Two mothers from Kentucky were looking forward to their first child-free vacation. They embarked on a Carnival cruise. The ship took them to the Bahamas, where the boat docked to allow passengers to get off and explore the island.
What started off as a fun day on the beach ended in horror as the women claim they were drugged and raped by resort staffers. Now, the two friends are warning other women to take heed.
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A staffer offered the two women drinks on the beach.
Amber Shearer and Dongayla Dobson are long-time friends who now share a traumatic bond. The two women were on Grand Bahama beach when a resort staffer came by and offered the women a two-for-one drink deal, according to their interview with NewsNation’s Cuomo.
They accepted the offer and took pictures with the drinks, one served in a pineapple and one in a coconut. By the time they were working on their second drink, they realized something was wrong. “Less than a few drinks into the second drink, we knew something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong,” Shearer said.
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'I came to in the process of my rape,' Shearer said.
Even the videos they sent back home to family and friends were cause for concern. They seemed highly intoxicated from their first sips after just 15 minutes. After the drinks, the women went out to look for seashells on the beach for their children, according to the New York Post.
That’s when a male staffer offered to show the women where they could find the best shells. The next thing Shearer says she could remember was waking up to being assaulted by a staffer.
“I came to in the process of my rape,” Shearer said on NewsNation, as she broke down. “We were just conscious enough to have, or just aware enough, to know that they were in uniforms,” Dobson said.
While two men were arrested, the women said Bahamian authorities did not administer proper rape kits.
Bahamian authorities were immediately able to identify the two men accused of the assault based on surveillance footage, a news release posted by the Royal Bahamas Police stated. One of the men had only been employed by the resort for a week, according to Shearer. The two men were a 40-year-old South Bahamian and a 54-year-old of Eight Mile Rock.
Still, the two women were angry that local authorities didn’t administer proper rape kits. They claimed local law enforcement viewed them as though they were the criminals. When the women returned to the cruise ship, they received toxicology reports.
The reports showed that several drugs were in their systems, including benzodiazepines. They had no alcohol in their bodies and there were bruises on their legs, Lex 18 reported. “To see the things that showed up on my [toxicology] screen was just traumatizing all over again,” Dobson said.
The women said authorities in the US are not much better.
Now back in Kentucky, the women claim that they haven’t received the help that they desired from law enforcement in the US either. Today, the women are receiving medical care, including HIV prevention medication.
They've decided to go public with their story because they want to prevent this from happening to other women. “You need to be aware because our cruise line did not make us aware of a travel advisory,” Shearer said. “We had no idea what was going on in the Bahamas.”
The US government issued travel advisory warnings for both Bahamas and Jamaica.
The US Embassy issued a security warning and travel advisory on January 24, 2024, after there were 18 gang-related murders that took place that month, according to the New York Post. It advised travelers to “exercise extreme caution” near the capital city of Nassau.
The State Department also issued a travel warning for Jamaica after it endured 65 murders in January. The Bahamian and Jamaican tourism boards have insisted that the countries are still safe for tourists despite the warnings.
If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, the National Sexual Assault Hotline provides confidential 24/7 support. Call 800-656-HOPE (4673) or chat online at RAINN.
