Jamaica resorts facing a 'historic' sexual assault problem
TRESA BALDAS | DETROIT FREE PRESS
Updated 9:55 a.m. EDT Oct. 30, 2018
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 gang-raped 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.
Oct. 2: Raped in Jamaica: Woman turns gun on attacker who had climbed on her balcony at 5-star hotel
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 Free Press, a part of the USA TODAY Network, 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.
Rapists hiding within hotel staff
As the State Department warned in a travel advisory this year:
"Exercise increased caution in Jamaica ... Sexual assaults occur frequently, even at all-inclusive resorts. Local police lack the resources to respond effectively to serious criminal incidents," the State Department wrote in a Jan. 10 travel advisory.
The travel advisory wasn't the first such alarm.
For three consecutive years, the State Department issued similar warnings in 2012, 2013 and 2014 crime reports, stating: "A special concern continues to be the number of sexual assaults perpetrated by hotel employees at resort hotels on the north coast of Jamaica, and the need for forceful investigation and follow-up by the hotels and by police and other security officials."
Last year, Jamaica was ranked the third most dangerous country for female travelers by Trip by Skyscanner, a California-based travel research company that reviews destinations worldwide. Egypt and Morocco topped the list.
When the Detroit women booked their reservation at Hotel Riu Reggae, they didn't know about the survey, either.
They looked forward to their island getaway and enjoyed it, until the last day of their vacation, when a gunman burst into their room through their balcony and demanded money. The women said they had no cash and threw credit cards on the bed.
"He cocked the gun and said, 'You bitches know that this is a gun ... go turn the lights off or I'm going to (expletive) kill you,' " one of the victims told the Free Press.
The lights went off. He raped them both, they said, until one of the women got hold of the gun and shot him twice. He was arrested the next day and is facing charges.
The Detroit victims have said the police were helpful, but the hotel seemed dismissive.
"They said they had never heard of this before,” recalled one of the victims.
The Sandals resort victims and their mothers — all of them from Michigan — heard the same line in 2015 when they reported the laundry-room rapes to the hotel management.
"The hotel said, 'This has never happened,' " one mother recalled. "The manager wanted us to sign paper work saying nothing happened."
The mother wouldn't hear of it, and has been reeling ever since.
"My daughter will never have justice," the woman said in a recent exclusive interview with the Free Press. "These girls aren't the same girls."
Dr. Lee Bailey, who chairs a police civic committee in Jamaica, said the country has "very strict rules" as to who works in hotels.
When he learned about the rapes of the Detroit women in Montego Bay, he said: "I've never heard of this happening before." He also expressed concern that the hotel company — an international chain based in Spain — did not properly vet the employee charged in the attack.
The suspect is 24-year-old Demar Scott, a dancer and entertainment coordinator who was wanted by police for other crimes before landing the job at the resort.
Six months before he was hired to work at the Hotel Riu Reggae, the Manchester police in central Jamaica posted a wanted ad for Scott on its community Facebook page, calling him a person of interest in connection with a string of rapes in their parish.
The police offered $35,000 for tips on Scott's whereabouts.
Six months later, he got a job at the Montego Bay resort, where police say he stole a gun from a guest's room and then used it to rape the two vacationers from Detroit.
Meanwhile, the management of RIU Hotels & Resorts is defending its hiring practices, calling the Montego Bay rapes unfortunate, and isolated incidents.
"On September 27th, there was a very unfortunate incident in the RIU Reggae Hotel in which a man, who was a trainee at the entertainment department of the hotel, attacked two of our guests," RIU Resorts said in a statement to the Free Press. "The aggressor, who had been in training for only three days, managed to escape at first, but thanks to the work of the police with the full collaboration of the hotel management, he was arrested a few hours later and brought to justice."
The suspect has not been brought to justice; he has only been charged. And he was not arrested a few hours after the attack, but rather the next day when hospital staff alerted police that they were treating a shooting victim, police said.
