That is true when there is no evidence of injury to the female. But, if there is evidence of battery and a rape kit, conviction is almost certain.

The airlines apparently should have a report-of-rape procedure in place to freeze the crew at the layover and get the police to the scene.

Contrary to some sexist statements, female airline pilots aren't going away. I have a close friend who was in training management at a major carrier. He said some of the best pilots are females. I trained two many years ago when I was a GA instructor. Both were well above average.

As far as having babies and all that, most segments of industry seem to deal with that just fine.

It's worth remembering: it generally takes two to make a baby.

Anyhow in the more progressive countries there's such a thing as paternity leave (in addition to maternity leave), so the baby will "steal" "your" employee regardless of them being female. (And plenty of employers add additional leave on top of the mandatory minimums.) I gather that isn't the case in the country where AS are located though.

Ask yourself what you would have done.

You're a woman having a drink with a senior male colleague. The next thing you know, you're waking up in a bed full of vomit feeling deeply ill and confused. You're half-undressed, but you might have done that yourself. You don't necessarily know if intercourse took place (condom). You have no idea what happened. But you do have a professional responsibility to fulfill, so you force yourself to shower and dress.

Then you find out that you're not flying - another colleague has reported that you and the pilot were seen drinking and that you looked out of it, and that the pilot has admitted to boozing. You fly back as a passenger, feeling sure that this is a serious issue, and that the company will have to investigate what happened. On the journey, the pilot suggests you get your stories straight. Warning bells start to ring.

It's only now - hours after the black-out - that the bruises start to show. It begins to dawn on you that you were sexually assaulted.

So you tell the company what happened, and what you think was done to you. You're not charging the pilot with rape - perhaps because you think it's now too late to gather physical evidence - but you DO expect the company to take your complaint very seriously. You expect them to investigate whether other female crew have had problems with him. You feel that he should not be allowed to abuse other female colleagues. You feel that the company should protect you.

The company puts you on furlough while they look into it. You agree, thinking that the investigation will take a while to conduct.

Time goes by. You go back to work, expecting that something will have been done. Instead, you find that the pilot is still flying and that the whole event has been buried. You've been conned.

Right, so now what do you do?

Report the rape to the police, six months later? You'd need the support of the company to provide whatever evidence they had at the time, and you're now far from convinced you can trust them. You have reason to think they'd support the pilot over you.

Go to the press? You'd probably get sued by the pilot for defamation.

What's left?

Seems to me this is her best option. What would YOU do?

Maybe someone would like to propose how this alleged incident will be solved? How can there be a final verdict that either party will find comfortable.
IMHO there are no winners here.

What would I have done?

Allegations of rape can, and should, only be dealt with by the courts. To take any other course of action other than reporting it to the police. Firstly prevents the alleged perpetrator from defending themselves in a court of law. But it also prevents the alleged perpetrator being taken off the streets if they are found guilty!

Look. It’s not rocket science!

Delaying the allegation, merely served to prevent this lady from establishing she had been drugged. However, some may infer conveniently. It also denied the ‘defendant’ from establishing her blood alcohol level.

As far as I can tell, there is no claim that either intercourse, or assault ever took place?

This looks like a very serious allegation with very little supporting evidence.

Absolutely perfect fodder for those of the #MeToo persuasion, who find the principle of “innocent until proven guilty” a little too problematic for their cause. So they prefer other, less stringent, means of ‘prosecuting’ their case!

The insurance company may ask to see a police report, should you file a claim for the computer in question.

Just something to think about...

I'm a bit of a "stick-in-the-mud/click-and-slam" type, and I don't drink at all, so I can't speak from personal experience, but something tells me that coworkers of the opposite sex and alcohol are a dangerous combination.

Call it a hunch, I guess...

The problem is you can just as easily say the same thing from the opposite side! Imagine you are the Captain involved in this, you started to have a few drinks with your FO and things got a bit out of control and the next thing you remember you wake up with a splitting hangover lying in bed with your FO who has vomited everywhere. In shock you get up and go to the bathroom to clean yourself up trying to remember is you had intercourse with this woman.

