Heidi Sorrem and her husband, Corey, talk about their trip from their Greenfield, Wis., home to a Mexico resort in Sept. 2016 to celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary. After a couple of shots they both blacked out and Heidi ended up in a hospital. Mike De Sisti/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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The young woman behind the desk at the police station in Playa del Carmen toggled between her cellphone and computer, Snap Chatting with friends and scrolling through Facebook, as she asked the young man from Boston whether he had ever enjoyed sex.
How that was relevant, he didn’t know. He was at the police department in the small Mexican city south of Cancun to report that he had just been drugged and raped while receiving a massage at a world-renowned resort and spa.
The young man was told that the woman — Claudia, as he recalls — was a psychologist. They sat in a windowless room and after a while she handed him some paper and told him to draw some pictures. No stick figures. As detailed as possible. 
A tree. A man. A woman. A person trapped in the rain without an umbrella.
Now draw your family, she said. The 29-year-old man broke down. All he wanted to do was to get home, see his family. The senseless questions and exercises were too much.
But he had to stay — had to endure a four-hour psychological test, a humiliating physical exam and then miss his flight home — if he had any hope of getting justice and stopping the perpetrator from harming anyone else.
He drew the picture.
Three months later, there’s no sign of justice; no indication Mexican police pursued the case. The man is back home, struggling through the emotional aftermath. 
The despair and frustration he’s facing are familiar to dozens of vacationers who have been victimized at upscale, all-inclusive Mexican resorts.
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Following blackouts, robberies, assaults, even the death of a loved one, they have experienced indifferent — if not hostile — treatment from resort staffers, local police, and doctors, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation has found.
The harm is worsened when travelers quickly learn that catching criminals, filing a lawsuit and otherwise obtaining justice in Mexico is nearly impossible.
And that the U.S. Department of State does little or nothing to help them.
“The laws in Mexico make it very, very difficult to hold anyone accountable,” said Nancy Winkler, a Philadelphia attorney who represented a family whose 22-year-old son drowned in a Mexican resort pool in 2007. “It’s a nightmare.”
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“From the Mexican perspective, they can’t even find 43 students who disappeared, were tortured and killed,” said Ribando Seelke, who co-authored the June report to Congress entitled “U.S.-Mexican Security Cooperation: The Mérida Initiative and Beyond.
“They have people hacked to bits every day and nobody cares.”
Earl Anthony Wayne, a former U.S. ambassador to Mexico under President Barack Obama, said the system has failed the majority of the Mexican population — and it’s no different for visitors.
“The justice system is the justice system, for everybody,” said Wayne, now with the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. “There isn’t a separate system for Americans and Europeans … And the whole law enforcement system is strained.”
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Photos: Tragedy for two men in Mexico
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Rick Autrey of Dallas was at the Hard Rock Hotel Riviera Maya in May when he became seriously ill. Autrey, a barber, was pulled from a resort pool pulseless and blue. While he was unconscious, his friend had to put $10,000 on his credit card to ensure Autrey would receive care.  Rick Autrey
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Photos: Tragedy for two men in Mexico
Rick Autrey, the barber from Texas, was at the Hard Rock Cancun in May, courtesy of a friend who won the trip through work.
They had just arrived and were at the pool bar drinking rum-and-Cokes. His friend went back to the room. Autrey said he would meet him there shortly. 
Instead, he blacked out and floated face down into a group of people standing in the chest-deep water. At first they thought he was pranking them. When he didn’t respond, they realized he was nearly dead.
Somebody pulled him up on the bar and started giving him CPR. That continued until an ambulance came and took him to one hospital and then — several hours later —  to another in Cancun, both part of a chain called Hospiten that contracts with resorts. 
He was in a coma for two days, then suddenly opened his eyes.
His wife was at his side. She told him to blink if he understood what she was saying. He did. Their kids came in the room and asked him to squeeze their hands. He did. Then he fell back asleep.
The family hired a medivac jet to fly him out the next day.


Autrey has yet to return to work at his barber shop. A wound on his foot hasn’t healed, and doctors told him to wait before he stands on it all day. Insurance has covered about $10,000 of the $50,000 bill. The family is hoping it will cover more.
Like others, he longs for justice. But there was no police investigation, and the hotel would not provide the family with footage from surveillance cameras at the pool. 
When he read stories about what happened to others, it gave him chills.
“They are scary similar,” Autrey said. “But you can’t prove anything. I can’t prove it was tainted alcohol.”
He doesn't think a few rum-and-Cokes incapacitated him.
“I’m 60 years old. It’s not like I’m going down there binge drinking, lining up shots.” 
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The U.S. Department of State does not track how many people are injured in foreign countries every year. The agency’s data show that 75 U.S. citizens were killed in Mexico in 2016 and that 39 Americans drowned. Beyond that, details are sparse.
The agency can’t say how many citizens have called to report being drugged, assaulted or robbed. It can’t say how many citizens pursue legal action as a result of being harmed. Nor does the agency track complaints about hospital care or costs.
