Resorts in Jamaica are facing a ‘historic’ sexual assault problem

DETROIT – In a dark laundry room at a Jamaican Sandals resort, pinned to the floor by a hotel lifeguard, a Michigan teenage girl lay paralyzed with fear as the man bit her lip and raped her, violently robbing her virginity.

When her mother found her after the assault, trembling and holding herself in a hallway, the 17-year-old couldn’t speak. She could only point to a metal door.

Behind the door, her friend was being gangraped by three resort lifeguards.

This is the Jamaica that the U.S. State Department has repeatedly warned tourists about. This is the island paradise that the government says has a pervasive sexual assault problem, the place where two Detroit women were raped in September, and an estimated one American is raped each month.

Over the last seven years, 78 U.S. citizens have been raped in Jamaica according to State Department statistics from 2011-17. The victims include: a mentally handicapped woman in her 20s; an Indiana mother gang-raped by three Cuban soccer players in a resort bathroom stall; a 20-year-old woman raped by two men in her hotel; two Detroit mothers raped at gunpoint in their room; a Kent County teenager and her 21-year-old friend, gang-raped by lifeguards in a locked laundry room at the resort where they were staying.

Perhaps most alarming for tourists is that sexual assaults are occurring inside gated resorts – the place they are led to believe that they are most safe. For example, this year, the Beaches Ocho Rios Resort & Golf Club, where the lifeguard assaults occurred in 2015, was given the Travelers Choice Award by Tripadvisor; it’s the travel group’s highest recognition given to the top 1 percent of hotels.

According to U.S. Embassy reports, 12 Americans were raped in Jamaica last year, half of them inside resorts by hotel employees. The U.S. government suspects this number may be higher as sexual assaults are often underreported, and the embassy figures don’t include victims from other countries.

The Detroit victims knew none of this when they booked their trip to Jamaica. The two women were raped at gunpoint on Sept. 27 at the five-star Hotel Riu Reggae in Montego Bay, allegedly by a hotel employee who had worked there just three days. They are now outraged, praying for justice after the terror they encountered during what was supposed to be a fun 33rd birthday celebration.

When the women reported the rape to hotel staff, management told them that they had never heard of this type of assault happening there before. Local officials took the same position, implying that sexual assaults were rare.

But according to multiple victims interviewed by the Detroit Free Press, lawyers, lawsuits and hundreds of State Department and U.S. Embassy records, Jamaica has a sexual assault problem that it is not confronting. And the tourism industry is well aware of the problem.

The U.S. State Department has warned tourists for years about a pervasive sexual assault problem in Jamaica, where two Detroit women were raped at gunpoint in September.

Over the last seven years, 78 Americans have been raped in Jamaica – that’s roughly one U.S. citizen raped a month – though sex crimes aren’t unique to the island.

While statistics about American rape victims in other Caribbean countries are hard to come by (the U.S. State Department doesn’t have crime statistics for each country), it has issued multiple warnings about sexual violence in several Caribbean islands.

The Bahamas has been cited several times for sexual assault issues. In a January 2018 travel advisory, the State Department warned travelers to “exercise increased caution in The Bahamas due to crime,” noting that “sexual assault is common, even during daylight hours and in tourist areas.”

More specifically, the advisory noted “Jet-ski operators are known to commit sexual assaults against tourists, including minors.”

In 2014, five Americans were sexually assaulted in the Bahamas, including Rape victim Amber tells her story to the Free Press during an interview Oct. 12.

minors assaulted by jet ski operators, prompting this warning in 2015.

“The U.S. Embassy has received an increase of reports of assaults, including sexual assaults at residences, hotel rooms, casinos, outside hotels, and on cruise ships. In some sexual assault incidents, the victim had reportedly been drugged.”

Barbados and Grenada also fell under the government’s radar this year for sex crimes. In a 2018 report, the State Department wrote: “Some American tourists alleged that they were the victims of “date rape” drugs (such as rohypnol “roofies,” PCP, scopolamine, etc.), slipped into their drinks or food in furtherance of criminal activity.”

Similar complaints were cited in the Dominican Republic, where anecdotal reports provided to the U.S. Embassy “indicate perpetrators sometimes used date-rape drugs in the commission of sexual assaults,” states a 2018 State Department report.

In Aruba, where Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway disappeared while on a graduation trip in 2005, the State Department has said “rapes and sex assaults are infrequent, but do occur.”

The Holloway case remains unsolved, though the Dutch man she was last seen with is serving a 28-year-prison sentence for the murder of another woman.

Mexico also has come under intense scrutiny for

tourist-related crimes following a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation into alcohol-related blackouts at Mexico resorts. The newspaper found that more than 170 travelers got sick, injured – and in some cases died – after drinking alcohol at allinclusive resorts across Mexico. The investigation prompted the U.S. State Department last year to alert travelers to Mexico about possible tainted or counterfeit alcohol that could cause blackouts or illness.

As the Journal Sentinel investigation found, many vacationers blacked out after consuming a few drinks, regained consciousness hours later, only to learn that they had been sexually assaulted, robbed or beaten.

“It has to stop,” one mother, whose daughter was drugged in Mexico, told the Journal Sentinel. “Somebody has got to stop this.”

A Michigan mother whose daughter was gang-raped at a Jamaican Sandals resort in 2015 echoed similar sentiments – though she is skeptical that Jamaican authorities can do anything to stem sexual violence. As she noted, it has been three years since her daughter was raped, and her assailants are still free on bail.

“I don’t foresee that there will ever be justice,” the Michigan mother told the Detroit Free Press in a recent interview. “It’s not hopeful at all.”

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea stepped up its attack on U.s.-led sanctions, threatening to resume its nuclear program if they aren’t lifted.

The Foreign Ministry’s Institute for American Studies said it could revive its policy of economic construction and nuclear development if sanctions continue. The U.S. “had better stop the self-destructive act of putting pressure” on the North, the Korean Central News Agency quoted Director Kwon Jong Gun as saying.

The measures hamper South Korea from pursuing cooperation projects with North Korea, the institute said. That echoes North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s recent comments, saying that “vicious” sanctions stand in the way of promoting the country’s development and lead instead “to change and submission.”

U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and North Korean official Kim Yong Chol plan to meet next week to discuss details of a potential second summit between Kim and President Donald Trump. Pompeo and Kim will probably be accompanied by special envoy Stephen Biegun and North Korea’s Choe Son Hui, South Korea’s Hankyoreh reported.

Hours after the statement was released, satellite imagery seen by 38 North suggested that North Korea is continuing uranium mining and milling operations at one of the country’s largest declared uranium ore concentrate facilities.