Margaritaville cruise settles 2 lawsuits after bartender snuck into women's room, raped them
WEST PALM BEACH — Two women who said they were raped by a bartender on a Jimmy Buffett-themed cruise ship have agreed to settle their lawsuits against the company for undisclosed amounts of money.
They accused a crewmate of sneaking into their room aboard the Margaritaville At Sea Paradise ship and raping them while they slept. One woman, identified in a December lawsuit only as Jane Doe, said she became pregnant as a result and "was forced to terminate the pregnancy, from which she then suffered serious complications."
Her cabinmate, identified in a separate lawsuit as HB, said bartender Hoobesh Dookhy pocketed one of their room keys while serving the women drinks aboard the Bahamas-bound ship and used it to enter their room after both women fell asleep.
Doe said she woke to find Dookhy caressing her face and sexually assaulting her. She told FBI agents that she demanded he leave, but he moved to HB's bed and began to assault her, too.
Doe recorded the assault and reported it to cruise-ship security the following morning. According to court records, investigators found the women's room key in the pocket of Dookhy's work vest and a photo he took of HB, naked and asleep, on his cellphone.
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Dookhy admitted to having sex with HB but told investigators that their encounter was consensual. Faced with the possibility of life in federal prison on a sexual-abuse charge, he pleaded guilty to one count of abusive sexual contact in October — forgoing his right to a trial by jury but cementing a deal with prosecutors to have the worst of the two charges against him dropped.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon sentenced Dookhy to two years in prison — one year more than federal sentencing guidelines advised and exactly what prosecutors asked for. He is scheduled to be released before his 28th birthday. According to court records, he will remain on supervised release for five years and must register as a sex offender.
Neither charge against him stemmed from the rape Doe described in her lawsuit. She was classified as a witness to her cabinmate's sexual assault rather than as a victim to her own, but her attorney, Spencer Aronfeld, said Dookhy's conviction and the subsequent media attention surrounding HB's lawsuit convincedher to file one, too.
"We reached an amicable resolution," Aronfeld said this month. "She's pleased with the result."
Aronfeld said that as part of the agreement, Doe "can't tell her story to anyone." He declined to say more about the confidential settlement but added that, generally speaking, no amount of money can heal the wounds of sexual assault victims. He said the value of a settlement is in closing the case and allowing victims to move forward.
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HB's attorney, Carissa Peebles of the law firm Morgan & Morgan, declined to comment, and Aronfeld said he did not know whether her settlement was identical to Doe's. In an earlier interview, Aronfeld called the two lawsuits "considerably different" in terms of the damages reported by both women — the most notable being Doe's pregnancy and abortion.
During the earlier interview, Aronfeld said his client did not undergo a paternity test to determine who fathered the child but said Doe intended to testify that she and her husband were not sexually active before or after the alleged rape.
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Doe and HB belong to a long list of passengers and crew members who say they were victimized aboard cruise ships. More than 500 sexual-assault reports were documented between 2010 and 2022 on 13 major cruise lines, according to data published by the U.S. Department of Transportation.
A Missourian woman, identified only as Jane Doe, filed a new lawsuit against the Margaritaville at Sea cruise and its parent company Classica Cruise this month. She said Margaritaville arranged for a sea-side hotel in the Bahamas for guests to stay. According to the lawsuit, when she left her hotel room at night to get a glass of water, a hotel employee forced her into the hotel's theater control room, locked the door and raped her.
She is suing the hotel in addition to the cruise line. The alleged rape happened in August 2023. Margaritaville at Sea did not return a request for comment.
Hannah Phillips is a journalist covering public safety and criminal justice at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at hphillips@pbpost.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Margaritaville cruise settles two lawsuits over sex assaults on ship