The department doesn't keep that "level of granularity," a spokeswoman told the Journal Sentinel.
If it did, it might have detected the problems and sounded an alarm. 
It wasn't until after the Journal Sentinel reports that the department added language to its website warning travelers about problems with alcohol at Mexican resorts, but even that isn't easy to find.
As it stands, workers at the U.S. consulate offices in Mexico have little ability to help U.S. citizens who have been victims of crimes. The workers cannot advocate on behalf of the citizens. They cannot translate the language. They cannot offer legal advice or help investigate a situation. 
“We cannot investigate. Period,” said Uzma Javed, an officer with the department’s Office of Overseas Citizens Services. “We don’t have the jurisdiction … We are very limited in what we can and cannot do.”
The one thing they can do for victims of crimes is help them contact local authorities and accompany them to the police department or hospital if asked. 
Hospiten, the private hospital chain that contracts with Iberostar Hotels & Resorts and other resorts in the area, said the company treated more than 24,000 people from all countries in its five emergency departments in Mexico last year, the vast majority in Cancun and Riviera Maya.
Hospiten officials acknowledged, in a written statement to the Journal Sentinel, that when a patient arrives “administrative procedures are initiated to guarantee the necessary financial resources” for treatment.

“Every patient who goes to the emergency department of our hospitals, without exception and regardless of their nationality and economic condition, receives timely and adequate medical attention based on personal circumstances and seriousness of their illness,” the statement said.
There’s nothing that officers with the U.S. consulate can do about the way hospitals conduct business and treat U.S. citizens, Javed said.  
“When we hear about these types of cases, we reach out to the hospital and let them know,” she said. “We’re not able to force this on them.
“It’s not like in the U.S. where you go into the ER and they bill you later.”
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Nolan Webster never made it to the hospital. 
His body lay on a lounge chair by the pool for several hours after he drowned at a busy Cancun resort on a bright January day in 2007. Hotel staff covered his body with towels. 
He was 22, at the Grand Oasis Hotel from Massachusetts with his girlfriend, celebrating his college graduation just two weeks earlier.  
Titto Chickee, an emergency room nurse from London, Ontario, was there that day.
Chickee had just arrived and was scoping out the pool area in the late afternoon when he heard people yelling for help:
Does anyone know CPR?
He raced over. Webster was lying at the side of the pool, turning blue as the guests around him scrambled to figure out what to do.
Chickee immediately began CPR, but when hotel security guards arrived, they quickly pulled him off Webster.
“Security kept saying, ‘Leave him alone. He’s drunk, he’s drunk,’” Chickee told the Journal Sentinel. “I was saying ‘I don’t care if he’s drunk, he’s blue and he’s not breathing.’ ”

Chickee's CPR had gotten Webster breathing again — short, labored breaths. Webster had coughed up water and foam and a little color had returned to his face. But Chickee could see that he was starting to turn blue again.
He frantically shouted at the security staff and on-site doctor, who had since arrived, that the man needed oxygen. They didn’t move. Chickee broke loose and tried to grab the oxygen bag from the doctor’s medical kit.
“I was lifted up and held on the ground,” he said. “I started fearing for my life. I could not comprehend why nobody would help him, how anyone could have such disregard for human life.
"To this day, it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.”
For days, Chikee searched the Internet to find Nolan Webster’s parents to let them know what had happened. 
On a Friday nearly two weeks after her son’s death, Maureen Webster was at her home near Boston when she received an email from Chickee. 
In it, he told her how resort staff “did nothing, and just stood there while (her son) died.”
“I am extremely distraught and disgusted by these circumstances,” he wrote. “Please contact me to discuss further, I cannot rest until you know the truth.”
“Thank God you found me,” Webster replied. “I have heard so many people mention you and I prayed we would find you.”
Other people who witnessed what happened also reached out to the Websters.
“I want you to have an exact account of what we saw because what we saw was greatly upsetting and very wrong,” wrote one couple, Etienne and Kenneth Marchione of Westford, Mass.
They told how Chickee "was very, very distraught and hysterical, tears were coming off of his face because he tried so very hard only to have the Mexican emergency response and Grand Oasis personnel force him to get away.”
“My husband and I are still in complete shock and we only hope you will find a way to justice in your son’s death,” the Marchiones wrote.
They said Nolan had been smiling and jumping around in the water just minutes earlier and appeared to be “jolly and happy.” Nobody reported that he appeared drunk.
Erin Hambleton was there that day as well. She wrote to Webster saying that had the resort staff taken action “this boy might have had a fighting chance, but they did not give him the opportunity.”
Others detailed how Webster’s girlfriend came down from their room a few minutes later not realizing what had happened. She screamed, began crying hysterically and “crumpled.” 
Multiple people reported that resort staff picked her up by her hands and feet and carried her away.
Maureen Webster’s attorney, Nancy Winkler, said suing foreign-based businesses is very difficult.
