A Hotel Sexual Assault in Lancaster County: What Survivors and Families Need to Know Right Now
A woman was staying at a hotel in Strasburg Borough on the night of December 11, 2025. According to charging documents, she and a friend had been drinking beers with members of a construction crew working at the Clarion Inn on the 1400 block of Historic Drive. Later that night, a man from that crew knocked on the door of the women’s room and invited them to another room to drink. The woman went with him, expecting her friend to follow. The friend did not immediately follow. When the woman got to the other room, she was raped and assaulted. The friend eventually came to the room, confronted the man, and yelled for someone to call 911. The suspect had already left by the time police arrived that night, but officers found and arrested him the next morning. He is now being held at Lancaster County Prison without bail on charges including rape and strangulation.
If you are reading this because something like this happened to you or to someone you love, this page is for you. We are Ralph Manginello and Lupe Peña. We are trial lawyers at Attorney911. We have spent our careers in courtrooms representing people who were hurt because a business or property owner failed in its basic duty to keep them safe. We are not going to tell you what happened is your fault. We are going to tell you what Pennsylvania law actually gives survivors of sexual assault in hotels, what evidence needs to be preserved before it disappears, what insurance companies do when they find out what happened, and what your rights are in the days and weeks ahead. The call is free. The consultation is confidential. We don’t get paid unless we win your case.
Pennsylvania Law: Your Deadlines, Your Damages, and the Things the Defense Will Try to Take Away
Pennsylvania gives injury victims a defined window to bring a civil case, and it defines how fault and damages are handled. These rules apply to sexual assault survivors in hotels just as they do to any other personal injury claim.
The statute of limitations is two years. Pennsylvania’s general personal injury statute of limitations requires that an action to recover damages for personal injury be commenced within two years from the date the cause of action accrued.
“An action to recover damages for personal injury must be commenced within two years from the date the cause of action accrued.” — 42 Pa. C.S. § 5524
That two-year clock is the single most important deadline in your case. There are narrow exceptions that can extend it — for example, when the injury or its cause could not reasonably have been discovered right away (the “discovery rule”), or when the victim was a minor at the time — but you should not assume an exception applies without speaking to a lawyer. If the two-year window is approaching, the call needs to happen now, not later. We have seen what happens to families who waited to see if they were “ready” and lost their right to sue by the time they called.
Pennsylvania follows modified comparative negligence at the 51% bar. Under Pennsylvania’s comparative fault rule, your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault — but if you are found to be 51% or more at fault, your recovery is barred entirely. The defense will try to pin fault on you. They will say you drank too much. They will say you should have locked the door. They will say you went to the other room voluntarily. None of those arguments, standing alone, makes a sexual assault survivor 51% at fault for being raped. Pennsylvania juries understand that being impaired or going somewhere voluntarily does not equal consenting to assault. A skilled trial lawyer can defeat these arguments, but you need to be ready for them.
Punitive damages are available for outrageous conduct. Pennsylvania allows punitive damages when a defendant’s conduct shows a reckless indifference to the rights of others. A hotel that knew about prior assaults or dangerous conditions, that cut security to save money, that ignored warning signs from staff or police — that kind of conduct is exactly what punitive damages exist to punish. Punitive damages are not capped in Pennsylvania the way they are in some other states, and they are designed to send a message. We pursue them in every case where the facts support them.
What the Insurance Company Will Do — and How We Counter Every Move
Sexual assault claims involving a hotel are almost always defended by the hotel’s commercial general liability (CGL) insurer or by a specialized sexual-abuse-and-molestation carrier. These insurers have a playbook. We have seen every move in it. Here is what they will try to do to your case, and how we stop each one.
Move 1: Blame you. The first move is always to shift fault onto the survivor. You drank. You went to the other room. You didn’t lock your door. You should have known better. The counter is the law: Pennsylvania’s comparative fault rule does not erase a sexual assault victim’s recovery because she was impaired, or because she walked into another room, or because she failed to lock a door. A skilled cross-examination makes clear that consent is not the absence of “no”; consent is the presence of “yes,” and a person who is being assaulted is not consenting. We do not let a survivor’s social choices become the reason the hotel pays nothing. We hold the line in voir dire and at trial that victim-blaming has no place in this courtroom.
Move 2: Settle fast and cheap. Within weeks of the report, the insurer will often reach out with a sympathetic-sounding adjuster who offers a small check “to help with immediate expenses,” attached to a release that closes your right to sue forever. The check is small. The release is permanent. We never let a survivor sign anything from an insurance company without the document being reviewed by counsel first. We will tell you, in writing, whether an early offer is real money or a trap. Sometimes we can negotiate a fair early number; more often, the early offer is a fraction of what the case is actually worth.
Move 3: Dispute the injuries. Insurers routinely argue that a survivor’s PTSD, depression, anxiety, or sleep problems are exaggerated, pre-existing, or unrelated to the assault. We counter with objective documentation: the SANE exam, contemporaneous psychiatric evaluations, DSM-5 diagnoses from treating clinicians, validated instruments such as the CAPS-5 and PCL-5, prescription records, and testimony from the people who knew the survivor before and after the assault. Invisible injuries are still injuries. We build the record that proves them.