Another airline employee reports that you have both been drinking heavily and you are removed from duty and paced home, during the flight you rather awkwardly raise the nights events with your FO and suggest that you should try and figure out what happened so your stories match,,,,,,,, she seems to be acting weirdly. You get a bollocking from you manager and told to go home and to never do that again, you are returned to normal duties, thankgod they didn’t breath test me you think. Two weeks later you are contacted to be told the FO has said that she would never drink to excess like that and has accused you of not only drugging her but also raping her even though she has no memory of the night, this doesn’t seem right, you don’t even know what a date rape drug is and you have never forced anyone to do anything sexual in your life before. The company says that you can keep flying as there is no evidence of wrong doing at this point, you hope it all blows over as how would you explain this to you wife? Months later your world falls apart when you are named in a lawsuit against the airline and it is now nationally reported front page news about this nightstop! You worry that your marriage and career could be over, you are confused and worried..... what should you do?

I don't know, Ollie, I'm probably a little old-fashioned (despite being relatively young), but I believe there are things a Captain (as opposed to just an employee with four stripes sitting in the left seat) just shouldn't do. Part of my job is to keep my crew safe and legal (including, to the extent possible, on overnights). If other crewmembers want to get liquored up, that's their business, but if "things got out of control" with MY PARTICIPATION, to me that's a reflection on my leadership abilities (or lack thereof).

I realize I'm probably in the minority on this, but it is what it is.

^^^ ai can see what you are saying and somewhat agree but I have been in the situation myself where I have had to wake a Captain up who is on the Bathroom floor of his hotel room drunk after an out of control nightstop where he disappeared from the reastaurant we were at. He had to call in ‘sick’ for our duty and to this day can’t remember what happened or where he went. So it does happen.

What would I have done? Called the police immediately, because the only way that situation would have come about would have been through poisoning.

I'm sorry but do adult people really get 'blackout' drunk sufficiently regularly that they have to ask themselves in the morning 'was I drugged or was it just me?'

Quite how much do you have to drink to forget the events? I've put away two bottles of wine on more than one occasion and still remembered clambering laboriously into bed taking care to leave one foot touching the floor to ward off the dreaded 'bed spins'...

@Ollie

Your point is fair: the point I was making is that the woman's actions are entirely consistent with her perception of the situation. She appears to have behaved perfectly rationally.

The New York Times reported:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/t...ilot-rape.html

The male pilot may be a) guilty as charged, b) guilty 'only' of a drunken extramarital shag, or c) entirely innocent. Whichever it is, I believe he has a valid case against Alaska Airlines for not investigating the situation properly and compiling evidence to exonerate him. (Hotel staff, notoriously ephemeral, would still have been around to question. Colleagues would have fresh memories.) They had over six months, after all - plenty of time. Suspicious minds might think they were leaving it as long as possible to let the trail go cold and the female pilot go off to another company. They should have strongly suggested that she report the rape to the police and secure all evidence.

The parties in question are shown here, not that it's relevant: Alaska Airlines pilot accused of rape grounded as shocking details emerge, outcry grows | Fox News. My immediate reaction, I confess, was to feel sceptical that she would 'come onto him pretty hard', although people's tastes are individual and skygods are of course irresistible.

@Lascaille: Do you know much about date-rape drugs? They leave the victim confused and disorientated, especially on waking. The victim is likely to have very little capacity to think straight at all, never mind contact the police. (These drugs can kill.) There are memory blanks - you may not remember who you were with or what you were doing. It's not a state that most humans have ever been in, so there's little point of reference - you're struggling to make sense of an unfamiliar sense of illness.

Two bottles of wine don't register on the scale.

Yes, that's exactly my point. That's exactly why I would call the police, because the situation would be completely foreign and one I would never anticipate reaching through alcohol alone.

My point was exactly that - do people regularly drink such huge quantities that they would find themselves in that situation in the morning and really think 'wow, must have overdone it again?' Because as you've rightly said, 2 bottles of wine doesn't even come close...

as someone just tried to tell you.... i'll try again

your logical reasoning skills are severly impaired after waking up because the drugs are STILL having an effect.

I just trudged home and went back too sleep for another 12 hrs, am still non the wiser..

AFAIK, date-rape drugs are similar to the drugs administered to endoscopy patients.
The drug induces 'compliance' with instructions - even though the normal (undrugged) reaction would be to fight the (unpleasant) activity, then, after the patient has slept, they awake with all memory of the period erased - there is no possibility of recalling events - none at all.
It isn't 'just a dream', there is just a totally blank period (and no sense of 'missing').

I don’t disagree.

