An Australia woman who had accused a Malaysia Airlines (MAS) chief steward of sexually assaulting her on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Paris earlier this month told a television audience of her harrowing experience, including video snippets she had recorded on the flight.
26-year old Laura Bushney told Australia’s Channel 7 in an interview broadcast last night that MAS chief steward Mohd Rosli Ab Karim, 54, had molested her twice on the Paris-bound Flight MH20 on August 4, and then begged her not to report the incident.
According to Bushney, Mohd Rosli took advantage of her apprehension about flying due to MAS recent tragedies of missing Flight MH370 and downed Flight MH17.
Bushney said that on the pretense of calming her down, the chief steward sat down net to her on row 81 of the flight and started massaging her legs, lifted them up and placed them on his lap. She also said that during the incident, she could feel that he had an erection.
“He then started pushing his hand down, moving his hand down towards my belly button and I pushed his hand away,” Bushney said in the interview, which can also be viewed on Australia’s Yahoo News site.
“I thought my pushing him away that I was telling him I didn’t want that to happen but I didn’t want to say it, I was just scared.”
She claimed that she was “froen in panic” during the incident and did not call out for help or to alert anyone, but did flim the incident using her handphone.
Bushney said that Mohd Rosli approached her later during the flight to apologise, saying that he only meant to calm her down and begged her not to report the incident, as he was married and had three children.
“You’ve got a wife at home and you’re putting your hands down my pants, why would you do that? That’s rape,” she was heard saying in her recording that was aired on the Australian programme.
Bushney filed a formal complaint as soon as the plane landed in Paris and Mohd Rosli was taken in by the French police for questioning.
After the incident became known to the public, The Malay Mail reports MAS stressed that it would assist French authorities in their investigations.
“Malaysia Airlines expects and accepts nothing short of the highest standards of conduct from its crew and takes such allegations very seriously,” it had said.
