Flight attendant says Victoria Osteen eyed cockpit
Published 8:47 am Wednesday, August 13, 2008
HOUSTON (AP) — A flight attendant suing Victoria Osteen said the wife of megachurch evangelist Joel Osteen was eyeing the cockpit after throwing her against a bathroom door before a 2005 flight.
“I looked in her eyes and realized she was looking at the cockpit. I positioned myself in front of the cockpit,” Continental Airlines flight attendant Sharon Brown told jurors on Tuesday.
“I still was trying to understand what was going on because it happened so quick. My main concern was I wasn’t going to let this lady in the cockpit,” she said.
Brown’s comments came as she spent most of Tuesday being questioned by Victoria Osteen’s attorney. She was scheduled to resume testifying on Wednesday in her civil lawsuit against Victoria Osteen.
Brown told jurors she remained calm and courteous as she tried to assure Victoria Osteen that a spill on the armrest of her first-class seat would be cleaned up before the start of the flight from Houston to Vail, Colo.
But Victoria Osteen, co-pastor of Houston’s popular Lakewood Church, began yelling at the flight attendant and then threw her against a bathroom door and elbowed her in the left breast, Brown testified.
Victoria Osteen has previously testified she was “dumbfounded” and “shook up” after Brown accused her of assaulting her. On Tuesday, her attorney aggressively questioned Brown, trying to trying to cast doubt that an assault ever took place.
“Can you look into my eyes and tell me where I am going to go?” Rusty Hardin said, referencing Brown’s earlier statement about looking into Victoria Osteen’s eyes. People in the courtroom laughed.
Hardin’s questioning got intense enough that state District Judge Patricia Hancock several times warned both not to speak over each other.
Hardin also tried to cast doubt that Brown suffered any physical or mental injuries from the alleged attack, as she has claimed in her lawsuit. Brown admitted that doctors found no physical injuries on her.
Brown also claimed that after the attack, she could not work for five days.
“How is it you were totally incapacitated for those five days?” Hardin said.
“I was stressed, had a lot of anxiety,” she responded.
Both Victoria Osteen and Joel Osteen, who was on the same flight, testified last week that no attack took place.
The couple are co-pastors of Houston’s Lakewood Church, which draws about 42,000 people each week for services. Joel Osteen’s weekly television address is broadcast in the U.S. and internationally and his books are sold around the globe.
Brown wants an apology and punitive damages amounting to 10 percent of Victoria Osteen’s net worth as part of her lawsuit.
The Osteens testified the only reason they paid a $3,000 fine the Federal Aviation Administration levied against Victoria Osteen for interfering with a crew member was to put the incident behind them.
During Brown’s testimony, Hardin questioned how Brown and another flight attendant who testified earlier in the trial were the only ones who were aware of the alleged attack.
“Can you explain how passengers or the captain were not aware of that?” Hardin asked.
“No sir I cannot,” Brown said.
In a videotaped 2007 deposition shown to jurors, Brown admitted to calling Joel Osteen the devil and Lakewood Church a cult. Under questioning Tuesday, she said she didn’t know about the church and hadn’t been to it, but that she had seen Joel Osteen on television.