Keir Starmer had written <\/a>to the company\u2019s chief executive, Jo Boydell, saying he was \u201cvery concerned\u201d about the meeting\u2019s cancellation. The prime minister pressed the hotel chain to \u201cseriously engage\u201d with MPs over the \u201cutterly appalling\u201d assault.<\/p>\nThe survivor, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was attacked by Kyran Smith in December 2022. Smith was jailed in February for seven and a half years after being convicted of the assault.<\/p>\n
Asked for her reaction to the letter, the survivor told ITV\u2019s Good Morning Britain (GMB): \u201cI think if you are the CEO of a company, then you have a responsibility to answer these questions and engage in that situation, and say how you\u2019re going to now improve. You\u2019re not protecting people and I mean, I personally find it quite shocking.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a separate interview with BBC News, the woman said of the chief executive: \u201cIf you\u2019re really that worried about safeguarding and protecting people and making sure your guests are safe, then why are you not attending these kinds of meetings with MPs?\u201d<\/p>\n
Boydell has previously apologised to the woman. She said the company had made immediate changes to its door key policy. Boydell repeated her apologies in interviews with ITV and the BBC on Monday, telling the latter she was \u201cgenuinely sorry\u201d for the company\u2019s handling of the incident.<\/p>\n
The survivor said suggestions from the chief executive there had been deadbolts on the doors were \u201cdeflection\u201d, and she knew she had locked her door on the night of the attack.<\/p>\n
Speaking to GMB, Boydell said: \u201cI\u2019m really sorry if she did feel dismissed, and we are definitely listening to what she has to say. The hotels with key cards have deadbolts, but clearly something went wrong here, and that needs to be investigated.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boydell said she was aware of \u201cother instances\u201d of unwanted people entering customers\u2019 rooms, and had only found out about Smith\u2019s assault this month after he was jailed more than three years on from the attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve certainly heard of other instances, different to this one, in terms of not keys being obtained by deception, but you know, any instance of somebody entering a customer\u2019s room that they haven\u2019t given explicit permission to, we understand, would be upsetting.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve made some changes immediately in terms of how we handle serious incidents. I would have expected it to be escalated. It wasn\u2019t, so something went wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
The chief executive said she \u201ccan completely understand\u201d that the survivor felt insulted after she was initially offered \u00a330 in compensation by Travelodge.<\/p>\n
The woman is taking legal action against the hotel chain, according to the BBC.<\/p>\n
Before the attack, Smith had lied to reception staff at the hotel in Maidenhead in Berkshire, telling them he was the victim\u2019s boyfriend. He had been at the same party as the woman before they and others retired to their rooms. The woman said staff told her Smith had passed their security checks by providing her name.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman who was sexually assaulted by a man who was handed a key card to her room…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-503487","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}