Stop Sexual Assault and Harassment in Transportation Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I strongly support the Stop Sexual Assault and Harassment in Transportation Act, which would institute reporting requirements for incidents of sexual assault and harassment in passenger transportation carriers including airlines, vessels, buses, commuter and intercity passenger railroads, and transportation network companies like Uber and Lyft.

I am pleased that this bill includes provisions that direct the Department of Transportation to collect information on the number of sexual assault and harassment incidents and to make that information publicly available, which Representative Rick Crawford and I included in our bipartisan AWARE Act. I believe that until we collect this information, the full magnitude of the problem will not be understood. We have heard some of it reported by my good friend just now from Oregon just now.

In a 2018 survey of 2,000 flight attendants, one in five said they had been harassed, witnessed a passenger being sexually assaulted, or received a report of passenger-on-passenger sexual assault. Nearly 70 percent reported experiencing sexual harassment, and almost one in five reported being sexually assaulted by passengers.

In fiscal year 2014, 38 instances of in-flight sexual assault were reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This number increased to 63 reported cases in 2017, but many instances of in-flight sexual assault remain unreported, because victims are fearful of contacting the authorities. FBI statistics indicate that as many as 75 percent of incidents go unreported.

On cruise ships, sex crimes outweigh any other major offense. A 2013 congressional report found that minors were victims in one-third of reported sexual assaults.

There was bipartisan support for a provision in the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act of 2018 to establish a sexual misconduct working group to develop best practices for addressing sexual misconduct on flights, employee training, and law enforcement notification.

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Ms. NORTON. This legislation builds upon that work, requiring passenger transportation carriers to establish formal policies, training, and reporting structures for sexual assault and harassment and adds penalties for individuals who physically or sexually assault or threaten to assault transportation personnel.

I support the passage of the Stop Sexual Assault and Harassment in Transportation Act so that every person can feel safe from violence and harassment while traveling.

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