[italic]Claims it was consensual. But if the kid is transphobic as the tranny claims, why would the kid consent? The teen isn't a tranny chaser. My guess is that the transcult response will be, "women rape, too. It's misandrist to say only men rape." Coming soon to a women's bathroom near you....[/italic]
Early in the evening of July 4, Micaela Giles’s mobile phone started sounding alerts, and a series of messages straight out of a horror movie began scrolling down her screen.
Her 19-year-old son told her that his Airbnb host in Madrid had locked him in the fourth-floor apartment where he was supposed to be staying and removed the key. The host was still there, he said, rattling knives around in the kitchen drawer and pressing him to submit to a sexual act. He begged his mother for help.
When she called Airbnb, its employees would not give her the address and would not call the police. Instead, they gave her a number for the Madrid police and told her to ask the police to call the company for the address. But the number led to a recording in Spanish that kept disconnecting her, she said, and when she repeatedly called back her Airbnb contact, the calls went straight to voice mail.
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According to her son, Jacob Lopez, he was sexually assaulted that night. Eventually, he persuaded his host to free him. He returned home to Massachusetts and is in trauma therapy.
[bold]His host, who was born male but is living as a woman, denied Mr. Lopez’s accusations. She denied threatening him and said that the sex act was consensual and that he is transphobic.[/bold] If she is right, filing a false police report and telling the story publicly would be an unlikely way to bury a regrettable experience.
But the central question here is for Airbnb: Just how much responsibility is it willing to assume for the safety of its customers? It refers to them as guests and promotes its security measures and hospitality. But its employees made a choice here that a hotel might not make in similar circumstances. Rather than sending someone to check on Mr. Lopez, Airbnb put the onus on his mother to make that happen.
Airbnb, Uber and their ilk have managed to get people to refer to them as pioneers of something called the sharing economy, a neat trick given that they are in the business of renting out rooms and charging for rides.
What they do share, however, is risk. As I’ve pointed out in previous columns, insurance companies aren’t always fond of everyday individuals running inns out of their apartments and driving people around for money.
