56 Year Old Claire Hirschkind, Alledged Rape Victim & Pacemaker Device in Chest Arrested by TSA for Refusing Pat Down

56 year old Claire Hirschkind, rape victim and pacemaker-like device implant airline passenger pushed to the floor, handcuffed and arrested for refusing to be patted down.   The TSA continuing their ridiculous, non-profiling ways as they treat no passengers with dignity and respect.

Early Wednesday morning, a computer glitch shut down a security checkpoint for a couple of hours at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.  The line snaked out the door as many travelers waited for more than an hour and some missed their flights.  One of the first people in line after that shutdown never made it through. She was arrested and banned from the airport.

Claire Hirschkind, 56, who says she is a rape victim and who has a pacemaker-type device implanted in her chest, says her constitutional rights were violated.  She says she never broke any laws.  But the Transportation Security Administration disagrees.

Hirschkind was hoping to spend Christmas with friends in California, but she never made it past the security checkpoint.

“I can’t go through because I have the equivalent of a pacemaker in me,” she said.

Hirschkind said because of the device in her body, she was led to a female TSA employee and three Austin police officers.  She says she was told she was going to be patted down.

“I turned to the police officer and said, ‘I have given no due cause to give up my constitutional rights.  You can wand me,’” and they said, ‘No, you have to do this,’” she said.

Hirschkind agreed to the pat down, but on one condition.

“I told them, ‘No, I’m not going to have my breasts felt,’ and she said, ‘Yes, you are,’”said Hirschkind.

When Hirschkind refused, she says that “the police actually pushed me to the floor, (and) handcuffed me.  I was crying by then.  They drug me 25 yards across the floor in front of the whole security.”

The TSA did release a statement Wednesday that said, “Our officers are trained to treat all passengers with dignity and respect. Security is not optional.” Now that’s rich. Maybe the TSA would like to ask  61 year old, bladder cancer patient  Thomas D. “Tom” Sawyerwho they humiliated by breaking his urostomy bag.

A  retired special education teacher on his way to a wedding in Orlando, Fla., said he was left humiliated, crying and covered with his own urine after an enhanced pat-down by TSA officers recently at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

“I was absolutely humiliated, I couldn’t even speak,” said Thomas D. “Tom” Sawyer, 61, of Lansing, Mich.

Sawyer is a bladder cancer survivor who now wears a urostomy bag, which collects his urine from a stoma, or opening in his stomach.  “I have to wear special clothes and in order to mount the bag I have to seal a wafer to my stomach and then attach the bag. If the seal is broken, urine can leak all over my body and clothes.”

 The TSA certainly treated this 3 year old girl with dignity and respect as she screamed, “sop touching me.” Then of course there was all the dignity in the world shown by the TSA to Cathy Bossi, a cancer survivor flight attendant forced to remove her  prosthetic breast during a TSA groping.