Woman reveals details of alleged rape by MAS staff in TV interview
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- Woman reveals details of alleged rape by MAS staff in TV interview
An Australian woman spoke on TV today of a sexual assault she suffered on board a Malaysia Airlines flight to Paris earlier this month.
Laura Bushney, 26, from Perth told Australia's Channel 7 Sunday Night programme that she was "raped" by a senior cabin crew member during her journey on MAS flight MH20 on August 4, the UK's Daily Mail reported today.
Recollecting the events that transpired about three hours into the flight, Bushney said she had informed the crew member, Mohd Rosli Ab Karim, of her fears in taking a MAS flight, especially following the double tragedies of flight MH17 and MH370.
She then accused Rosli of trying to calm her nerves by sitting next to her and first massaging her legs, then placing her legs on his lap. She alleged that he was aroused at the time.
Bushney, who is employed as a disability support worker in the Western Australian city, added how Rosli, 54, then put his hands under her blanket and felt her up in her pants, inserting his fingers into her private part.
She claimed to have been in shock and but kept thinking later: "Why didn't I scream, why didn't I shout.
"I am a strong person because I can do that, I know I can. But when I was in the moment, I couldn't. I felt so scared and petrified," the Daily Mail quoted her as saying on the programme.
Bushney also told her interviewer that she had managed to make a recording of the incident under the blanket, as well as filming a video on her phone of an altercation she had with Rosli after the incident.
In the first recording, she is heard to be saying: "He's massaging my legs, I'm so scared I just want to get off this plane."
According to the Daily Mail, Bushney also claimed that Rosli had walked away after the first assault then returned 30 minutes later and sat next to her and once again moved her outstretched legs onto his legs.
After Rosli walked away the first time, she said she had managed to confide in one of the passengers seated closest to her, a Canadian woman, Sophie Lachance. It was Lachance who had advised Bushney to report the incident to the other crew members on board the flight and with the authorities upon landing in Paris.
Rosli was taken away for questioning by police when the flight landed in Paris and remains on remand in the French capital while the investigation continues, the Daily Mail reported.
Bushney, who is still in Paris, also told Channel 7's Sunday Night programme that Rosli had "begged me not to report the incident, while we were still in the air, as he had a wife and a child".
She is "furious", however, at the way MAS had handled her complaint saying that an official advised her not to proceed with the matter, adding that there has also been no apology forthcoming from the airline.
Malaysia Airlines had released a brief statement in response to the allegations.
"Malaysia Airlines can confirm that following allegations by a passenger travelling on flight MH20 from Kuala Lumpur to Paris on 4th August 2014 of inappropriate sexual behaviour by a member of the cabin crew, the member of staff in question has been detained for questioning by the French police.
"Malaysia Airlines expects and accepts nothing short of the highest standards of conduct from its crew and takes any such allegations very seriously." – August 24, 2014.
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