CRIME & COURTS

Lawsuit: Embassy Suites let attacker into woman's room

Grant Rodgers
grodgers@dmreg.com

A New Jersey woman who was sexually assaulted while staying at the Embassy Suites in downtown Des Moines has filed a lawsuit claiming staff members unwittingly let her attacker into her seventh-floor room.

Christopher LaPointe

Cheri Marchionda is suing both Embassy Suites and Hilton Worldwide, as well as Atrium Finance III, the company that owns the Des Moines hotel.

She was staying at the East Village hotel during a business trip when she awoke sometime after midnight on April 11, 2014, to find Christopher Edward LaPointe standing at the foot of her bed and touching her leg.

LaPointe, 31, a New York resident also staying at the hotel, is now serving a 20-year prison sentence at the Iowa Medical and Classification Center after pleading guilty to burglary and sexual abuse charges in December 2014.

In a federal lawsuit on track to go to trial in Des Moines, lawyers from a Pennsylvania firm representing Marchionda wrote that a manager, a desk clerk and a maintenance man all helped LaPointe get into the woman's room without asking Marchionda whether he had permission to be there.

Though the Des Moines Register does not typically identify sexual assault victims in criminal cases, it does publish plaintiffs' names in reporting on civil lawsuits. Reached by phone Wednesday, Marchionda's lawyers said she did not currently want to speak publicly about the case.

"Each defendant owed a special duty of care to her, including a duty to provide for and assure her safety and security while at the hotel," attorneys Paul Brandes and Michael Hanamirian wrote in the lawsuit. "To not expose her to burglary, assaults or attacks by others … and to not assist others in burglarizing, assaulting or attacking her."

The negligence lawsuit was filed in a New Jersey federal court district in June, but was moved Tuesday to Iowa after lawyers couldn't agree on a settlement during nonbinding mediation earlier in December. None of the defendants have filed an answer in court to the lawsuit, though a motion to dismiss over jurisdictional issues was denied by a judge.

The general manager at the Des Moines hotel did not immediately return a reporter's phone call this week. Maggie Giddens, a public relations director for the hotel chain, said the company could not publicly comment because of the ongoing litigation.

The claims in Marchionda's lawsuit are similar to those from another that Los Angeles attorney Gloria Allred filed against Embassy Suites and its parent company, Hilton Worldwide, on behalf of a woman who was sexually assaulted while staying at one of their hotels in North Charleston, S.C.

In that case, a woman who was staying at the hotel after a Christmas party was assaulted by a co-worker who got a key to her room from the check-in desk by claiming he was her boyfriend, according to the Charleston Post and Courier.

Marchionda was traveling for work when she checked into the Des Moines hotel on April 9, 2014, according to the lawsuit. She went to hotel restaurant and sat at the bar for dinner, where she was approached by LaPointe — who at the time appeared drunk and was slurring his words, according to the complaint.

The New York resident tried to flirt with Marchionda, but she politely turned him down. After he left, the bartender told the woman that LaPointe was "harmless," according to the lawsuit.

As Marchionda got on the elevator to return to her room, LaPointe appeared and tried again to flirt before she stopped on the seventh floor and returned to her room.

The next night, Marchionda was approached in the restaurant by a drunken-looking LaPointe, who said he'd just been at a hotel reception, the lawsuit says. LaPointe sat at the same table as Marchionda, and the lawsuit claims he drank at least three beers and a shot of liquor.

According to the lawsuit, surveillance video obtained from the hotel showed LaPointe talking with a bartender after Marchionda went back to her room. When the bartender commented that his "flirtatious efforts" toward the woman were unsuccessful, LaPointe responded, "The night is not over yet," according to the lawsuit.

LaPointe went to the hotel's front desk and asked for a key to the room where Marchionda was staying.

A manager who was behind the desk authorized a clerk to hand over a key to the room, but neither worker called Marchionda to check and neither asked for LaPointe's identification or verified whether he was even a guest, the lawsuit said.

LaPointe was blocked from getting in the room because Marchionda had locked the door from the inside. LaPointe found a maintenance worker and claimed that he and his girlfriend were sharing the room, but had gotten into a fight and she'd locked him out, according to the lawsuit.

The maintenance man unlocked the door for LaPointe without checking his identification or verifying any aspects of his story.

During the attack, LaPointe put his hand down the woman's pajama pants and tried to force her to touch and kiss him, according to a police incident report. The report indicates that police believe LaPointe was in the room for about two hours.

The lawsuit claims the manager, desk clerk and maintenance man all violated the hotels own internal policies by not checking with Marchionda before turning over a key to her room and then opening the door.

The hotel's owners gave Marchionda a "false sense of security" and should pay punitive damages that are typically intended to send a message to other businesses, lawyers wrote in the lawsuit.

LaPointe pleaded guilty as part of an agreement with prosecutors in December 2014, but in July Des Moines defense attorney Alfredo Parrish filed an application for post-conviction relief on LaPointe's behalf in an attempt to get his convictions reversed and a new trial. Among other things, the application claims that LaPointe's first attorney was ineffective for agreeing to waive a pre-sentence investigation report that could have won a more favorable sentence for him.

A judge is currently scheduled to hear arguments on LaPointe's application at a non-jury trial in July. In court documents, LaPointe has written that his wife in New York remained "supportive" of him throughout the criminal proceedings. He's blamed the assault on his struggles with alcohol.

"I wake up every morning and go to bed each night reminded of my actions and feel nothing but remorse," he wrote in one document. "I am forever reminded each and every day of the life choices I made."