Oh I assure you, it's real.

I'm the LeeAnne of the original story. I just discovered this thread, and I want to express thanks for everyone's compassion and understanding. I'm actually surprised and pleased to see that so many of you GET it - you get why we reacted the way we did. We WERE shocked, stunned, vulnerable and afraid.

When the first incident happened last year, changing planes in Atlanta on our way home from a Baltics cruise, it was just so unexpected. Mom and I have traveled all over the world (I tell people I'm people I'm paying her back for what a horrible teenager I was by taking her to all the places on her bucket list ) and this was the first time anything like this had happened to us. Mom had gone through the pat-down without problems at every leg of that trip - Phoenix to Burbank (to my house), then LAX to Stockholm, hell we'd just taken flights between St. Petersburg and Moscow (as a cruise excursion), and even THEY treated us with greater respect than our own government!

Anyway, she got the hip replaced a couple of months before that trip, so she now gets patted down at every single airport. The ATL incident caught us completely by surprise - we'd just disembarked from a long flight from Copenhagen and we were exhausted. The worst part of it was the total feeling of helplessness - we both just knew that they hold all the power, and if we gave them ANY kind of resistance, we'd be punished in some way. They were very intimidating. I'd read TSA horror stories before - there's one from several years ago about a reporter who's pregnant wife resisted having her breasts touched, and the husband ended up being thrown in jail for speaking up! That's what worried us - that if we protested at all, they'd somehow hurt us. Make us miss our plane, or fine us, or even throw us in jail. After a 13-hour flight, just wanting to get home, we felt completely and utterly vulnerable.

I wanted to do something, but what could I do? I was literally shaking in anger, wanting to go comfort her, to tell that beast to GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY MOTHER! But what would have happened if I'd done that? I'd probably have been thrown in jail...and then what about my Mom?

I think that makes me the angriest of all: that we are completely at the mercy of these low-level people with barely any training and zero understanding of how to deal with people with medical conditions - and we have no recourse. None. If we want to go on vacation, or go visit family, or just go HOME from wherever we are, we have to give up one of our most basic rights: the right to decide who TOUCHES OUR PRIVATE PARTS. Because no matter what, my mother is going to have to go through the pat-down for every single flight she goes on, for the rest of her life. That's something that seems to have been lost in a lot of the articles I've read about this, when they write about how few people have had problems: some people don't get the option - they have to go through the grope EVERY SINGLE TIME.

I'm sure they won't all be this awful. She flies back home to Phoenix from Burbank on Monday - and I can only pray they treat her with more respect. But to be honest, I'm not holding out a lot of hope.

As for speaking up - if she knew I was posting this on the internet she'd kill me. She is a proud woman, and she refuses to even talk about it now. I WILL talk about it, but I'll respect my mother's wishes by not revealing her (or my) identity. I owe her that. I know it's not as good as getting out there and openly telling our story, but it's the best I can do.