Sandra Pezqueda, a dishwasher who was named one of  The Silence Breakers, Time’s 2017 Person of the Year, settled a lawsuit against the Terranea resort and the staffing agency that placed her there.

“I feel happy that by me breaking the silence more women have spoken out with their own stories. They had remained silent, but by seeing me speak out, they found the courage to speak out too. Me too, Terranea.”

Sharon Merino, who worked as a barista in the resort’s Sea Beans Café, alleges the following about what happened when she reported her allegations of sexual harassment by another employee to human resources in 2017:

“I talked to the HR person for about 45 minutes and told her all the inappropriate things [my male coworker] would say to me. I felt like they were just checking boxes. I remember her saying something to the effect of ‘maybe he didn’t understand, and he thought you were just joking.’ I told her how firm I was, and she still said maybe I didn’t tell him firmly enough. I felt guilty during this time because I didn’t want to cost someone their job, but I also didn’t feel like I should have to deal with this kind of thing at work.”

In one incident several years before she left the hotel in 2017, former Terranea housekeeper Macaria Santos alleged in a sworn declaration that after she reported that a male guest exposed himself to her, her managers in the housekeeping department repeatedly joked about her experience. The male guest had allegedly opened the guest door wearing nothing but an open robe, showing his genitals erect.

“[W]hen I would see [two male housekeeping managers who worked at the Terranea at the time], they continued to make the same stupid joke, always asking me if I had seen any more naked men. They made a joke like that about once a week for a long time, until they eventually just stopped. I would estimate that they said something like that about 10 times. Their tone was always like what they were saying was funny. They never asked how I was feeling or anything serious. They would just ask if I had seen any more naked men, and I would say no.

It made me feel really bad. I had not even told my husband about what happened. Imagine if the man had raped me or tried to do something to me? I felt like they didn’t care.”

Another former Terranea housekeeper, Rosa Marina Moreno Garcia, alleges that a male guest at the Terranea exposed himself to her in about 2013:

“I knocked on the door to his hotel room to make sure no customers were inside before I went in to clean, and I heard him say ‘come in.’ I walked into the room and he was standing by the bed facing me, completely nude. He didn’t move or put anything on to cover himself, he just said ‘you can come in, it’s okay.’ I was shocked and didn’t know what to do, so I said, ‘I’ll come back later,’ and left the room right away. I returned to clean the room the following day. I was so nervous that the man would return while I was in his room that I placed my cart in front of the door to block it.”

Another former dishwasher, who was employed through the same staffing agency as Sandra Pezqueda, alleges sexual harassment at the hands of the same agency supervisor, Teo, named in Sandra’s lawsuit. After Teo propositioned her at work for a sexual relationship in return for a better schedule, she says the following happened in 2014:

“I went to speak with… a manager for the Terranea who oversaw our work and who supervise[d] Teo. I complained to [the former Terranea manager] about what Teo had said to me and told him it made me feel uncomfortable. [He] laughed off my complaint. He said that Teo must have been joking… As far as I know, [the Terranea manager] did not do anything at all about the issue.”