched this elderly woman. I hope there is video of them wheeling her away from the main security area.

 

This is so sad on so many levels. I can sort of understand how a daughter would let the TSA wheel her mother away, not knowing what would happen to her mother. Part of the problem is that the excesses commited by TSOs in the name of security at any cost are really hard to believe unless you've been on the receiving end.

Flew out of MSP this morning and the TSO said I tested positive and got dragged into a room for an additional patdown. It was a wth moment. Why drag me into a room for additional screening when the process involved in the screening was the same? Prelude to strip search? Asked them if that is what was in store. Not a good start for a travel day.

One of the screeners recognized me from when we both worked for the same company (not TSA). When the process was finished I said "Since TSA views all passengers as terrorists, I view all TSA employees as thugs, thieves, and perverts." Funny thing was he couldn't look me in the eye as though he was ashamed of his employer.

 

Since the passenger's name is listed along with photos it seems legitimate. There have been similar incidents, such as the 95 year old who had to remove her diaper that were credible.

As for accompanying the woman to the room, many people do not know that is their option and TSA doesn't readily volunteer that information.

In the case of Rep Jason Chaffetz of Utah, his 14 year old daughter was taken to a private room alone, without his knowledge which is why he is such a staunch opponent of TSA. They were going through security and became separated and he looked frantically for her for twenty minutes before learning that she had been screened in private with no parent present. He has recounted this episode on multiple occasions so it demonstrates that this could happen to anyone. If the chair of the TSA oversight committee can be victimized, a casual traveler is easy prey for TSA.

 

This story prompted a conversation between my husband and me. We thought about his 87 year old mother and I am sure I wouldn't have let her go into a room alone with the TSA but then I know what the TSA is capable of. However, we both thought there was a possibility she would have followed the TSA orders to take off her clothes had she been alone in a room with them because she grew up in an era of doing whatever somebody in authority and wearing a uniform tells you to do. She wouldn't like it but she probably would follow their instructions. I hope somebody hangs for this!

 

I can think of a couple for sure that should, starting with Pistole. He is at the top of the A-list for (expletive deleted)!

 

Pistole deserves worse than hanging. Drawing-and-quartering in Washington, DC square would be more fitting, considering it's what they did to TRAITORS during the Revolution.

But only if it's assigned by the courts. We won't sink to their level.

 

If Pistole doesn't get his goons under control, some violent reactions at the checkpoints are inevitable. Andrea Abbott & Yukari Myamae will be angels compared to what's coming when they finally grope the wrong person's parent or grandparent. The news just keeps getting worse: They got the urostomy bag guy a second time, what they did to Kate Hanni's person, now this, yet TSA just stumbles on blindly giving us even worse examples with every turn.

Sure glad we drive these days.

(Just checking in from a motel in Chadron, NE, for whatever it's worth )

 

You might wish to do some research.

Only two people were ever drawn & quartered (the actual punishment is called "hanged, drawn & quartered" -- they were usually dead before things got too messy) in the North American colonies -- one in the 1630's & one in the 1670s, none during the Revolutionary War.

In England the punishment was reserved for men convicted of treason. Women convicted of treason were burned.

 

I agree with Monica that a 98-year old would probably take off her clothes if told to do so by someone she views as being an authority figure. However, I still take the report with a grain of salt as too many things just don't sound right. From the report, it would seem as if the woman was in the room for only 15 minutes. An old lady doesn't get herself undressed, undergo a pat down and then re-dress herself in 15 minutes. I don't believe that she stood up and banged on the door if she is wheelchair bound and didn't have access to her cane. Further, TSA probably would have done a swab which would have meant the door was opened and someone came out to run the swab.

Does LAX still use HHMD?

Sorry, there really are too many inconsistencies for me to accept this as genuine.

 

Another outrageous, predictable incident of abuse.

