Wellesley woman says she was attacked and seriously injured by three men in an Airbnb rental in Barcelona

Yordanova spent 11 days in hospital and never returned to her first-year program abroad in Ireland.

“It was supposed to be the best semester of my life,” said Yordanova, who had to wear a steel device drilled into her skull for two months and still has a titanium rod in her right arm since the incident. 2018. “It turned out to be the worst.”

Now Yordanova is suing the multibillion-dollar online vacation rental company, arguing that Airbnb failed to provide her with a safe place to stay when she arrived in Barcelona.

An Airbnb spokesperson did not comment on Yordanova’s lawsuit, but confirmed that her host was “removed from Airbnb” after the incident. He also sent a link to a list of safety measures the company has taken to keep customers safe, including “reducing disruptive gatherings” and offering tools to protect women traveling alone.

“And we believe our efforts are paying off. Between July 1, 2019 and June 30, 2020, only 0.086% of trips included a safety issue reported by a host or guest,” the company said in a press release sent to The Globe in response to questions about the incident. . .

But, for a company as big as Airbnb, even a small percentage of trips means big numbers. Bloomberg reported last month that Airbnb receives 200,000 safety complaints a year. In October 2018, the Globe describe the test of two Boston resident doctors who were woken in the middle of the night by their Airbnb host, who crashed through a window of the guesthouse they were renting. It had been rated as a “superhost” and had excellent reviews.

Bloomberg reported that Airbnb has spent millions of dollars to keep guest complaints out of the public eye, including paying $7 million to a tourist who said she was raped at an Airbnb rental in Manhattan. Bloomberg reported that a secret security team is authorized to spend any amount to manage crises in their rentals.

One such incident took place in Barcelona, ​​where a host lured two American women to his home and raped them, according to the story.

“I want people to know it can happen. You can get an Airbnb and you can end up in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Yordanova said in an interview. “I want to have some sort of closure. I know I will never have it with people who hurt me physically. But I can get closure from the people who put me in the position in the first place – it’s Airbnb.

Yordanova was a Simmons University junior in the fall of 2018, enrolled in a program in Dublin when a group of friends decided to take a detour to Spain. She left a day earlier. She wasn’t looking for any fancy place, just a place to spend the night.

When she arrived at the building around 9:30 p.m. and her host, a Russian woman named Tamara, was not there to let her in, she panicked. She had no cell phone service, so she asked tourists to help her. After a series of frantic calls to Airbnb, she was put in touch with Tamara, who told her it was too late to move into the original apartment. Tamara then directed her to another apartment where she said she could have a room for the night for an additional charge. She hurried over, grateful to have a place to go.

There, Yordanova said, Tamara led her to a room that, in violation of Airbnb policy, had no lock. Three young men were in another room of the same apartment.

After eating something, Yordanova says, she went straight to bed.

In the middle of the night, she awoke to find the three men carrying her from her bed, according to a lawsuit she filed late last month in Norfolk Superior Court against Airbnb. The men allegedly dragged her down a stucco staircase, but she screamed so loudly that they dropped her on the steps. Yordanova, according to the lawsuit, “fell and rolled down the entire staircase, suffering severe injuries and extreme pain and suffering.”

Neighbors heard her scream and called police, who found her in an alley outside the building.

Yordanova, who is still suffering from the physical and psychological effects of the attack, finds it too painful to describe the actual assault, said her attorney, George A. McLaughlin. She was not sexually assaulted, he said, but believes she was the victim of an attempted kidnapping.

“Maybe they thought it would be a quick grab and throw her in a van,” said McLaughlin, who filed the lawsuit with attorney Joel E. Faller on June 30. “The only problem is she fought and screamed and they let her down. . Lights were going on in the neighborhood.

Yordanova was taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries – her neck was fractured in two places and she had a broken arm, the suit says. She spent four days in intensive care and another week after that in hospital.

A titanium rod was placed inside his arm and will likely remain there, according to the lawsuit. She has large visible scars.

But the neck injuries were worse. Because the surgery was considered too risky, doctors instead screwed a device called a halo into his head to hold his upper body steady, essentially immobilizing him for two months.

“The hospital was right on the boardwalk with the ocean outside,” she said. “It was so beautiful, but I was in such an anxious place. I didn’t know if I would ever be able to put my feet in the sand.

Police interviewed Yordanova in hospital and showed her photos of men who matched the description she had given them. But she didn’t recognize any of the men in the photos.

According to the report, “it was not possible to identify” the alleged attackers. “However, if further incriminating evidence is obtained in the future,” the case will continue.

Tamara, whose last name is unknown, told a friend of Yordanova, who had stopped by the apartment to collect her belongings, that she thought Yordanova jumped out the window, according to McLaughlin.

For its part, Airbnb stopped posting rental listings for Tamara and offered Yordanova a token settlement, but she declined the offer, McLaughlin said. He said he was offered $50,000. Airbnb’s spokesperson said it had no information on any settlement offer.

“I was shocked at how cavalier they were about it,” McLaughlin said. “They pooped. ‘We have no records. It didn’t happen,” he said.

Yordanova, who was taking pre-med classes with hopes of becoming a doctor, was eventually able to return to school and complete her bachelor’s degree, taking additional classes so she could graduate with her class in 2020. She now works as a technician at a Boston hospital.

But the experience has shaken her so much that she still has trouble functioning. She panics when there is an emergency at the hospital and starts shaking and sweating when in crowds.

“If they had just found me a registered place and made sure the place was safe, none of this would have happened. I was not safe. I was never safe,” she said.

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Andrea Estes can be contacted at [email protected].