But in law, if you can’t prove that there was rape. Then the defendant is not guilty of the allegation. They should be free to continue with their lives. It’s really very simple.

If you don’t even bother taking recourse in law, then frankly, any allegation is nothing more than an untested grievance. It would be perfectly reasonable to ask, why have you not taken this to the police?

As I have said. This isn’t rocket science!

Is there anyone that can disagree?

“Law and freedom must be indivisible partners. For without law, there can be no freedom, only chaos and disorder; and without freedom, law is but a cynical veneer for injustice and oppression.”

The law, is fundamental to society as we know it. To seek to subvert it, damages our freedom, and the quality of life itself.

#MeToo and #Time’sUp (etc) seem to wish to bypass the inconvenience of the law?

Do tell me how I’m wrong?

One on one, I would agree. But, back in the mid-1960s when all the F/As were female and all the pilots were male, we had some grand parties on long layovers. Nothing bad happened. There were the occasional romantic encounters, but by mutual consent.

Another aspect of the endoscope drugs is the calming nature of their effect, conveying that 'all is well', so anyone recovering from an attack is likely to view the situation as 'nothing to be concerned about'.
Mental reaction is not what would be expected without the the drug effect.

Any thought of 'outrage' just would not occur.

Technically, you have a point - a person can't be punished for a crime unless the crime can be proved beyond reasonable doubt.

Rape, however, is a unique crime. By its nature, rape is very hard to prove to the standards of other crimes. Even physical evidence such as semen, bruising and injuries are not conclusive proof, especially if both parties are known to each other. The specific nature of the crime - which is violent and ego-destructive - often leads to victims taking time to decide to contact the police, further weakening their case. (Date-rape drugs, by the way, don't always hang around in the system long enough to be detected. Some are gone in a few hours.) Rape is a uniquely traumatic crime, and expecting victims to respond as if they've come downstairs to discover a burglary is unreasonable.

One of the cunning things about rape / sexual assault is that victims remain in isolation, unaware of each other and unable to bolster each other's account. A rape trial isn't usually a class action. #MeToo was a platform that allowed many victims to speak up, so that the MO of individual men could be discerned. A lot of men had their careers trashed because their employers knew that if just one accuser went to court, the accused would lose...because for the first time there would be lots of corroborating witnesses. The employers chose to avoid crippling legal bills and bad publicity in pursuit of a guaranteed loss. Perhaps a few men went down unfairly on the basis of a single complaint. But ask yourself how many men avoided a criminal conviction by heading quickly for the door?

The male pilot in the Alaskan case is indeed currently free to live his life, and will remain free to live his life after the trial. The case is being brought against Alaskan Airways, not him. Whether he's employable depends on what emerges about him during the trial. If he's pure as the driven snow, his reputation will survive. Won't it?

Actually I believe in letting "the facts talk". My response is to those who have declared HER "guilty" of attempting to ruin a male colleagues career and deciding he must be innocent because she didn't go to the police straight away.

These issues are always complex although if there was a rape, then justice must be meted out without villifying the victim for reporting it.

You know what, I just had a thought. This really is the argument you need to put a stop to women being pilots. Just look at the trouble they cause, all because they want to do a man's job.

Your points are well made. We need to "let the facts talk" for sake of all involved.

I await that.

Looks like the FO's tearful interview was the lead story on Friday's Good Morning America, video has been added to the link posted earlier:

Alaska Airlines pilot accuses co-pilot of rape in lawsuit, calls it a 'not-dealt-with issue in our industry' - ABC News

The actual lawsuit as filed is here:

https://www.documentcloud.org/docume...-Airlines.html

The suit appears long on accusations and short on evidence to me.

I've been told in other cases that the civil suit is sometimes filed to get things like internal HR documents, emails and investigation results into the court system and potentially into the public domain.

Since this discovery phase can be costly and possibly promote negative media coverage for the defendant, particularly in the #MeToo era, there is pressure to reach a settlement before the case goes to trial.

According to the court document linked above, the captain said 'We're f****d, we're f****d.' Obviously the FO was thinking 'What do you mean we, Kemosabe?'

I'm guessing that the airline will settle for several million dollars rather than risk a media circus trial in a progressive Seattle courtroom.

A couple of details in the lawsuit that catch my eye. It is acknowledged that the captain denied any sexual contact. Also, the suit mentions that the FO took her birth control pill the next morning. Are these details mentioned to correlate with previous testimony in the company's investigation which will be uncovered by a discovery subpoena?

