Hotel housekeepers say jobs often make them wary.

[sufrommich]

Last week the former head of the 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 hotel in New York.

Labor groups and hotel housekeepers have reported at least 10 other such incidents in the United States in recent years, from Gaithersburg to remote Grand Island, Neb.

Many more are hushed up, labor groups say, 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 consultant based on New York’s Long Island who spent 30 years working security for hotels, said he knows of dozens of incidents involving female room attendants, from drunken propositions to rape.

“They’re not an infrequent occurrence,” he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-wake-of-strauss-kahn-arrest-hotel-housekeepers-say-jobs-often-make-them-wary/2011/05/21/AFIe6j8G_story.html