HOTELS 'OPEN DOORS' TO HELL
Give ‘rapists’ keys to women’s rooms
Horrifying cases of women being raped in their rooms at top hotel chains are taking place because staff are allegedly handing over keys to sexual predators unchecked, The Post can reveal.
Two separate cases in Texas allege men broke into women’s rooms after lying to staff to obtain keycards.
In an even more shocking incident, one man was allegedly able to convince police and hotel staff to deliver his victim to his own room at a Hilton-owned property.
One alleged unwanted entry was only foiled when a quick-thinking woman slammed a door on an intruder’s hand — severing his finger in the process.
Outlining a December 2022 incident at a Holiday Inn Express & Suites, a lawyer representing a victim who hails from Milwaukee told The Post: “The woman was asleep and she woke up to the man crouched at the foot of her bed with his pants undone and a condom out.
“She was able to scream and get him out of the room, and she immediately called down to the front desk. They admitted, ‘Oh yes, we did give a key to the man. He said he knew you.’ ”
The man allegedly followed the victim, who asked not to be named, back to her hotel in Gonzales before convincing the front desk to give him the key.
The accused attacker was arrested and arraigned on a felony charge of attempted sexual assault, in a case that is ongoing.
Holiday Inn did not respond to The Post’s request for comment. Not vigilant enough
“Almost every hotel chain I’ve seen has a policy in place that says under no circumstance can you issue a key to someone’s room without verifying with an identification that that person is registered to the room,” said Anna Greenberg of Blizzard Law, who represented the victim.
But time and again, staff have proven not to be vigilant enough.
In a 2017 case centered around the $500-a-night Hilton Americas Houston hotel, Kathleen Dawson was unconscious after she had been out drinking and was lying in the street near her hotel.
A concerned citizen called 911 because a man was standing over her with his pants down, her lawyers explained.
Hotel staff arrived to help at the same time as police, but a suit filed by the victim claims they followed the direction of her coworker, who falsely claimed she was staying in his room.
Hotel staff put Dawson in a wheelchair and rolled her up to the man’s hotel room, where she woke up with him raping her, according to her lawsuit.
Rape charges against the man were ultimately dismissed.
However, Dawson was awarded $44 million in civil damages from the hotel chain.
In a third case, a woman allegedly woke up in her Austin hotel in January and realized someone had a key to her room and was trying to open the door.
The woman, who asked to be identified as Mandy, said she ran to slam the door shut. She called 911, and found that the man’s finger had been severed when the cops arrived. “I realized that the finger was still in my door underneath the security latch,” she recalled.
She is suing the DoubleTree Austin University Hotel for more than $1 million.
A different Austin hotel, the DoubleTree Northwest Arboretum, is currently facing a lawsuit in a fourth case.
A college student claims she was raped after her attacker found her lost key card, and used the it to get into her room and sexually assault her. Her lawsuit also seeks more than $1 million.
Other cases have taken place in different parts of the country.
In 2017, a California jury awarded a woman $3.5 million when a Holiday Inn Express she was staying at failed to check the ID of a man who requested a key to her room, according to her lawyers. Jonathan Padilla was later convicted of sexual assault, reported a local station.