In complete agreement.
World wide there appears a whole lot of accusations are leveled in the media, certainly not through the legal process that result in untold damage to the accused without even a modicum of process involved.

What is scary is that the damage is done BEFORE a complaint is filed, evidence and defence heard and a decision made.

The rule of law is based on the presumption of innocence. Slowly but surely this is being eroded, the presumption of innocence and due process thrown out and replaced with a modern version of lynch mobs and witch drownings on social media.

Au contraire, it is just as important that the accused is not vilified either. There is supposed to be due process.

I find the absence of a complaint in a timely manner to be a worrisome trend.

Have no opinion on the MSP incident but certainly in the U.K. the authorities have not starred recently, e.g:

Redditch forklift truck driver took own life after fake rape claim | Daily Mail Online

.. And I have absolutely no idea what the solution is.

What a very strange way to drug rape a co-worker???? Knowing that, however the alleged victim reacts, there will have to be an investigation, and serious consequences.

Meanwhile, others here suggest rape is too ‘tricky’. Too unique to obey the principle of innocent until proven guilty. Too difficult to satisfy the standard of proof required. So the highly inconvenient rule of law should be sidestepped, to drag the names of alleged assailants through the mud. It doesn’t matter if a ‘few’ innocent men’s lives are ruined. Only those who can somehow ‘prove’ they are pure as the driven snow, should be excused the opprobrium of being born male!

Talk about shifting the burden of proof!

What a f@cked up world!

Meanwhile...Flight attendant orgy: Airline hits back over rumours
:rolleyes:

I find this case a bit strange.

First of all why didn't the company advise her to contact the police once she reported the alleged rape to them. Even if after the company finishes their investigation and determines that the guy did in fact rape her, what's the most they can do, fire him? Is that enough punishment for a rapist? I think not! If someone ever comes to me with such reports my fist instinct would be to get the police involved. What else can I do?

Second of all why is she suing the company and not the alleged rapist? Are companies responsible for the behaviour of their employees outside duty hours? Or is it because the company has deeper pockets than the alleged rapist?

Why did they stand her down?
And do nothing?
Did they?

You mean. having your less-than-white past dragged out into public, the way women have been routinely treated in rape trials since rape trials began?

Ah, now I see your point.

You are suggesting that what went on in the past was deeply wrong. In any event, the law now prevents alleged victims, (who uniquely have the right to retain their anonymity) from having to discuss anything at all not directly related to the alleged offence? Even if it may assist the defence.

But such obnoxious bias should now be considered as perfectly acceptable, as long as it’s now only men having to prove their innocence? So it’s not actually the principle per se? It just depends how it suits your agenda?? (Or more accurately, how it suits your gender!)

That’s a fair summation, isn’t it?

Of course, this is why so many rape trials have recently collapsed in the UK, and many more are under review as potentially being unsafe. This is because relevant information was not disclosed to the defence by the prosecution/police. It was just inconvenient, as we want to lock up as many of these b@st@rd men as possible. We don’t need to bother ourselves with the inconvenience of due process. No woman would lie, eh!

However this non disclosure has revealed that some women do indeed lie (with impunity!) about rape. In much the same way that some men are rapists.

Personally. I want to see as many rapists as possible taken off the streets. Yet I don’t wish to see a single innocent person, suffering life changing consequences for a crime they did not commit. Much less for a supposed ‘crime’ for which they were never ever charged!

But as long as the lady involved here can enjoy a life changing bung, without the need to bother the courts. As long as that ‘b@st@rd’ man gets his commuppance’. (Because he must be guilty! Right?)

Then all is well in the world? Eh?

What a screwed up world!

I can't believe that it is not company policy to relay any accusation of serious sexual assault to the police asap. No matter how much time has elapsed since the incident there is always an opportunity to gather evidence whether that is forensic samples or interviewing witnesses. Allegations of rape are very difficult to investigate and even more difficult to prove. It is a job for investigative professionals ie cops NOT hr professionals. The max sentence for a conviction like that is life in prison.

@4468 I'm sorry this has made you so agitated. I'm merely listing facts.

If we get down to numbers:

Roughly 2% of rape accusations in the UK are 'false'. Of those, less than half make it to be formal accusations, and 1% result in convictions which are later overturned. That's 1% of 2%, ie 1 person per 10,000 accusations.