Those who are victims of crimes at resorts that own U.S. assets, and those who booked their trips through agencies that have U.S. ties, have better odds of holding companies accountable.
In Maureen Webster's case, she booked the trip for her son through Pennsylvania-based Apple Vacations. She sued them, the travel agency and Oasis Hotels. All three agreed to settlements for confidential sums.
The key: Reliable testimony from Chickee and more than a dozen eyewitness accounts. Other victims typically start with little or nothing on which to build a legal case.
The settlements provided no solace for Webster, however. Looking back, she thinks the lawsuit had no impact in forcing improvements.
"I absolutely do NOT think it did one damn bit of good to hold them accountable or cause them to make any changes," she wrote in an email. "I hated settling. Hardest decision I've ever made in my life."
Oasis Hotels did not respond to multiple emails from the Journal Sentinel seeking comment. 
Webster launched a website, mexicovacationawareness.com, in hopes of spreading the word about what happened to her son, the dangers of Mexico, and to provide a space for others to share their experiences.
That's how she met Karen Smith.
Smith's son, Brian Mannuci, drowned in the same pool, under similar circumstances four years later.
Smith has not filed a lawsuit. There was no police investigation into her son's death. Witnesses have said little and the resort maintained it has no video surveillance.
“I naively believed that the Mexican authorities would conduct an investigation,” Smith said in an email. “I also assumed the U.S. Embassy would get involved and between the two of them I'd find out exactly what happened, what he was drinking, who he was with, etc. None of that happened.
“I reluctantly gave up since we had nothing to go on ... no witnesses, no police report, no travel agency, etc.”
And as a result, "no closure," she said.
On Jan. 7 of this year, Abbey Conner, the 20-year-old Wisconsin woman, was pulled from a resort pool 30 miles down the road.
It was 10 years to the day after Nolan Webster's death.
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The Grand Velas Riviera Maya resort is included on AAA’s exclusive "Five Diamond Award" list and is a member of The Leading Hotels of the World, a network of more than 375 luxury resorts that are approved by the organization’s executive committee. Nightly prices at the Grand Velas start upwards of $600. 
The man from Boston was staying at a nearby resort in May, but sought out the Grand Velas for its world-famous spa. He booked an 80-minute massage and was assigned a therapist named Diego.
He had a Mimosa or a similar drink at brunch hours earlier and felt fine. No alcohol since. At the start of the massage, he was lying on his stomach, his face in the cradle of the table. The therapist put something under his nose and told him to breathe in. He figured it was some type of aromatherapy oil that massage therapists commonly use to help clients relax.
He fell deeply asleep. The man, who isn't being named per the Journal Sentinel's policy pertaining to victims of sexual assault, told the newspaper that he awoke to find he was being sexually assaulted. When he tried to get up, he felt weak and the therapist pushed him back down.    
When it was over, he complained to a hotel manager. That night, he called the U.S. Consulate. He filed a police report and went to the hospital. He stayed in Mexico an extra six days to ensure the paperwork — much of which has to be filed in person — and other procedures of the Mexican judicial system were properly followed. 
Once home, he wrote letters to the hotel and to executives of The Leading Hotels of the World, AAA and American Express, since Grand Velas was included in its Fine Hotels & Resorts program. 
He sought out help from an attorney who handled many of the cases against Catholic priests in Boston.
To date, he has yet to hear whether Mexican authorities are pursuing criminal charges.
Everyone with a stake in the issue appears to have sided with the resort. 
"Thank you for sharing this with me. I am simply speechless and very much feel your upset. What you have described is a serious criminal act," Ted Teng, executive director of The Leading Hotels of the World, wrote in an email to the man this month. "While I have no reasons to doubt your statement, please also accept that I must give the benefit of the doubt to the hotel and the employee of this alleged crime."
Grand Velas defended its “top-performing” therapist, saying he had worked at the spa for a year with no complaints and that the man from Boston did not behave in a manner consistent with someone being raped. 
“He had the opportunity to terminate the massage, to leave the treatment room, which was unlocked and accessible from other rooms, to call for help, none of which he did,” a resort spokeswoman wrote in an email to the Journal Sentinel. 
The resort moved the therapist to a beach-side station where his massages would be given in public, "out of an abundance of caution," the spokeswoman said.
He quit a few weeks later. 
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MEXICO IS LAUGHING AT US ...  "STUPID AMERICANS." 
WE CAN'T EVEN BUILD A WALL. TO PROTECT OURSELVES ... 
STUPID ASS LIBERALS ... WHEN AMERICANS CAN'T FIND 
JOBS IN AMERICA ... MAN TOLD ME, " IF YOU DON'T SPEAK
SPANISH YOU'LL HAVE A HARD TIME FINDING WORK. " WHAT 
THE F@@@. IN SOUTH CAROLINA WE CAN'T GET WORK AS 
CARPENTERS BECAUSE WE DON'T SPEAK SPANISH ... ??? 
WTH ... HOW STUPID ARE WE WASHINGTON ... IDIOTS ...