Hotel housekeepers vulnerable to attacks

Hotel housekeepers say they often feel a twinge of fear when they slide the keycard, turn the door handle and step into a room to clean it. What will they find?

Last week the former head of the powerful International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was charged with chasing a housekeeper around his $3,000 a night penthouse suite and forcing her to perform oral sex on him at the Sofitel New York Hotel.

But labor groups and hotel housekeepers have reported at least 10 other attacks in the U.S. in recent years, from the Washington, D.C. suburb of Gaithersburg, Md., to remote Grand Island, Neb.

Labor groups say many more are hushed up because the victims are illegal immigrants or because hotels are wary of scaring off guests. Many hotels laid off security staff during the recession, leaving workers even more vulnerable, they said.

"It's dangerous work," said Yazmin Vazquez, who works at a hotel in downtown Chicago. "These customers think they can use us for anything they want because we don't have the power that they have or the money that they have."

Anthony Roman, a Long Island consultant who spent 30 years working security for hotels, said he saw dozens of incidents involving female room attendants, from drunken propositions to rape.

"They're not an infrequent occurrence," he said.

At the luxury hotel in Toronto where Andria Babbington worked for 17 years, housekeepers especially hated doing "turn-down" service, which involves preparing beds for the night.

Some men would put money on the pillow, ask for sexual favors and tell the women they could take the money when they left, Babbington said.

Others took a more circuitous route to the same end: they would inquire about a housekeeper's home country and how many family members they were supporting. Then came some sympathetic-sounding questions about much the hotel paid them -- followed by an offer of money for sex.

Kimberley 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' 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.

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.

The open-door policy is a security procedure that's been in place at the Sofitel before Strauss-Kahn was charged in the alleged May 14 attack. Sofitel officials say they're not aware of any other sexual attack on a maid at any of their worldwide hotels.

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.