#Guest claims masseur at luxe NYC hotel sexually assaulted her

An Illinois woman claims she was sexually assaulted by a masseur in a luxe Manhattan hotel.

Margaret Betts was in New York with a friend for an October 2018 weekend when they got upgraded to the duplex penthouse at Sixty Lower East Side, where rooms can go for $2,300 a night.

The night they arrived, Betts asked the front desk of the Allen Street hotel for an in-room, $150 massage.

Betts fell asleep during the relaxing rubdown by “Yuri,” who she assumed was one of the hotel’s on-site spa workers.

But she awoke to a nightmare: He was fondling her and putting his fingers into her vagina, with the horrific violation lasting for 30 more minutes, she charges in a Manhattan Federal Court lawsuit filed June 22.

“I couldn’t believe it had happened,” said Betts, an 41-year-old yoga teacher. “I thought maybe I had done something wrong.”

With her friend asleep on the far side of the 2,000-square-foot penthouse, the 5-foot-4 Betts said she was afraid to resist her muscled 5-foot-10 attacker or call for help.

Paralyzed with fear the assault could become more violent, Betts said she “just froze. I was scared. I kept thinking, ‘What do I do? How do I get myself out of here?’

“I waited for an opportune moment and made a run for it,” she said.

She ended her weekend early and left town, alerting the hotel and police days later to the attack.

A Sixty LES manager claimed they would cancel all future bookings for the masseur, but weeks later Betts was shocked when an NYPD detective told her the hotel couldn’t, or wouldn’t, identify him.

The hotel claimed it shared information with the NYPD but “later on, we found out they weren’t cooperative,” said Betts’ lawyer, Renato Mariotti.

The 141-room hotel hired the masseur “without verifying his credentials, performing a background check, or even knowing his name,” Betts charges in the lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages from the hotel.

The alleged assault has left Betts with flashbacks.

“I don’t feel safe. I don’t want to go out,” she said. “I was assaulted and no one really cared.”