The Marriott Hotel in Stamford, CT; drops the claim that a rape victim was partially to blame for having been raped.

The Marriott hotel chain on Monday abandoned its legal claim that a Connecticut woman raped at gunpoint in a hotel parking garage, in front of her young children, had been careless and was partly at fault.
The withdrawal followed days of backlash against Bethesda, Md.-based Marriott International Inc., which had claimed in its defense of a lawsuit by the woman that she had "failed to exercise due care for her own safety and the safety of her children and proper use of her senses and facilities."
Her attacker is serving a 20-year prison term for the 2006 attack at the Stamford hotel. Critics said the blame-the-victim defense wasn't softened by the apology.
"I thought it was despicable, disgusting and all too common," said Jessica Mindlin, a national director for the Victim Rights Law Center in Boston. "It's like a second rape." The defense claim was made before attorneys finished taking the victim's deposition, Derrico said, "so as not to waive a potential defense." He said that Marriott officials asked his law firm to withdraw the claim in July, but that his associate had not done so because his mother died.



Link:http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=8348288