It's estimated half a million adults are sexually assaulted every year in the UK (99K are full rapes). Only 15% are reported to the police, ie 75,000. Of those, less than 6% result in convictions, ie 4,500 convictions per 500,000 actual assaults. The stats in the previous paragraph suggest roughly half a person per year may be wrongly convicted - one man every two years.

To sum up - each year:

425,000 assaults take place but are not reported.
420,500 perps go unpunished.
0.5 people are convicted unjustly.

Do you really feel the system is biased against the 0.5?

The stats can be argued against - some wrongful convictions may never be discovered, so the 0.5 is presumably lower than the actual number of falsely imprisoned men. How many of the 4,500 do you think are victims of lies? How high a false-accusation rate is acceptable to you? Is any false-accusation rate acceptable to you?

Note: the vast majority of men who sexually assault other humans have a 90% chance of getting away with it, even in a country like the UK.

I think there is a wave of male panic that the notion of 'consent' is being brought into sharp focus, and that older men in particular will have to learn new behaviours. All change is painful.

I wonder who hid FO's underwear in her purse

"Hid"?

Placed might be better....

You can always use numbers to prove any point you want.

Using this % above you could say that 94.3% of rape allegations were false yet the figures come from rape crisis UK who were trying to use the number to emphasise that in their opinion to many rapists were getting off scot free.

I suspect in this case only one person knows what really happened, two at the most.

No. And not just on rape, on anything. One innocent life ruined is too many.

PaxBritannica
Ha ha!

Not agitated at all. Too busy sunbathing!:)

Truth is, you have no interest whatsoever in ‘facts’! Even your list of made up statistics is as heavily based in agenda as ‘fact’, and doesn’t even acknowledge recent trial collapses! Every single ‘not guilty’ verdict you mention, is a case in which the evidence has failed to satisfy the standard of proof (beyond reasonable doubt) that a jury of every day men AND women are required to satisfy, before finding guilt. Those found not guilty, are precisely that. NOT GUILTY. They are not simply rapists who dodged their guilt. Though I accept some may be!!

So because you find you don’t much like the fundamentals of the law, and the changes that have been introduced STILL can’t persuade a jury of every day men AND women to convict. Cases such as the one under consideration become the default MO!

Where the inconvenience of establishing the facts is sidestepped. In it’s stead, a scurrilous means of besmirching alleged assailants is undertaken. No proof required, or desired! Go #MeToo/#Time’sUp! Launch the media campaign! Name and shame!

So here we are very likely to see a multi million dollar bung to the complainant. She will forever carry the association with her unproven allegation. But hey perhaps immediate retirement to the Caribbean (or elsewhere) might ease her trauma?

But what of the gentleman involved. Who I imagine is likely never to be charged. Never given the opportunity of clearing his name? Two outcomes are possible. Either an innocent man will have his life ruined by a false (or mistaken?) allegation. Or a rapist with a tendency to drug women will continue to walk the streets. I would suggest both of those outcomes are undesirable. But it’s precisely the world your argument, and that of Hollywood activists are taking us.

So please don’t pretend you have any interest whatsoever in facts. (Or even in protecting women!) You and others like you, do not. Admit you find ‘facts’ can be inconvenient. Which is why you and others are delighted to sidestep the examination of factual evidence lest the ‘facts’ fail to deliver the ‘right’ result!

As a gentleman, I shall of course allow you the final word. It’s been such a shame to interrupt your grandstanding.

This isn't just about rape (which is a sickening crime), it's more to do with the ongoing inequality in our profession. I fly with a girl who previously got a job with an AOC set-up through personal recommendation from a company pilot. Subsequently there was a 'price' which she refused to pay, leading to some rather despicable behaviour from people within the company. She then spent some time extricating herself from the organisation who were insistent on a more standard 'arrangement' of £##K for her TR training. With a bit of BALPA assistance, the fee was dropped and they let her go, chivalrously. :ugh:

My point? We can shove our heads in the sand, convincing ourselves that we have an absolutely level playing field and that all pilot's have the highest integrity. The truth is something significantly different. For sure, people of both genders (or should I now say 'all sexualities'?) can and do cause mischief but, in my mere 30 years of aviating experience, I fancy that the girls tend to be wronged far more often than the boys. :rolleyes: