A former American Airlines flight attendant who used his cellphone to secretly record girls as they used the lavatory on flights was sentenced on Wednesday to 18 and a half years in prison, federal prosecutors said.
From January 2023 to September 2023, the flight attendant, Estes Carter Thompson III, of Charlotte, N.C., secretly filmed girls using the restroom on American Airlines flights, the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Massachusetts said in a sentencing memo. He would direct them to specific lavatories where he had set up “a secret recording studio,” using his cellphone, the memo said.
“He robbed five young girls of their innocence and belief in the goodness of the world and the people they would encounter in it, instead leaving them with fear, mistrust, insecurity and sadness,” Leah B. Foley, the U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, wrote in the sentencing memo.
Federal prosecutors had recommended a sentence of 20 years in prison, with five years of supervised release. Elianna J. Nuzum, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Scott Lauer, a lawyer for Mr. Thompson, had recommended a sentence of 15 years in prison followed by five years of supervised release, citing his substance abuse, mental health issues and lack of a criminal history. Mr. Lauer declined to comment on Wednesday night.
Mr. Thompson was arrested in January 2024 and pleaded guilty in March 2025 to one count of attempted sexual exploitation of children and one count of possession of child pornography depicting a prepubescent minor, federal prosecutors said.
In handing down the sentence on Wednesday, Judge Julia E. Kobick called Mr. Thompson’s behavior “appalling” and said the victims’ “innocence has been lost” because of his actions, The Associated Press reported.
Judge Kobick recommended that Mr. Thompson serve his sentence at a federal prison in Butner, N.C., and that he participate in substance abuse and sex offender treatment programs. Mr. Thompson was also sentenced to five years supervised release after he completes his prison sentence.
According to The A.P., Mr. Thompson apologized in court on Wednesday and said his actions were “selfish, perverse and wrong.”
According to prosecutors’ sentencing memo, Mr. Thompson was working as a flight attendant on an American Airlines flight to Boston from Charlotte on Sept. 2, 2023, when he tried to record a 14-year-old girl using the bathroom during the flight. The girl was waiting for a bathroom in the main cabin when Mr. Thompson told her she could use the first-class bathroom and escorted her to the front of the plane. He informed her that the toilet seat in the bathroom was broken.
The girl noticed red stickers on the underside of the toilet seat lid that read “INOPERATIVE CATERING EQUIPMENT” with “SEAT BROKEN” handwritten on one of the stickers. It wasn’t until after she used the toilet and went to flush that she noticed an iPhone with its flashlight on underneath the stickers, according to court documents.
The girl took a picture of the phone and told her parents, who told the crew. Her father confronted Mr. Thompson, who took his phone into a bathroom and restored the device to factory settings, wiping it clean, the document said.
In searching Mr. Thompson’s iCloud account, investigators found evidence of four additional episodes in which Mr. Thompson recorded a minor using the lavatory on American Airlines flights in 2023, the document said. They also found 50 images of a sixth child who flew as an unaccompanied minor on a flight in July 2023. Those included pictures of the child sleeping and of her clothed buttocks, as well as hundreds of images depicting child sexual abuse that had been generated by artificial intelligence.
Investigators also found 11 “INOPERATIVE CATERING EQUIPMENT” stickers in Mr. Thompson’s suitcase, along with numerous copies of American Airlines forms pertaining to unaccompanied minors, the documents said.
Mr. Thompson was immediately removed from service after the September flight, American Airlines said after his arrest.
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