Posted on April 28, 2017

Michigan Woman Files Suit Against Delta After Passenger Convicted For Indecent Exposure, Assault

CBS Detroit, April 26, 2017

Delta Airlines Planes

Credit Image: © Joshua Roberts/Reuters via ZUMA Press

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A Garden City woman has filed a civil suit against Delta Airlines after she says she was sexually assaulted on a flight from Myrtle Beach.

And she says the flight attendants did nothing to stop the man next to her from masturbating or assaulting her until they landed.

The passenger on that flight, Christopher Finkley, 41, was convicted last month of assault and indecent exposure.

The convictions stem from two separate incidents on the Delta flight; Finkley exposing himself to the flight attendants and the second is for taking another seat on the plane and assaulting a female passenger seated in coach.

The victim’s attorney, Jordan Acker, says it happened on a flight from Florida to Detroit on July 27, 2016, when Finkley unapologetically exposed himself on the flight while masturbating in his seat and then was allowed to move freely around the cabin. He eventually settled in next to the victim, a waitress and mother of a 14-year-old girl, and reached his hands under her shorts.

“While he was doing this, the defendant told her that he ‘liked white women’ and asked ‘where’s your man?’” the complaint says. The victim says she told the man to stop and said her kids were sitting behind her. He eventually left, the complaint says, and went back to masturbating in his own seat with his penis exposed.

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The victim was crying and distraught when the plane landed, the complaint says, especially since she had switched seats with her 14-year-old daughter and feared she could have been the victim. “She now suffers from anxiety while flying,” the complaint says.