Sexual assault lawsuit: Fort Worth hotel employee let attacker in women’s room
A guest at a Fort Worth hotel was sexually assaulted after a hotel employee unlocked her room’s door for a man claiming to be her husband, according to a lawsuit that’s scheduled to go to trial this year.
The suit, filed last October in a Texas state court in Dallas County, alleges that the downtown location of Fairfield Inn & Suites and its staff were negligent and allowed the intruder to commit the assault.
The guest and a friend, identified only by the initials J.E. and L.T., were sharing a room at the downtown Fort Worth hotel near the Convention Center for a work event in March 2024, according to the lawsuit. The women were standing outside the hotel after returning from a night out when a man approached them and started a conversation, they said.
The unidentified man mentioned that he had been living on the streets and in parking garages, according to the lawsuit. The women had a brief discussion with the man about his circumstances. J.E. then decided to return to the hotel room and L.T. followed shortly after.
When L.T. got back to the hotel room and began to take a shower, she heard someone banging on the door and looked out the peephole to see the man from earlier, according to the suit. Believing there was no way for the man to get in, she left the door and continued showering.
While L.T. was in the shower, a front desk agent returned to the room with the man and opened the door for him using her master key, surveillance footage of the incident shows. When L.T. got out of the shower, she saw the man in bed sexually assaulting J.E. and ran to get help, according to the lawsuit.
The front desk employee later told L.T. that she had given a key to the man after the man claimed to be L.T.’s husband, according to the lawsuit. Surveillance video and a “lock interrogation report” with data from the electronic lock for the women’s room shows that the front desk agent did not give the man a key, but used her master key to let him in, the suit states.
The employee did not knock, announce herself, or get permission from the guests before letting the man inside in the middle of the night, the women’s attorney said.
In court documents responding to the lawsuit, the defendants, which include the hotel and the companies that manage it, denied liability in the case. Attorneys for the hotel said that they don’t comment on pending litigation.
The man, who has not been identified, is listed in the suit as a John Doe.
Fort Worth police interviewed the women and took them to a hospital so that J.E. could have a forensic exam and a rape kit performed, according to the suit.
Officials with the Fort Worth Police Department declined to comment on the ongoing investigation, but confirmed that no one has been arrested in the case.
The women are seeking in excess of $1 million in damages meant to cover the costs of therapy bills incurred since the assault, attorney Anna Greenberg told the Star-Telegram on Wednesday.
The hotel employee who let the man into the room was fired after the incident, Greenberg said.
A TikTok video that Greenberg made about the case had received almost 60,000 views as of Wednesday.
This case “isn’t a one-off,” Greenberg said. “I’ve represented several women in similar cases. Hotel staff need to be trained and held accountable.”
This story was originally published June 25, 2025 at 6:25 PM.
