A legal expert who was sent vile messages by strangers on her Virgin Atlantic seat screen said she had been bombarded with abusive messages since coming forward.
Jessica Van Meir said she was sent a message to her personal Facebook account calling her a “whore” and telling her to take her own life.
Jessica had previously shared how she was horrified when pervy passengers targeted her using the plane’s chat system, which allows travellers to communicate on-board.
The Cambridge University graduate was called “tidy babe” by one passenger sat nine rows away, while another wrote “Welcome to Hell”.
A traveller branding himself “bid d**k swinger” winked in response to the sick messages.
But Jessica, originally from Atlanta, Georgia, shut them down by replying: “I work for a law firm that specialises in online sexual harassment. Enjoy being reported to Virgin.”
She told Victoria Derbyshire on BBC Today about the abuse she had received since coming forward.
“Unfortunately, I think anytime that a woman speaks out about being sexually harassed online she will get bombarded with abusive messages as well,” she said.
“And I received a particularly concerning one on my personal Facebook from a guy who called me a whore. He told me to go slit my wrists and then you know suck his private parts.
“And you know it’s really upsetting that there are some men who are so enraged by a woman speaking about her own experiences that they would go to the measure of looking me up and telling me to kill myself.”
The legal expert, who works for legal firm McAllister Olivarius in Maidenhead, Berks, tweeted about the ordeal on Twitter.
She shared images of the messages, writing: “I was on a Virgin Atlantic flight, and I unexpectedly received these sexually harassing messages on my screen.
“I was in 55C. The flight attendants were helpful and dealt with it swiftly. Have any other women had this happen to them?”
She added: “Virgin Atlantic, you should probably take measures to prevent this from happening by flagging specific language and putting in place a reporting function on the chat to report abusive users.”
The “seat-to-seat” system gives passengers an opportunity to message each other on-board while playing games on the screens in front of them.
It can also be used to order drinks, a snack or an in-flight meal.
But Virgin has now said it will review the system to avoid passengers sending unsolicited messages.
A spokesperson said: “We were extremely concerned to hear of the incident reported on-board one of our flights and are investigating as a matter of urgency.
“We want all of our customers to have the best possible experience when they fly with us and have zero tolerance for any disruptive or inappropriate behaviour.
“We’re grateful to our cabin crew who supported our customer following this incident and would like to apologise for the distress caused.
“We are now reviewing our entertainment systems to ensure sexual explicit messaging does not happen again.”
This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permission
