PicoBlog

*Edit 5/1/23: I now know there are even more of you still out there. For Sten Molin victims who haven’t signed NDAs, if you were assaulted in New York and were 18 or over at the time, please please get a good lawyer. Comment or email me directly if you have any questions at all.

A very warm welcome to The Landing’s latest subscribers! (Except for Mr. Dick and Balls, who gets an instant block, not least for his woeful lack of originality).

On this #DenimDay, a time during Sexual Assault Awareness month meant to remind everyone it’s not what you wear that causes sexual assault but the assailant alone who bears the blame, I want to give a glacier-sized thank you to the women* who continue to reach out, speak out, sue, fight back,** and trust me with their vitally important stories.

The courage it takes to put words to their trauma and speak them to one stranger, let alone release them to the world, is not something you can truly understand until you do it.

Erica’s story is reaching thousands of people. The article hit 1,000 readers in a couple of hours, faster than any story ever on The Landing. I don’t give a flying F about visits and views—except when big numbers mean other silent, suffering victims might find inspiration, courage and company here.

Below: a handy reminder that monsters don't usually present as snarling, hideous creatures. If they did, it'd be much harder to get close to their victims:

I believe we all owe a debt of gratitude to the women who came forward. Dozens of women, some of whom were underage girls when Sten Molin assaulted and/or raped them, flooded corners of the internet last year to share their harrowing experiences with the late American Airlines first officer, who was at the controls when AA Flight 587 tragically crashed into Queens on takeoff in 2001 and took the lives of 265 people. I believe their voices are going to be the impetus for broader change in the industry.

I truly believe that.

The Landing wouldn’t exist without them. With every woman who comes forward now, another contacts her to ask, Should I speak out, too? And another, and another, until every one of them becomes a new link in an unbreakable chain. As long as they want their stories told, I’ll be here to amplify their voices best I can.

All because a group of women refused to let a glowing story about their rapist stand, and they educated the writer who got it wrong (it’s me, hi. I’m the problem—it’s me).

Most of Molin’s most outspoken victims are gone now, disappeared one by one over the past 12 months like ghosts. I hope they are finding some measure of peace and healing.

I’m told most of those who worked for the airline have “settled” with American Airlines, which, from what I understand, means signing iron-clad nondisclosure agreements. (American has never responded to my requests for comment or guidance).

These women sought justice and acknowledgement for decades. I hope it’s been good for them, taking what I understand to be not-great settlements in many cases. It’s better than a kick in the teeth, which is what they’ve gotten since they started speaking up decades ago when no one was listening anyway.

Too many men around Molin were complicit, enabling him, defending him, allowing him to turn into the most prolific predator I ever personally met.

Two things, though: American Airlines can’t disappear the stories these victims have already told. I’ve got those locked up and screenshotted for eternity. And the airline can’t get everyone, and they didn’t. There are still Sten Molin assault victims out there who owe the airline nothing. They worked at the airport or knew Sten from Greenwich, CT, maybe through his “computer tutoring business.” Or they refused to settle.

One day when my work deadlines calm down (will they ever?) I’m going to put the full story in one long narrative and pin it, so future readers can bear witness to everything that happened after I posted my initial glowing articles about my old friend.

The basics: After I wrote about Molin in September 2021 and what I admittedly once called a “dreamy” weekend blind date in tony Newport, R.I. (point of order: I never called HIM dreamy) with rolling lawns overlooking the Atlantic, the last official wedding held at Jackie Kennedy’s childhood estate, my first-ever oysters shucked by experts at an oyster bar alongside bottomless champagne with a man I was told was the youngest pilot ever hired by American Airlines, his victims came at me.

That two-part series I wrote in defense of his piloting skills and his character got tens of thousands of views. At the time, I couldn’t begin to understand how that happened. In any case, the stories made it to certain people.

They said how infuriating my articles were to them. How wrong I was about this nice guy. How much he hurt them.

One flight attendant wrote to me that every time a positive-leaning article about Molin came out for 20 years, she wrote to whichever reporter put it out there.

