A major Australian accommodation chain has been ordered to make part of a $300,000-plus payout to a worker sexually assaulted by another employee at a company hotel.
The "serious and shocking" assault by a naked and much older man on a 21-year-old woman in December 2010 left the woman with post-traumatic stress disorder and depressive symptoms, according to a tribunal, and she couldn't return to work until 2015.
None of the parties involved can be named due to a non-publication order made in 2013.
The victim and her attacker, the hotel's night caretaker, were sharing an employer-provided apartment in the Brisbane complex after an arrangement with the company when she woke up to find him naked in her room about 5am on December 1, 2010.
A Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal decision published on Friday found he touched her upper thigh and groin and tried to remove her underpants.
She asked him to leave and broke down crying, before the respondent left the room saying something like "I'll let you get changed" before returning to say "this can be our little secret".
The man didn't give evidence in the proceeding and QCAT member Ann Fitzpatrick accepted the woman's account of the incident.
"The sexual assault on the applicant was serious and shocking," she commented.
"She was a very young woman at the time, merely 21 years of age. Her assailant was nearly 70 years of age.
"She was assaulted in her bedroom and was awoken from sleep. She was plainly very vulnerable and she underwent a frightening experience."
The victim had moved into the room, rent-free, as part of an arrangement suggested by her employer when she was asked to move to Brisbane and take up a new role at the hotel.
According to the tribunal, the company's CEO described the night manager as a trustworthy man.
The hotel chain had been fighting the victim's various attempts to seek compensation since at least 2014.
In the latest proceedings, the company argued it was not liable for the assault. It also claimed the victim's evidence "lacked veracity" and she had failed to mitigate her loss.
The hotel argued she didn't have to live in the apartment with the caretaker and denied he acted in the course of his employment.
But Ms Fitzpatrick found the assault had taken place in accommodation arranged for and provided by the company and the man was required to be "available" for work at the time the assault occurred.
"In the terms of the legislation, it matters not if the sexual assault occurred in his private residence or anywhere else in the hotel," she found.
"The critical issue is that it occurred in the course of his work."
The hotel and the woman's attacker were ordered to pay $313,000 within 28 days of the decision being delivered on December 6 last year.
QCAT rejected the hotel's claims it couldn't have done anything to prevent the result and its calls to make findings against the woman's credibility.
