“When I told my supervisors, they didn’t do anything,” Rico said. “From then on I had to ask a co-worker from the floor upstairs to accompany me so I could clean his room, because that really scared me.”
Phillips was cleaning rooms at a Hampton Inn in Lebanon, Ky., last year when she opened the door of Room 118 to find two dogs. The animals attacked her left leg, biting through to the bone, until a hotel guest fought them off with Phillips’s broom.
The dogs belonged to a contractor who was staying at the hotel while doing work there.
Phillips, 40, now uses a cane and walks with a limp. She has nerve damage in her leg and suffers from panic attacks.
“It’s completely changed my whole life,” she said. “Even to sit outside, I can’t do that. I’m afraid a dog is going to approach me.”
The Hampton Inn’s manager, Becky Edlin, said the hotel had tightened its security measures after the attack. She declined to elaborate.
Many hotels have adopted policies aimed at protecting housekeepers, such as barring them from cleaning rooms while they are occupied. One standard practice is to prop the open door with a supply cart.
Vazquez, 40, said she started wearing extra clothes under her uniform as an added layer of protection after a VIP guest barged into a bathroom she was cleaning and pulled out his privates in August. She also wears a jacket that comes down to her thighs. “Anything to hide your figure,” she said.
Protective measures
Some hotels will send only male employees to a room late at night if their computers show a guest is watching pornography, said Carl Boger, dean of academics at the University of Houston’s college of hotel management.
They can also monitor who opens a door and when by looking at the electronic lock system, he said. In the New York case, those records should help investigators determine the timeline of the alleged attack and whether the housekeeper had propped the door open, Boger said.
The Sofitel’s open-door security policy was in place before Strauss-Kahn was charged in the alleged May 14 attack. Sofitel officials say they are not aware of any other such incidents involving maids at any of their worldwide hotels.
The 32-year-old maid, an immigrant from Guinea who worked for the Sofitel for three years, told police that a naked Strauss-Kahn accosted her after she came into the room, attacking her in the bedroom and bathroom before she got away.
Strauss-Kahn was indicted on multiple charges, including attempted rape and sexual abuse. He posted $1 million cash bail and a $5 million insurance bond and is under house arrest in Manhattan.
Labor groups worry that the recession has created more danger by forcing hotels to cut back on security guards and housekeepers. “You’re on a floor by yourself, with those long hallways and nobody around, cleaning 30 rooms a day alone,” said Tho Do, a vice president of Unite Here, a union representing hotel workers. “You don’t have a lot of protection.”
— Associated Press
Campaign 2012 tools
The Post Most: PoliticsMost-viewed stories, videos and galleries int he past two hours
Featured Blogs & Columns
Loading...
Comments