Yes, the TSA itself states the obvious -- that we have a right to have a person of our choice, obviously not another TSA criminal -- accompany us into their little gulag room. But 1) people don't know this, 2) TSA goons don't follow their own rules, 3) Pistole and his chiefs, who have the power to enforce their own rules, don't give a (expletive deleted), 4) people are too easily cowed by authority and go along, go along, go along, whether it's with a strange car flashing lights behind them on a road or a thug in a smurf uniform at an airport.

People have to start making noise. You need witnesses. You must have witnesses. Never allow one of these criminals to take you alone into a private room. Never. If their searches are so innocuous, then why can't they be done in public??

I won't even bother sending this around to my know-nothing mailing list. They don't care. They're all fine with all the abuse, no matter how often it happens, as long as it doesn't happen to them.

 

Hmm. Since this has happened countless times to other people, I don't see why it's hard to believe. As for time frame, first of all, when one is upset, one's sense of time often goes out the window. Regardless, 15 minutes doesn't strike me as too short an amount of time to abuse someone, clothes on or not. With two people taking the woman's clothes off, it wouldn't take long. If the woman was forced to stand for the assault, why couldn't she also stand to bang on the door, however weakly? Many people go through airports in wheelchairs because they're infirm, not because they're paralyzed or crippled. Just because she was in a wheelchair for the long trek to her gate doesn't mean she was completely incapacitated.

 

I agree that under stress, one loses track of time. However, the daughter seems to have the time line down pat.

Obviously, we will never know exactly what happened in that room. However, I cannot see the TSA agents undressing and redressing her; I also cannot see that whatever chair they had in there would be close enough to the door to allow access to it, especially for this woman who was without her cane as the agents took the cane and the chair away from her. The woman reported that she was forced to completely undress, she never stated that they undressed her. I would think that she would have reported that had it happened that way.

Maybe we'll have to agree to disagree on how this all went down.

 

Well I'll be damned.

Then again, there's a certain appeal to imagining the look on Pistole's face as a judge sentences him to a good ol'-fashioned burning at the stake. England may have reserved it for women but nobody says we have to follow suit. ...What colour you think the flames would turn?

Also, Congress letter will be up here as soon as I'm done writing it.

 

I think Pistole needs to be hung, drawn and quartered and Nappy needs to be burned at the stake. They are both traitors.

 

Agreed 100% +1,000,000!!

 

Doober's got it down.
.

 

No we need some old fashion justice, locked in stocks on the public square and let justice takes it course.

 

I agree with Doober, this story has a lot of holes.

However, as Lisa Simeone points out, and as we all know, the TSA checkpoint is a chaotic, confusing place. And that's by design. It's entirely conceivable that she and her wheelchair were pushed through a WTMD, setting off all of the alarms described. I've seen it happen, and in a passenger in a wheelchair it's just as likely the TSA clerks assumed she couldn't "assume the position", or maybe the whole body imaging scanners were off at the time, and therefore wheeled her through the WTMD en route to a groping. To an uninformed observer, and I think that's what we have to assume most of these stories are coming from, the wheelchair patdown would include a "wand" of some kind. After all, they rub all over you then use a wand to put the swab in the machine. And then it alarms.

I believe this story for 2 reasons: 1) this is exactly the type of stuff TSA does, and where there's smoke there's fire, and 2) as we all well know, people think these stories are fabrications, embellished by MSM, happen to somebody else, and likely all of the above. Now it's happened to another person who can't understand why it happened to her mother. What she didn't know on July 10, was that it is SOP for everyone's mother.

Well, people need to wake up, and TSA is doing that for us, one grope at a time.

 

I don't see how this story is any less believable than that of JeanWeber (the infamous diaper-removing incident). Or that of Jay Spooner, whose 87-year-old mother was similarly treated. Or this 94-year-old woman, Marian Peterson:

http://www.firstcoastnews.com/topst...Woman-Says-TSA-Crossed-the-Line-with-Pat-Down

Or people I've talked to personally. After all, I didn't witness their incidents either.

This forum is the last place I would expect to find people discrediting a passenger's story, a passenger whose daughter has put her name out there publicly for all to see.