The mother of one of the Kentucky moms who was allegedly drugged and raped at a Bahamas resort knew “something wasn’t quite right” before she received the disturbing text message revealing the alleged assault earlier this month.
“Call us now we’ve been drugged and raped,” Frankie King, Dongayla Dobson’s mother, recalled the message to Fox News.
Dobson and her childhood best friend Amber Shearer had taken a Carnival Cruise where they spent one day relaxing at the Pirates Cove Resort on Grand Bahama beach in February.
The moms were spending time at the beach when a resort staffer offered them a two-for-one drink deal, Dobson said.
They received two tropical drinks, one in a pineapple and the other in a coconut, but soon felt the drinks were stronger than expected, becoming highly intoxicated 15 minutes after their first sips, Dobson told NewsNation’s “Cuomo.”
King knew something wasn’t right when she talked with Dobson on Facetime in the morning and noticed her daughter seemed “a little weird.”
“I asked her if she was ok and she said ‘she was fine’ and had just sat down at a bar to have something to drink,” King recalled.
“A few minutes later I logged onto Facebook and saw a video where they were all over the place and just giggling and laughing and just not themselves at all.”
After watching the footage, King says she called her daughter back to ensure the two friends were fine, and to question how many drinks they already had.
Travel advisories issued for the Bahamas, Jamaica
- The US Embassy issued a stark security warning and travel advisory on Jan. 24 after the Bahamas saw 18 primarily gang-related murders in January.
- The US Embassy warning urged travelers to “exercise extreme caution” on the eastern side of the Bahamas’ capital city, Nassau.
- Bahamian Prime Minister Philip Davis said in a statement the government is “alert, attentive, and proactive” in keeping the island nation “welcoming” to travelers.
- The State Department issued a stark travel warning for Jamaica after it was rocked by 65 murders last month. The US Embassy in Jamaica upgraded the travel advisory to a Level 3, “Reconsider travel,” which is just one level short of the most severe, which warns Americans against travel altogether.
- The Bahamian and Jamaican tourism boards are insisting the countries are still safe for tourists despite the United States’ warnings.
Dobson reportedly told her mother she had yet to finish one full drink.
“They don’t drink a lot, but I’ve seen both of those girls drunk,” King said. “I knew there was something else going on. Like something’s not quite right, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.”
Dobson and Shearer were allegedly lured to a secluded area by one male resort staffer to look for seashells in the time between the alarming video and the haunting text message.
When she came through, Shearer told NewsNation she was in the “process of my rape.”
The two were eventually found unconscious inside a bathroom by another resort worker.
“Every parent’s worst nightmare,” King said. “Your child’s in trouble, in danger and scared and they are 300 miles away, I can’t get to them.”
After the incident was reported to the resort and local police, two male staffers a 40-year-old of South Bahamia and a 54-year-old of Eight Mile Rock were arrested by Royal Bahamas police in connection to the sexual assault.
While Dobson and Shearer were aboard the cruise, the US embassy in the Bahamas released a security warning and travel advisory after 18 murders occurred in the country throughout January.
The furious mother reiterated her daughter’s intention to share the photos of her injuries to warn others of the danger of traveling to the Caribbean country.
“Their biggest thing to start posting not long after it happened was that they wanted people to be aware that it is a dangerous place, because they felt like they had no warning,” King said.
Pirates Cove resort, however, claimed that surveillance footage doesn’t match up with Dobson and Shearer’s accounts of what happened.
“Upon further review of the surveillance videos, the allegations made on site, and in subsequent social media posts and news stories, conflict with what the time-stamped surveillance videos contain,” Pirate’s Cove beach resort said in a statement without divulging further details, the Daily Mail reported.
