Woman Files Lawsuit Claiming Emotional Distress And Accusing Hilton And Franchise Partners Of Negligence
by Heather Cassell
A Chicago woman is suiting Hilton Worldwide for $100 million claiming an employee secretly took a video of her showering without her permission and then attempted to extort her.
The woman, who requested to remain anonymous, spoke exclusively with ABC’s “Good Morning America” December 4 about the incident.
The woman claims that an unidentified employee at the Hampton Inn and Suites Albany-Downtown in Albany, New York installed a hidden camera in the shower of her hotel room and filmed her while she showered in July 2015.
Hilton Worldwide is the parent company of Hampton Inn.
Her attorney, Roland Christiansen, hasn’t identified the suspect’s “precise identity” yet, but he and the woman are holding the global hotel company and its partners accountable because the suspect obtained her name and other personal information about her that she provided to the hotel, according to the lawsuit.
She was completely unaware of the existence of the video until September of this year when someone allegedly attempted to blackmail her with the footage by uploading it to a pornographic website and emailed her the link, she told GMA.
“I click on it and I see my face and profile in a bathroom and I start screaming,” she said. “I just immediately started screaming. It was devastating on kind of a cellular level because I didn’t know. … I had no clue, I had no context for this.
“It was like I had been hit by a truck. It just knocked the wind out of me,” she continued. “I had no idea who took the video. I had no idea who this guy was, and all I could think is my life is over.”
Later that same night she received another email from the same address telling her that the video would be exposed along with her full name, school and place of employment unless she sent nude footage of herself, according to the lawsuit obtained by GMA.
The unknown emailer wrote, “I’m a perv. I don’t hurt anyone. I like to watch.”
“No need to worry about me. I just like to watch and then I move on to the next,” the suspect wrote. “Promise me my own show. That’s the hottest. No need to show your face. Then I disappear and remove the videos forever before they get copied on every website.”
Later the suspect sent another email asking the woman if she was still there.
“I know it’s you. I don’t want to embarrass you,” the person wrote. “Please reply before it’s too late to stop it.”
Then things got worse.
The suspect started sending the video to her colleagues and followed through on threats to distribute the video further if she didn’t pay $2,000 up front and $1,000 per month for the next year, according to the lawsuit.
“It was just absolutely traumatizing because these are people I went to law school with,” she said. “They’re friends, they’re coworkers. And they were sent a link to what looks like an email I sent.”
Worse, as soon as the suspect began posting the video to more pornographic sites, they included her full name.
“It’s sadistic, and it’s designed to terrorize me and force me into a place where I feel like I have to give in to his demands and give him more photos or give him money,” she said. “He did this so that whenever someone Googles me, they’re going to see this.”
When the extortion attempt and threats were stopped, the video had been posted on at least a dozen pornographic websites, she said. The ordeal is hardly over. She has spent hours searching the web and petitioning the websites to remove the video and continues to do so.
She’s now suing Hilton Worldwide and its various franchise partners due to the emotional distress and accusing the company and partners of negligence.
Roland claims there’s footage from another guest from the same room.
“We have seen evidence that there is at least one other video,” Roland told GMA. “We have evidence, we haven’t seen all of the other videos, but we have reason to believe there is a significant amount of others and that this room that my client stayed in was used repeatedly to film people over an extended period.”
Hampton Inn and Suites Albany-Downtown and Hilton both responded with statements expressing the importance of the safety of their guests.
“The safety and security of our guests is our highest priority,” said a spokesperson for Hampton Inn and Suites Albany-Downtown, who stated the hotel plans to work with authorities to investigate the matter. “We will continue to work with the authorities to discover the perpetrator and see that s/he is held accountable.”
Hilton agreed, stating that the company was alerted to the details of the alleged incident on December 3.
“We take the safety and wellbeing of our guests incredibly seriously, and find the details included in the civil filing distressing,” a spokesperson said in the statement. “We commit to supporting the independent ownership and management of the property as they investigate, respond, and cooperate with any law enforcement investigations.”
The woman continues working on restoring her reputation.
“I think the hardest conversation I had to have was with my dad in explaining that there’s videos of me up on multiple porn sites,” she said. “It was probably the hardest conversation I’ve ever had to have in my life.”
“I don’t know if that’s something you ever truly recover from.”
Book your next trip to make a difference with Girls That Roam Travel. Contact Heather Cassell at Girls That Roam Travel at 415-517-7239 or at .
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