Feds: Man Fondled Sleeping Woman on International Flight

A 19-year-old Norwegian passenger on an international flight from Detroit to Amsterdam awoke to a two-year nightmare, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court Wednesday.

To her horror, the passenger seated next to her had slipped his hand inside her underpants, was fondling her and had placed her hand on his erect penis, according to a complaint charging 32-year-old Janarol Dickens with abusive sexual contact, the Detroit Free Press reports.

The alleged incident occurred aboard a Delta Airlines flight more than two years ago.

According to an affidavit filed by the FBI agent investigating the case, the woman rebuffed Dickens when he asked her to watch a movie, then fell asleep. After she awoke and confronted Dickens, she was assigned to a new seat for the duration of the flight.

Dickens told Dutch Royal Military Police, who interviewed him after the plane had arrived at its destination, that the story was fabricated. The complaint doesn’t say what happened from that point until nearly two years later, when Dickens returned to the United States on a flight that landed in Miami.

FBI agents were waiting at the airport to interview him. He not only denied sexual contact with the passenger, but also that he’d ever been questioned about any crime by law enforcement.

Dickens eventually admitted Dutch police had detained him after the 2012 flight and said he had put his hand in the woman’s pants, but not inside her underwear, for about 10 seconds, and that he didn’t have her permission to do so.

Whether the contact occurred inside or outside of the woman’s underwear doesn’t matter, the FBI said in its affidavit. Dickens didn’t have the woman’s permission, and that’s a crime.

And, according to media reports, it’s not uncommon.

In February, NBC News, Channel 41, in Washington reported a surge in sexual assaults aboard flights. The FBI had investigated at least four assaults on aircraft en route to Reagan or Dulles International Airports.

Two of those cases resulted in charges by the FBI, but the reporters’ investigation revealed no federal agency is keeping statistics on how frequently sexual assaults occur on aircraft, and airlines declined to discuss what their data show.

Delta Airlines, which was involved in one of the cases in the NBC report, issued a statement saying it “cannot share details about security measures so we can make sure the integrity of said measures isn’t compromised.”

In one of the cases where charges were filed, federal prosecutors alleged a passenger molested a 15-year-old girl, who pretended to be sleeping as her attacker put his hands up her shorts and fondled her buttocks and genitals. The defendant in that case, Carlos Vasquez, pleaded guilty to a federal charge and was fined $3,000 and sentenced to three years probation.

In an April 2013 incident, the FBI investigated passenger for fondling the breast of a woman seated next to him on a flight from Miami bound for Reagan National Airport. She, too, pretended to sleep. A witness saw the attack and a federal marshal aboard the flight took Saurabh Agarwal into custody before the aircraft landed. Agarwal pleaded guilty and was fined $4,000 and placed on probation, the NBC report said.

FBI Supervisory Special Agent Drew Ptasienski told NBC News that it’s common for victims to feign sleep during attacks because they are “so shocked they’re being assaulted, it takes them awhile to process it.”

The other two alleged assaults referenced by the television station weren’t prosecuted because there wasn’t enough evidence to support charges. Such attacks are “a crime of opportunity,” he said, often occurring during red-eye flights when passengers are sleeping and the crew doesn’t move about the aircraft as much.

In the case filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Detroit, U.S. courts have jurisdiction because the flight last departed the Detroit Metropolitan Airport, The complaint did not say where Dickens currently resides. He is an American citizen, but does not live in Michigan, according to the report.

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