Sarah Barratt was looking forward to seeing her new husband Craig who was returning home to York from a business trip to Doha. But when the phone rang on Thursday October 9 last year, it was not Craig but his lawyer.

Her husband had been forbidden from boarding his flight at Doha’s Hamad International Airport, he told her. Instead he had been detained by police.

Unbeknown to Sarah, Craig had been carted off into the desert and was lying on the floor of a Qatari police cell, with 15 other men, not knowing when, or if, he’d be allowed to leave.

His ‘crime’, for which Craig, 49, had been tried and found guilty in his absence and without his knowledge, did not, as you might suspect, involve violence, theft, fraud or even traffic offences. He had been convicted of defamation, under Qatar’s cybercrime laws, after criticising a hotel on Tripadvisor. Angry that the hotel management had failed to act on a sexual harassment complaint Sarah had made when the couple had visited Qatar together the previous year, he had shared his views on the popular travel site.

The domino effect from this negative review sounds so beyond belief, it’s more like something one might only conjure up in a fever dream. ‘Honestly, never in our worst nightmares could we have anticipated the fallout from Craig doing what he felt was right, standing up for me and protecting other women from similar harassment,’ says Sarah, 34.

‘He spent four days incarcerated in cells, not knowing if he’d ever be free, while I was back home in York, wondering where he was and whether I’d ever see him again.

‘When Craig was finally released, after the British Embassy responded to my pleas to find and see him, he was banned from re-entering Qatar, where he had worked as a healthcare consultant for three years.

‘This led to the inevitable loss of his job, as all his work was in Qatar, and now, as we were reliant on Craig’s income, we’re on the verge of losing our home.’

Sharing their story with me, the couple still seem shell-shocked.

The incident which led to this downturn in the Barratts’ fortunes happened at The Ritz-Carlton, a Marriott hotel, in July 2024.

In the late afternoon, with Craig working away for the day in Saudi Arabia, Sarah decided to brave the blistering 45-degree temperatures and sit by the pool. She became aware of two men sitting down on sun loungers opposite hers.

When one asked if she could take a photograph of them, she agreed – until he explained he wanted her to use her own phone and send the pictures to them, via WhatsApp.

‘Seeing this as a ruse to get my number, I said “No, absolutely not” and tried to laugh it off, in the hope of diffusing the situation,’ recalls Sarah. ‘Then he asked what room I was staying in and I said “I’m not telling you that,” to which he replied “Oh, so you are staying here?”’

The man – only one of them spoke – then asked who she was with and when she said her partner (she and Craig were yet to marry) who was an adviser to the government, she hoped that might deter them. But she was wrong.

‘He said: “I’m going to come to your room, I’m going to sleep with you. You are going to enjoy it, and you will fall in love with me,” ’ says Sarah, shuddering at the memory.

‘It felt like a threat and I was really scared. There were no other guests around, I think it was too hot for most, and I didn’t want to leave the pool straight away, because I thought they might follow me.

‘They carried on speaking to me, but I tried to signal I wasn’t interested by just looking at my phone.’

In fact, Sarah was messaging Craig telling him she was being sexually harassed and too nervous to return to the room, in case she was pursued. A worried Craig, who was about to board a return flight to Doha, contacted the manager of The Ritz-Carlton, a hotel he ‘loved’ and where he had been a regular visitor.

Indeed, Craig spent so much time in Marriott hotels in the Middle East, he had been awarded Bonvoy Ambassador Elite status, the highest in the chain’s reward programme.

By then, Sarah had returned to their room and a female member of the management team knocked on the door, offering reassurance that staff would look out for her and check CCTV footage of the pool area.

Still feeling unsettled, Sarah told Craig she would like them to move to a different hotel. But when the manager begged the Barratts to stay, upgrading them to a suite, and then messaged, at 9.45pm, to say the men had ‘left the hotel’, she relented.

Three days later, however, the couple were returning from dinner when the two men who had harassed Sarah stepped out of the hotel lift they were about to enter.

