Australian model Adau Mornyang has avoided a prison sentence in the US for allegedly assaulting a flight attendant while drunk on a flight from Melbourne to Los Angeles.
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The 24-year-old was facing up to 21 years in jail over the assault but was instead sentenced to 100 hours of community service and three years of probation.
“I am a human being who made a terrible mistake,” Mornyang told the judge as she wept in court.
The former Miss World Australia finalist revealed she is now receiving treatment for anxiety and depression brought on by childhood trauma, instead of self-medicating as she did at the time of the flight.
“I’ve learned to deal with my emotions and trauma in a proper way,” Mornyang said as she stood crying with her arm around her lawyer.
She stated that the incident has “pushed me to have proper medical treatment.”
“I’ll do what it takes to prove to the world that I am not that woman,” Mornyang said, and asked the court for “forgiveness, kindness and mercy.”
The judge cited what he described as her “tragic history” of sexual and physical abuse and alcoholism as the motivation behind his ruling.
“It’s quite sad and tragic,” Judge Carney said.
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Back in March, a jury found Mornyang guilty of a felony charge of interference with a flight crew member and a misdemeanour count of assault.
The court heard the model ordered “several glasses of wine” during her flight on January 21.
When flight staff cut her off from ordering more alcohol, she reportedly yelled obscenities and racial slurs, and struck a flight attendant.
She was then handcuffed by an air marshal, refused to vacate a toilet, and had to be held at the rear of the plane.
The flight attendant said he was so shocked after he was assaulted he “could not physically do anything except sit for nearly half an hour to process what had happened to him”.
According to an audio recording obtained by A Current Affair, Mornyang made the following remarks in what was a 20-minute ordeal for other passengers and the crew.
“Don’t you ever dare come up to me and tell me, ‘oh, you are disturbing everybody else’,” she said at one point.
“How am I disturbing everybody else?
“Right now I am disturbing everyone else! Because of fucking you, you fucking white trash bitch!”
Prosecutors recommended she serve a month behind bars.
Probation officers recommended three years of probation and a $US2000 ($A2843) fine.
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