Lawsuit Alleges Sexual Assault at Disneyland

SANTA ANA — A woman has alleged in a lawsuit that she was sexually assaulted in Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion and that park officials had known about a similar attack earlier in the day and taken no action.

Erin Rogers, 38, of Northern California claims in the suit filed in Orange County Superior Court that on June 7, 1996, she and her two sons were in the dark room that starts the Haunted Mansion tour when a man grabbed her breasts from behind “so badly that she experienced hemorrhaging” afterward, said Steven Howard, Rogers’ attorney.

When the lights came on, she saw a man looking at her “kind of funny,” Howard said, and approached him.

“She tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘I know that was you in the dark,’ ” Howard said. “He ran, and she followed him.”

The man went through the Haunted Mansion ride and entered another nearby attraction, while Rogers called security officers, who arrested Daniel Jarrell, a Connecticut resident, Howard said.

Anaheim police confirmed that Jarrell was booked into the city jail.

Afterward, security officers told Rogers that they had had another “report of him doing the same thing on the same ride that same day,” Howard said.

In the lawsuit, Rogers accuses Disneyland of failing to take any precautionary steps to prevent the harm done to her.

Disneyland officials could not be reached for comment.