March 26, 2011 Family sues Ritz Carlton hotel after child is molested www.privateofficer.com
The hotel’s owner, Maritz, Wolff & Company, is not commenting. The attorney for suspect Daniel Hughes from Pennsylvania has not returned calls for comment.
Hughes’ his employer, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, will only say he’s no longer employed by them, and that the alleged incident did not happen on company time, also saying this is not the hotel they put him up in. They said he had already checked out of that hotel.
Daniel Hughes is charged with three counts of child molestation and one count of sodomy. According to prosecutors, Hughes returned to the Ritz Carlton drunk on the morning of March 6. He told the clerk he did not have his room key, gave the wrong number to his room, and the clerk gave him a duplicate key without verifying the room number.
One of the complaints in the lawsuit against the Ritz-Carlton said, “the desk clerk…carelessly and negligently gave a room key to Hughes without demanding and verifying his identity and insuring that he was a person properly entitled to receive a key for room he requested…and did not have a security person accompany Hughes to the room to verify.”
Police say he then went to the room where there were three children, got in bed with the nine-year-old and molested her.
The lawsuit against the four defendants was filed Tuesday in St. Louis County Circuit Court.
The victim in the case is referred to as Jane Doe. One of the complaints against Hughes for the lawsuit says it’s “…because of Hughes’ evil motives and reckless indifference to the rights of Jane Doe.”
The attorney for the alleged victim’s family, Maurice Graham, will not comment on the lawsuit, but said, “(the family) is continuing to deal with this tragedy involving the nine-year-old.”
Meanwhile, the Ritz-Carlton released the following statement: “Of course, most importantly we deeply regret that this incident took place, and we have reached out directly to the guests involved to express our concern for them. We are taking steps to underscore the importance of our security procedures at our hotels in light of this incident and are cooperating fully with the authorities on this matter. As litigation is pending, we do not have plans to comment further at this time.”
Source:KSDK
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