Move 4: Deny or limit coverage. Many CGL policies contain exclusions for assault, battery, or sexual misconduct. The insurer will claim the assault was an “expected and intended” act by the attacker and therefore not covered. We have seen this fight and we know how to win it. In Pennsylvania, the insurer’s coverage obligation to the insured (the hotel) is separate from the hotel’s liability to the survivor, and we pursue both. We also pursue the hotel’s failure-to-supervise and negligent-hiring theories directly against the hotel itself, which bypasses many of the assault exclusions in the CGL policy. When the hotel is self-insured or carries a large deductible, we go after the hotel’s own assets. And we always look for additional coverage — umbrella policies, excess layers, and any employer liability for the construction contractor’s crew.
Move 5: Delay until you give up. Insurance companies know that survivors of sexual trauma often cannot endure years of litigation. They drag their feet on document production, refuse to schedule depositions, and run out the clock hoping the survivor will settle for less or drop the case entirely. We do not let delay become a weapon. We set firm deadlines, file motions to compel, and push the case forward so that the survivor’s story is told on our timeline, not theirs.
What to Do in the First 72 Hours
If you or someone you love was sexually assaulted at a hotel in Lancaster County, here is what to do, and what not to do, in the next three days.
Do get medical care. Go to Lancaster General Hospital or Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health, or to the nearest hospital with a SANE program. Tell them what happened. The SANE exam is both a medical step and an evidence step — and it is far more useful the sooner it is done.
Do report to police. If you have not already, file a report with the Strasburg Borough Police Department and request a copy of the incident number. If the suspect is being criminally prosecuted, that case and the civil case are parallel tracks. You do not have to choose between them.
Do write down everything you remember. While it is fresh, write or record your recollection of the night: who you spoke with, what was said, what was offered, the layout of the rooms, the lighting, the sounds, the smell, the order of events. Do not worry about being organized. Do not edit. Memory crystallizes early and degrades fast; capturing it now protects it.
Do tell one trusted person. An outcry witness — a friend, family member, counselor — who heard your account early is corroboration. Tell them. Let them write down when you told them and what you said.
Do not post on social media. Insurance companies will scrape your Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and any other platform for anything they can twist into “she was fine,” “she’s exaggerating,” or “she’s lying.” Silence is your friend. If you want to talk to someone about how you feel, talk to a counselor or a trusted person in private.
Do not talk to the hotel’s insurance company or their lawyer. Anything you say can and will be used. If they call, tell them you are not able to discuss the case and that your attorney will be in touch.
Do not throw anything away. Clothing, sheets, towels, the room key card, your phone with location history, text messages with friends, receipts from the bar — every piece of physical and digital evidence is potential proof.
Do call us. The evidence clock is running. The sooner we can send a preservation letter to the hotel, the police, and the construction contractor, the better. We do not get paid unless we win. The consultation is free. The call is confidential.
The Survivor Is Not to Blame
We are going to say this one more time because we have seen what happens to survivors who never hear it: what happened to you is not your fault. You did not consent because you had been drinking. You did not consent because you went to another room. You did not consent because you did not lock the door. You did not consent because you were alone. You did not consent because your friend was not there. You did not consent because the attacker was someone connected to the hotel or someone you had met socially. Pennsylvania law and human decency agree: the only person responsible for a sexual assault is the person who committed it.
If you have been carrying shame that is not yours to carry, we want you to know that a jury in Pennsylvania will not punish you for what happened. A skilled trial lawyer can make that clear from jury selection through closing argument. We have done it before. We will do it for you.
A Final Word
If you or a loved one was sexually assaulted at a hotel in Lancaster County — at the Clarion Inn in Strasburg, or anywhere else — you have rights under Pennsylvania law. You have the right to pursue the hotel for its failure to protect you. You have the right to compensation for the harm you have suffered. You have the right to have your story told in a courtroom where the rules of evidence and the instructions of the judge prevent the kind of victim-blaming that too often silences survivors.
We will tell you the truth about your case, including its challenges. We will not make promises we cannot keep. We will not charge you a fee unless we recover money for you. We will move fast to preserve the evidence before it disappears. We will fight the insurance company’s playbook move by move. And we will be in the courtroom with you, in English or in Spanish, from the first preservation letter to the final verdict.
Call us any time, day or night, at 1-888-ATTY-911 (1-888-288-9911). You can also reach us directly at (713) 528-9070 or by cell at (713) 443-4781, or email Ralph at ralph@atty911.com or Lupe at lupe@atty911.com. Hablamos Español. The consultation is free, the conversation is confidential, and you do not pay us unless we win.
We also handle the full range of injury cases that arise alongside these facts — from brain injuries caused by strangulation or assault, to wrongful-death claims when an assault victim is lost, to the workplace-injury claims of the construction crew members who witnessed what happened or who were also exposed to unsafe conditions. If your situation touches more than one of these areas, we can help you see the full picture. You can also learn more about how we approach cases by watching our guides on what to do after a serious injury and on how contingency fees work in injury cases, and you can review our full practice areas.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The information on this page is general legal information based on Pennsylvania law as of June 2026 and the publicly available facts of the reported Strasburg case; it is not legal advice for your specific situation. Calling us starts a confidential consultation — not an attorney-client relationship — until we both sign an engagement letter. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.