Two mums from Kentucky, USA are speaking out after they were allegedly drugged and raped in the Bahamas on Sunday, February 4,after the US issued a travel warning for the vacation hotspot.
Longtime friends Amber Shearer and Dongayla Dobson said their first kid-free vacation ended with a traumatic, broad-daylight assault when they decided to go to the beach after the Carnival cruise ship they were on docked at the island country.
The moms say they were relaxing on a Grand Bahama beach when a resort staffer offered them a two-for-one drink deal, they told NewsNation’s “Cuomo.”
They accepted and took photos with the tropical drinks one in a pineapple and the other in a coconut.
But they soon felt like the drinks were much stronger than expected.
They say their loved ones back home grew concerned when the women sent videos where they seemed to be highly intoxicated just 15 minutes after their first sips, Dobson told the station.
“Less than a few [sips] into the second drink, we knew something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong,” Shearer said.
They went to look for seashells to bring back to their kids when a male resort staffer offered to show them the best spot to find shells.
But the next thing Shearer could recall was waking up while she was being assaulted by a uniformed male resort staffer.
I came to in the process of my rape,” she told NewsNation, breaking down.
Bahamian authorities and other staffers at the resort were able to immediately identify the two men accused of the daylight assault through surveillance footage.
One of the attackers had only been employed by the resort for about a week, according to Shearer.
Royal Bahamas police arrested two men, a 40-year-old of South Bahamia and a 54-year-old of Eight Mile Rock, in connection to the sexual assault, the department said in a news release.
Police are still investigating, but the women say their allegations weren’t properly handled and that the local cops did not administer proper rape test kits despite their pleas.
Back on the cruise ship, the moms received the results of their toxicology tests which showed they had a plethora of drugs in their systems, including benzodiazepines.
They also had almost no alcohol in their bodies and had bruising up and down their legs, NBC affiliate station Lex18 reported.
“To see the things that showed up on my [toxicology] screen was just traumatizing all over again,” Dobson said.
Bahamian Prime Minister Philip Davis said in a statement the government is “alert, attentive, and proactive” in keeping the island nation “welcoming” to travelers.
The US issued a stark travel warning for Jamaica after it was rocked by 65 murders last month. The US Embassy in Jamaica upgraded the travel advisory to a Level 3, “Reconsider travel,” which is just one level short of the most severe, which warns Americans against travel altogether.
Now back in Kentucky, the women have hired a lawyer to get justice and are receiving medical care — including $4,000 in HIV prevention medication, according to the local station.
