Former Miss USA weeps as she describes being 'sexually assaulted by the TSA'
A former Miss USA has blasted airport screeners for groping her after she refused to go through a naked body scanner.
Susie Castillo, now 31, complained that she was ‘violated' by a female TSA agent at a security checkpoint at Dallas airport in Texas.
Miss Castillo, who held the Miss America title in 2003 and is now an actress, wept as she recounted her traumatic ordeal in a video filmed at the airport.
Scroll down for her video testimonial
Former Miss USA Susie Castillo posted a video on YouTube that she made shortly after she was searched at the Dallas airport
Tears: Castillo says she refused the full body scanner over radiation concerns before a female agent allegedly touched her genitals four times
She said she decided to stand in a longer line to avoid going through the full body scanner because she had heard the extra radiation could be a health risk.
But after agreeing to a full body pat down, she said the screener touched her vagina four times.
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‘She actually touched my vagina,' she said, clearly distressed.
‘I am already so upset that they are making me choose to get molested – because that's what I feel like – or go through a machine that is completely unhealthy and dangerous.
The actress and model served as Miss USA in 2003 after she was Miss Massachusetts Teen USA 1998
'I travel a ton and I don't want to be radiated more than I already am.
TROUBLED TSA: Recent complaints against agents
- Philadelphia: TSA officer Thomas Gordon Jnr. allegedly distributed more than 100 images of child pornography
- Portland: Pictures emerged of Spencer Sheahan, eight, being searched by an agent on the way to Disneyland
- New Orleans: Six-year-old Anna Drexel was frisked by a TSA worker and started crying because she thought she had done something wrong
- Fort Lauderdale: Thomas Mollman, 54, complained about airport staff putting their hands down his trousers
- Tennessee: Steven Simon was upset when a search was done on his three-year-old daughter in Chattanooga
‘I am crying because I am really, really upset because as an American I have to go through this. I feel violated,' she added.
She said she was inappropriately touched when the screener patted down her legs from both the front and the back.
‘This woman touched my vagina four times,' she said. ‘She went up both legs from behind and then turned around and did it from the front. That was my experience this morning at Dallas airport.
After complaining to the authorities, she said she was given a TSA comment card to make a complaint.
‘I am hoping other people that feel violated as Americans make a complaint. Maybe then something will change in the near future. This whole thing is very troublesome to me,' she said.
An elderly airport volunteer told Miss Castillo that it was better to go through an awkward pat down than to be blown up. ‘I guess I was supposed to find comfort in that and I didn't,' she said.
'Never in my wildest dreams did I think that this would make me cry,' she added.
The ex-beauty queen's ordeal was the latest controversy over the intrusive searches put in place in the wake of terrorist scares last year.
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