RIU also said that it took proper vetting steps in hiring Scott.
"It is relevant to note that RIU Hotels & Resorts has a very severe and rigorous security protocol regarding the hiring of employees and trainees. The protocol was followed and the documentation requested," the company stated.
According to RIU, when Scott applied for the job, he had a recommendation letter from a justice of the peace, a recommendation from an entertainment manager from another company, and a résumé with experience and education relevant to the position he applied for.
"The police record is also always requested prior to formalizing the work contract," RIU stated, without explaining if a criminal record or police report actually turned up in Scott's background check.
RIU also said the hotel management acted appropriately that night, saying its "immediate priority" was to accompany and support the victims, work closely with the police and other authorities, and "to maintain the calm and normal operation of the hotel in consideration for all of the guests."
"This was an unprecedented event," RIU said.
Lifeguards assault women at Beaches
In May 2015, a young lady from Ingham County named Paiton was surprised by her mother with a trip to Jamaica for her 21st birthday.
The five-day getaway to the Beaches Ocho Rio Resort & Golf Club, a Sandals property in Boscobel, cost $5,000, which was split with another mother and her daughter.
For four days, Paiton enjoyed the perks of the all-inclusive resort, until the last night of her trip, when three hotel lifeguards she recognized from the pool lured her into a locked laundry room and each one raped her.
"I froze up. I was completely paralyzed with fear," the now-24-year-old Paiton said in a recent interview. "The one thing that really still stands out is being left in that room alone, and my mom finding me. ... I thought that I had done something wrong."
Paiton wasn't the only victim that night. Her 17-year-old friend Amber also was raped by one of the lifeguards. The teen was assaulted first in the same laundry room, though the resort tried to hide what happened, she said.
"They wanted to keep us quiet. They didn't want anyone to know that anything like that could happen at their resort," Paiton said.
For years, Paiton, Amber and their mothers said nothing about the sexual assault they experienced, but grew tired of staying silent. This month, they decided to share their story with the Free Press after learning about the rapes of the Detroit women.
Like the Detroit victims, Paiton, Amber and their mothers believed that the resorts where they were staying were safe, and they were unaware of the State Department's travel advisories.
"I want people to be more aware of what could happen," said Amber's mother, Maggie, who couldn't sleep for months following her daughter's rape. "Every time I'd close my eyes, all I could think of is what happened."
According to Paiton, Amber, their mothers and dozens of court documents filed in a pending civil suit, here are the events that led to the night of terror at the Beaches Ocho Rio Resort.
During the trip, Amber and Paiton spent time at the pool and water slides, where three lifeguards fraternized with them, engaging in casual conversation and asking how long they were staying.
On May 8, 2015, the last night of their trip, Amber and Paiton ran into the lifeguards in a hotel hallway while on their way to a piano bar. That's when one of the lifeguards took Amber by the hand and said, 'Cmon, I want to show you something.'
He opened a locked metal door that read employees-only and led Amber inside what was an industrial laundry room. Paiton, who had her back turned to Amber for a few seconds, became alarmed and asked one of the other lifeguards where the man had taken Amber, noting she was responsible for the younger girl. The other lifeguard said, 'Cmon, I'll take you to her.' "
Once inside, Paiton would suffer the same fate as Amber, who was released by her attacker after having an anxiety attack. But the lifeguards did not let Paiton go. She was trapped in the room, where three hotel employees, including the man who raped Amber, sexually assaulted her.
The first guy pushed her up against the wall and pulled her pants down.
She pleaded with him to stop. She said she didn't want to do this, that she had to go back to her room. But the lifeguard wouldn't listen as he forcefully raped her against the wall.
Then came the second lifeguard. He raped her, too, as she quietly wept.
The third lifeguard was equally forceful. She dug her fingernails into his leg to try to push him away. But he overpowered her, so she stayed quiet until it was over, fearful her attackers might kill her.
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