Which writers did you tell? I asked.

She named a list of well-known news and aviation journalists.

All of them are men. They’re the ones with the biggest platforms in aviation journalism, historically.

They all ignored Sten’s victims for two decades. Every. Single. One. Of. Them.

Shame on all of you.

After I posted Erica’s story last week, there was a notable lack of troll attacks across social media. No one flooded my posts calling me and/or Erica a slut, liar, See You Next Tuesday, bitch, whore.

That’s when I knew: MY STALKER IS GONE.

It is a relief that is hard to convey to anyone who hasn’t been cyberstalked before.

I know she’s gone because she never had any restraint and would never stop herself from attacking me and other rape victims online, sometimes generating multiple accounts every day as I blocked each one she created.

The stalker came at me starting in February of 2022, creating dozens if not hundreds of social media and email accounts as I ignored and blocked one after another, sometimes five or ten in the same morning.

I woke up to real-time cyber-assaults of slut, whore, bitch, liar, c—t. Threats of being shot in the head, sending her male pilot friends after me, destroying my career (that last one was laughable, but the rest were disconcerting).

It wears you down. It makes you feel powerless.

Ignore, block, ignore, block. I never knew when her vitriol would come. She sometimes went a couple of weeks without harassing me, but when she came back, she came armed with a barrage of attacks that would last for days. (I don’t know her and I never wrote about her outside the context of her as a stalker).

Don’t feel sorry for my abuser any more than I feel sorry for your abuser. Everyone has damage, and you never know how bad another person’s is, but this is not a free pass to become an abuser.

Every criminal, every predator, every murderer, every rapist has a family. It’s awful what they have to go through. But the victims come first. Always.

Anyway, by November of 2022, I was so worn out from trying to stop her by reporting her to various law enforcement agencies, so sick of waking up to her abuse and slander and absolute obsession, I thought, what more can I do?

And then it came to me.

Below: A gallery illustrates the sheer breadth of her attacks. This is a small sample of what I woke up to for nearly a year:

I was getting messages at the time from flight attendants who’d heard American Airlines was settling with Molin victims as the airline possibly attempted to squelch the story of their alleged complicity in his predation.

So I thought, Why not tell American about the abuse I was receiving? After all, the stalker had been regularly talking publicly about her well-known relationship with Molin when she was underage and working in a “summer intern” program at American. (To be clear: She posted all of this and more publicly multiple times and does not view herself as a victim).

I wrote to American and said it all in a nutshell, and asked what they had to say about it.

I never heard a word back.

Not from the airline, and not from the stalker. I know she’s gone for good, because she was never able to stop herself from inserting herself into every conversation I was having online, and now she is—because I believe she has a legal reason not to.

Can I be sure? Of course not.

I do think it’s a wild coincidence that as soon as I wrote to American about her ongoing harassment and threats against my life (and received no response as usual), the stalker disappeared. I have not heard from her in 2023.

Thank you all for reading. I hope you continue to bear witness to what women go through in the airline industry. There is much more to come, unfortunately. I have a backlog of stories about women at major carriers who have been assaulted, harassed and raped on the job, and then, to pile on the trauma, they’ve been ignored and/or retaliated against by their airline for reporting it (and in some cases allegedly betrayed by their own union; see the Christine Janning case).

Thank you again for reading, sharing, and for those who are in a position to, for signing up for a paid subscription. It means more than you know.

—Sara

*I always say it: we know there are victims out there who are not women, but I haven’t been in touch with any…yet.

**Not all victims are in a position (for many, many different reasons) to come forward or even speak the words out loud. Acknowledging the strength and courage of those who come forward in no way diminishes the bravery of victims who don’t feel safe—or never want to—reveal to anyone else what happened to them.

***The assault victims of Sten Molin are the first to acknowledge the terrible loss of the 265 people who died tragically in the crash of American Airlines flight 587 in 2001. I keep that immeasurable tragedy separate from this platform, as the families left behind are the ones who decide how and when to speak of their loss. The damage that man left behind is too great to calculate.

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