Paradise lost it
Resort did not vet staff before sex attack: suit
A US-based luxury hotel company has been duping tourists about its slack oversight of a five-star Mexican resort where a woman reported a sexual assault a year and a half ago, according to an explosive lawsuit.
That’s because California-based Auberge Resort, despite claims on its Web site and marketing materials, doesn’t actually own or operate the high-priced Esperanza Resorts in Cabo San Lucas, where the horrific attack allegedly took place, according to an amended suit in California court.
Instead, the swanky beachside hotel, which in recent years has played host to President Obama, Hillary Clinton and Jay-Z, has been using third-party firms overseas to perform the vetting, hiring and training of employees, the suit alleges.
“Auberge intentionally deceives the public, outsourcing to a series of foreign entities, so it can later try to disclaim any responsibility when a guest is harmed or injured at one of its hotels,” according to the complaint filed in state court in Marin County, Calif.
Plaintiffs lawyers declined to comment on what fresh evidence they had obtained to support the new allegations. Augberge declined to comment.
The victim, a San Franciscobased doctor and mother of two, was sexually assaulted by a hotel waiter in the same, $1,700-a-night villa where President Obama stayed during a G-20 Mexico Summit, ac- cording to a suit filed late last year.
In the November 2016 incident, which happened during a girls’ getaway with friends, the waiter entered her bedroom while she was asleep and put his fingers in her vagina, according to the complaint.
The assault occurred after the hotel failed to perform a background check on the waiter before hiring him, the suit alleges. Indeed, the attacker’s Facebook page, which was publicly viewable at the time, was replete with violent and disturbing posts and sexually explicit photos, according to the complaint.
“I love being the bad guy that everyone falls in love with, and if I admit it I have no heart, however I have perversion,” the waiter posted on Facebook in May 2015, the complaint states.
The suit, which had originally sued Auberge for negligence, has been beefed up with charges of fraud, misrepresentation and false advertising.
Auberge says in press releases and on its Web site that it “owns and operates a portfolio of exceptional hotels, ... all of which are regularly awarded with top distinctions from Travel+Leisure, Condé Nast Traveler, Andrew Harper and Forbes Travel Guide.”
“It’s clear that Auberge’s misrepresentations are meant to convey all the benefits of their resorts without exposing them to any of the liabilities,” said the victim’s lawyer, Marc Lewis of Lewis & Llewellyn. “And that simply is not right.”