Mom outraged over son's 'traumatizing' TSA patdown
“…These power tripping TSA agents who are traumatizing children and doing whatever they feel like without any cause.”
Jennifer Williamson is “livid” after her 13-year-old son Aaron was pulled aside and patted-down for additional screening by TSA officials at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport on Sunday. The Texas boy forgot his laptop in his book bag as it went through a scanning machine, but Williamson said he posed no risk and requested officials screen him in a different way. She said her son suffers from sensory processing disorder, a condition that makes him sensitive to touch as his brain has trouble receiving information from the senses.
“I do think that as a young child, that posed no threat and that had already passed an x-ray screening, that it was completely unnecessary,” Williamson said in an interview with CBS Miami.
She filmed the incident of an agent patting down her son’s legs and backside and posted it to Facebook on Sunday, the video has since went viral and been viewed more than 6 million times.
In a statement, the TSA said an alarm was “set off” by a laptop computer.
“TSA allows for a pat-down of a teenage passenger, and in this case, all approved procedures were followed to resolve an alarm of the passenger’s laptop,” the statement reads.
Williamson sees it otherwise.
“We have been through hell this morning,” wrote Williamson in her Facebook post. “They detained Aaron for well over an hour at DFW. (And deliberately kept us from our flight… we are now on an alternate).”
Williamson said they were “treated like dogs” because she requested they attempt to screen her son in other ways, per TSA rules.
“He has SPD and I didn’t want my child given a pat down like this. Let me make something else crystal clear. He set off NO alarms. He physically did not alarm at all during screening, he passed through the detector just fine. He is still several hours later saying “I don’t know what I did. What did I do?”
“I am livid. Please, share… make this viral like the other children’s videos with TSA… I wish I had taped the entire interchange because it was horrifying. We had two DFW police officers that were called and flanking him on each side. Somehow these power tripping TSA agents who are traumatizing children and doing whatever they feel like without any cause, need to be reined in.”
Her post has since received over 100,000 shares and 67,000 comments, many in support of the Texas family, labeling the incident as everything from “unacceptable” to “disgusting.”
“This made me uncomfortable just watching it! I understand in today’s day and age unfortunately extra security measures are a good thing but this seems to be taking it a bit too far.” One woman wrote.
“Someone said doing his job..fine..but this is overzealous to the point of absurdity..” another woman stated. “No one would make their flight!”
“This is wrong on many levels. Uncomfortable to watch,” another user wrote.
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