Former American Airlines flight attendant Estes Carter Thompson III has just received an 18-year-and-six-month prison sentence after pleading guilty to attempted sexual exploitation of children and possession of child pornography.
On a flight from Charlotte to Boston, a 14-year-old girl was directed by Thompson to an unoccupied first-class lavatory. Investigators found that Thompson led her there and then claimed he needed to wash his hands and fix a broken toilet seat. When Thompson left, the teen entered the bathroom and noticed red stickers on the underside of the open toilet seat lid. Hidden beneath, Thompson’s iPhone was recording video, officials confirmed. The girl photographed the stickers and concealed device before exiting. She promptly reported the incident, triggering the investigation.
Thompson was then arrested in his Virginia home, where agents uncovered hundreds of AI-generated child sexual abuse images in Thompson’s iCloud account. Images of four other girls, captured on earlier flights, were also found.
The victim’s family filed a lawsuit against American Airlines, alleging the airline knew or should have known Thompson posed a danger. They claimed other crew members’ failure to seize his phone allowed potential evidence destruction. American Airlines settled with the family.
According to a press release from the Justice Department, this case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse, launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the DOJ’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children, as well as identify and rescue victims.
For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit https://www.justice.gov/psc.
