Flight Attendant Accuses British Celebrity Chef of Sexual Assaulting Her in Hotel Room
‘SOMETHING WAS WRONG’
An American Airlines flight attendant alleges in a lawsuit that British celebrity chef Mark Sargeant sexually assaulted her after forcing his way into her hotel room in 2018, the Daily Mail reports. Kimberly Goesling says the incident occurred when she was on a work trip in Germany helping the airline pick out a new menu for international flights. On that trip, she allegedly received inappropriate texts from Sargeant, who’s worked with famed chef Gordon Ramsay. Later in the night, he knocked on her hotel room door and sexually assaulted her, she claims. “It wasn’t like a light knocking. It was (like) something was wrong, somebody needed something,” she told NBC. Goesling is also suing American Airlines, which her lawyer said is responsible for “[hiring] the predator” and “[providing] the alcohol he drank.” “We’ll be able to show that this predator only had Kimberly’s hotel room number because a member of American’s management team gave it to him,” the lawyer added. Goesling also says she was asked, “What were you wearing?” by an American Airlines representative when she first reported the attack.
Goesling filed the lawsuit in 2020 but went public with the allegations this week, according to the Daily Mail. Sargeant has not been criminally charged by police.