An EVA Airways flight attendant yesterday said that the airline grilled her for three hours over a false rumor that she was in a pornographic video posted on the Internet and asked her to provide personal information to prove her innocence.
She was repeatedly asked to confirm whether she was the woman in the video and forced to write a statement saying that she would never do anything to “hurt the company’s reputation,” the woman said a news conference outside the Taoyuan City Government, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The incident, which occurred the same day another flight attendant was forced to wipe a passenger’s behind in a plane lavatory, underscored the airline’s culture of “always blaming its employees,” EVA Air Union member Chao Chieh-huan (趙婕歡) said.
Photo: CNA
“They are very slow at solving problems, but quick to blame victims,” she said, adding that the firm’s management style is “ruthless and inhumane.”
The flight attendant told reporters that the airline received an anonymous letter on Jan. 18 that claimed she was in a pornographic video.
Without investigating the truthfulness of the claim, the company called her to a meeting with three supervisors the next day, she said.
She was asked to prove the woman in the video, a porn actress known as SukiSukiGirl, was not her.
“After watching the video, I told them it was not me, but they asked me how I could be so sure, as if I do not know what I look like,” she said.
They peppered her with questions about her dating history and personal life, including whether she had ever made sex videos, and told her to search the Internet for more inappropriate photographs and videos of herself, she said.
“They also asked me to write a statement saying that it was not me and that I would never do anything to hurt the company’s reputation,” she said.
After being grilled for three hours, the woman said she “collapsed into tears” thinking that the officials did not believe her and would not offer any help.
“To prove my innocence, I sacrificed my privacy, but at the end of the meeting I was told that I needed to be more careful in the future,” she said.
The meeting fueled workplace rumors and caused the woman great psychological stress and she was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, Taoyuan Flight Attendants Union secretary-general Cheng Ya-ling (鄭雅菱) said.
The woman was advised by a doctor to rest for a week, but the airline has not approved her leave request for work-related illness, Cheng said, urging the company to approve the leave and apologize.
EVA Airways denied inappropriately questioning its employees, saying it only “expressed care with the intention of protecting our employees and clarifying things.”
The company cannot agree with the union’s request for it to apologize, it said, adding that it had been cautious when trying to verify the claim about the video.
Taoyuan Department of Labor official Chang Hang-che (張哲航) said the department would carry out an inspection at the company.
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