R unning late to catch a flight to Ireland, a frustrated and angry Eimear Ni Ghiallgairrh allegedly decided to protest delays at the security checkpoint in London Stansted Airport by angrily banging on a desk and spontaneously stripping off her clothes at the customs area in front of fellow passengers — ironically refusing to be searched — until two law enforcement officers intervened and stopped her after her skirt was already off.
The primary school teacher — who is 29 years old — not only faces fines and legal costs which total £150 and spent 12 hours in a jail cell; but also suffered a bone fracture in her arm while in the process of being arrested by the two large police officers last month. She plead guilty to disorderly behavior and criminal damage, according to this article written by John Chapman of the Daily Express.
“I feel victimised, demonised. I can’t pay my bills”, she said, according to the aforementioned article. “I’m not on benefits and I can’t work. This is police brutality. I feel abused by the police.”
She was given 28 days to pay her debts — or face being sentenced to seven days in jail.
Additional details of this story can be found in this article written by Louie Smith of the Irish Mirror, which contains some conflicting information — such as that Eimear Ni Ghiallgairrh spent 15 hours in jail instead of 12 hours.
Airports and Stripping Off Clothes
It is unclear as to how far Eimear Ni Ghiallgairrh would have gone had law enforcement not interfered with her stripping off her clothes; but it is far from the first time that such an occurrence has happened at an airport.
Just yesterday, I reported about a man who stripped off all of his clothes and became completely naked at Nashville International Airport.
Last year — after ignoring multiple commands to stop by agents of the Transportation Security Administration at the security checkpoint at Tallahassee Regional Airport — a man wearing only underwear and carrying Japanese fighting sticks was shot with a stun gun after he dashed into the main concourse while claiming that he had an airplane to catch. The man suffered wounds on his back and buttocks before he was arrested by law enforcement officers.
By the way, having nude images of you scanned while you pass through the security checkpoint does not count as being naked in the airport — although plenty of people felt violated anyway. This was due to the introduction of backscatter machines responsible for you potentially starring in your own nudie show every time you went through airport security checkpoints — but I digress.
There have been other examples of people stripping clothes off at airports in various degrees — from a man who stripped naked and requested sex from a member of the flight crew to an actress who flashed her breasts to a naked man falling through a ceiling — as Gary Leff reported in this article at View From The Wing. “Thirteen years ago there was even going to be an all-nude airline.”
Hotels are apparently not exempt from this phenomenon either: would you protest while wet and naked about having no towels?
Summary
“Now lets watch how many blog posts will be based around this and attributed to….anyone else but the amazing TBB”, George of TravelBloggerBuzz wrote in this article. Sorry, George — you are not going to get a link and attribution out of me even though I first found out about Eimear Ni Ghiallgairrh and her striptease in your article. Nope — no link at all. None.
I am not certain that I understand this penchant for stripping clothes off in airports. Perhaps part of the phenomenon can be attributed to a mental disorder of some sort. Maybe it is the desire to protest. Could it be a simple cry for attention?
If I were to protest something, I can assure you that I will remain fully clothed and find other ways to ensure that my point of view is heard, thank you very much.
Hey — I heard that sigh of relief…
Photograph by Christopher Kern, which is used under the Creative Commons 3.0 license and is found here.
