My wife Sarah was sexually harassed at a Marriott hotel. When I complained, the hotel had me criminally prosecuted — leading to four nights in detention, including one in a holding cage, and deportation from Qatar with a five-year ban. Help us hold Marriott to account — and drive change in how global hotel groups protect their guests.

What this campaign is for, and what it is not

This is a legal accountability fund, not a personal fundraiser. Neither Sarah nor I will receive a penny from the money raised here.

Every pound that is not required for legal and directly related case costs, and every pound we recover if our case against Marriott succeeds, will be split equally between four charities supporting women affected by sexual violence — at international, US, UK and local levels:

Each charity will receive 25% of any residual and recovered funds.

After already spending £11,000 of our money, we have started this campaign with a personal donation of £3,000. We will continue to contribute from our own resources as our circumstances allow — the £3,000 is a starting point, not the limit of what we intend to put in ourselves.

To ensure contributors can be confident about how funds are handled, this campaign will be subject to independent oversight by a small panel of UK-qualified lawyers, to be confirmed within the first week of the campaign. Their terms of reference, and the names of our instructed legal representatives, will be published publicly through the campaign updates as they are confirmed. We have also committed to publishing quarterly accounts of funds raised, funds spent, and funds donated.

Urgent first milestone — $25,000 (approximately £20,000) in 30 days

Marriott's own contractual terms require any dispute to be pursued through arbitration, and proceedings must be commenced within one year. Because I was not told about my criminal conviction in Qatar until June 2025, that one-year window is now running. We need to raise the first $25,000 (approximately £20,000) within 30 days to instruct our US law firm and commence proceedings before the deadline.

If Marriott chose not to settle we will need to increase the target so that we can afford to take them through arbitration.

As covered by

The Telegraph published a long investigative piece on our case on 20 April 2026. You can read the full article for free

This section will be updated as further coverage develops.

For our full public statement and answers to the most common questions, which you can read here

What happened

In 2024, I was working in Doha on a client project. Sarah, my wife, was with me. We were staying at The Ritz-Carlton Doha — a hotel operated by Marriott International, where I held the top tier of their loyalty programme, Bonvoy Ambassador Elite.

While I was at work, Sarah was sexually harassed at the hotel pool by two men staying as guests. One of them asked her room number and made clear he intended to follow her to her room. Sarah understood that as a threat of sexual violence. She was alone, frightened, and believed — based on an earlier incident at the same hotel — that hotel security would not intervene.

We complained to the hotel that evening. Senior staff told us they had reviewed the CCTV, that the behaviour was unacceptable, and that the men had been removed. We were encouraged to stay for the remainder of our booking.

Two days later, one of the same men reappeared inside the hotel. The assurance we had been given was not true.

What followed

I complained formally to Marriott. I posted a short, factual review on Tripadvisor warning other women of what had happened. Tripadvisor removed the review three days later following a request from the hotel.

What I did not know — and what Marriott and the hotel did not tell me, despite holding all my contact details through the Marriott Bonvoy programme — was that the hotel had filed a criminal complaint against me in Qatar under the country's cybercrime laws. In February 2025, I was tried and convicted in my absence, without ever being notified.

The first I knew of it was in June 2025, when I was detained at Doha airport and handed legal papers in Arabic. In October 2025, I was detained again — held for four nights, the first of them in a freezing holding cage with fifteen men, handcuffed when moved between facilities. I was then deported and banned from Qatar for five years.

The consequences have been significant. My Gulf consulting work, built over nearly a decade, has ended. Sarah has had to live with the trauma of what happened to her and the eighteen months that followed. We have spent that time trying to resolve this privately with Marriott. They have declined to engage meaningfully, and declined to comment when approached by The Telegraph, whose detailed investigation was published this week.

Why we need to raise this money

This is not only about our case.

From the start, we have asked Marriott for three things: meaningful acknowledgement of what happened, fair recognition of the harm caused, and a serious commitment to changing how guest safety complaints are handled across their global estate. The third is the one we care about most. We believe Marriott's conduct in our case reflects a wider institutional failure — in how global hotel groups handle complaints from guests in jurisdictions where local law can be weaponised against them, in how parent brands are accountable for the conduct of their managed and franchised properties, and in whether elite loyalty status means anything when a guest needs the company most.

A successful arbitration against Marriott would establish a precedent that matters far beyond our case.

We have approached multiple US law firms about taking this on a contingency basis. All have declined. One reputable US firm has agreed to represent us, and has quoted up to $150,000 USD (approximately £120,000) to pursue the matter through arbitration. That is the primary purpose of this campaign and the sum we are seeking to raise in total.

Where the money goes

How to follow the case

We will post regular updates through this GoFundMe page, covering confirmation of our independent oversight panel, the progress of the legal case, and any further developments. If you donate, or simply want to follow the campaign, please bookmark this page.

Why we are asking

We are asking because this is genuinely beyond what we can meet from our own resources, and because the alternative is walking away not only from our own case, but from the wider change we believe it can drive. We have thought hard about whether to ask, and we want to be honest that doing so is uncomfortable. We are two professional people who never expected to be in this position.

If you believe women should be safe in hotels, that guests should be able to complain without being criminally prosecuted, and that global hotel groups should be held to account when they fail in their basic duties — please consider supporting us.

Please only give what you can. If you cannot given anything that is absolutely fine, sharing the campaign or the underlying story is just as valuable. Every pound and every share brings us closer to holding Marriott to account, closer to changing how global hotel groups treat guests who complain, and closer to a meaningful donation to the charities that do the work we believe this case should ultimately support. Our ultimate goal is that we win and all of these funds can be given to charity to help others who find themselves in worse positions than us.

Craig