Marriott's Response to Hotel Rape Suit

[richlevy]

Wow. From here

So, all of those security cameras and guards are just to make us feel good, like those fake security cameras you can buy to fool burglars? How do you 'mitigate your damage' in picking up your car? Personally, I think blaming a rape victim as part of a civil suit defense strategy is a losing proposition. And what is their point in interviewing friends and relatives of the victim. This isn't a date rape case where the victim's morals are at issue. The woman was raped by a transient in front of her kids. Do they really think they'll find some friend or relative who will state "yeah, she's always had this fantasy of being raped by an unwashed vagrant"?

STAMFORD -- A downtown hotel being sued by a woman raped at gunpoint in its parking garage is claiming she was careless, negligent and "failed to exercise due care for her own safety and the safety of her children and proper use of her senses and facilities," according to court documents.
The victim's attorneys also argue the hotel has inadvertently identified her to acquaintances by asking them to testify.
The Stamford Marriott Hotel & Spa, along with the firms in charge of managing the hotel and its parking garage, made the claim as part of a list of special defenses filed in state Superior Court in Stamford last month. Such defenses allow defendants in civil suits to argue they are not responsible for damages even if the plaintiff's story is true.

On Oct. 10, 2006, Fricker stuck a handgun in the back of the then 40-year-old woman and forced her and her children, then 3 and 5, into their minivan as they left the hotel, according to court documents.
She let him go through her wallet and told him he could take it, but Fricker demanded she take off her clothes. Fricker sexually assaulted the woman for several minutes, pointing the gun at her and her children and threatening to sexually assault one of her children.

The hotel also claims as a special defense that the acts were unforeseen and beyond their control, that the woman and her children failed to properly "mitigate their damages," and that the hotel had not been notified about Fricker.