‘I was so shocked I thought I must be seeing things at first,’ says Sarah. ‘Craig realised, from the fact I just froze, that it was them. I asked the man why he had spoken to me like that, at the pool, and he laughed, pretending not to speak English. Craig challenged him too, but then I had a panic attack, dropping to my knees, crying and struggling to breathe, in the lobby.

‘It wasn’t just seeing them again, it was realising I’d been lied to, not taken seriously, and that they were still there.’

Incensed, the couple directed their anger towards the managers who said they had reviewed CCTV footage from the pool area and there was no evidence of Sarah having been approached by men. Police were called and the Barratts were told that, if they wanted to press charges, they must go to the local station, which they declined to do.

‘Climbing into a police van, in the early hours, somehow felt risky,’ says Craig.

Instead, at 4am that night, they took an Uber to a different hotel where, still in a heightened state, Craig posted a Trip Advisor review for the Ritz-Carlton which read: ‘Local predators are allowed to harass guests with impunity.’

The review was removed three days later, on the basis that it was not the poster’s ‘first-hand account’.

When they got back home to their four-bedroom house in York, a week later, the couple turned their attention to submitting complaints to Marriott International, seeking both an apology and compensation.

Meanwhile, they got on with their lives. Indeed they travelled back and forth to Qatar over the next 11 months without event, though they never returned to The Ritz-Carlton.

It was in June last year, ten days after their register-office wedding, that they became aware that machinations had been going on behind the scenes in Qatar.

On his next trip to Doha, which he made alone, Craig was going through passport control when he was handed documents in Arabic. They revealed that in February, four months previously, a judge had ruled that he had harmed the hotel’s reputation and he was found guilty under the country’s cybercrime laws.

The Tripadvisor post and WhatsApp messages in which Craig referred to the hotel manager as a ‘bad man’ were included as evidence and he was given a seven-day prison sentence, a deportation order and a fine of 20,000 Qatari riyals (£4,000).

Alarmed at the prospect of being sent to a Qatari jail, Craig sought legal advice, at a cost of £11,000 to discover that, as it was now four months since his conviction, it was too late for a standard appeal.

Much to Craig’s relief, his lawyer was given assurances that he could continue working in Qatar while they appealed the verdict in Qatar’s highest court, the Court of Cassation. The hearing was scheduled for last October and concerned that the verdict might not go his way, Craig scheduled a flight home.

However the appeal had actually been heard a week early, and the verdict upheld, which is why he was detained. Craig, who had already paid the fine, had called his solicitor who joined him at the airport.

‘He told me that the case had been brought forward by seven days and said: “The good news is the prison sentence has been removed, so it’s just the deportation now.”’

When the police seized him, he ‘explained to police that I had my return ticket, my bags were on a British Airways flight and I was about to leave,’ recalls Craig. ‘But the lawyer said “No, that’s not how deportation works. They’re going to take you away now, though they won’t tell me where they’re going to take you.” ’

Craig was driven to the police station in the desert and imprisoned in a metal cage, then handcuffed and transferred without explanation to a deportation centre.

There he spent four days and nights, the only Westerner among hundreds of mostly migrant workers, some of whom had been detained for ten years.

‘I was horrified, and scared, but had no option but to go with the police and, as they took my phone away, I asked the lawyer to speak to Sarah, who then spent three days pleading with the British Embassy to track me down.’

While both are hugely relieved Craig was eventually allowed to board a flight home, they are also angry not to have received either an acknowledgement or an apology from Marriott International.

When contacted by the Daily Mail, a spokesperson for the hotel group said: ‘A thorough review of the allegations raised during the guest’s stay in 2024 was conducted and the allegations were taken seriously.

‘While the claims were not substantiated by the available evidence, local authorities were notified of the concerns raised by the guests and the guests were offered the opportunity to file a formal complaint, which, to our knowledge, was not pursued.’ Meanwhile, Tripadvisor said: ‘We are aware of Mr Barratt’s case. His story is deeply alarming and reinforces our belief that travellers should be able to share their genuine experiences without fear of criminal prosecution.’

Six months on, Sarah, who’s grateful for her husband’s support in the aftermath of the harassment she endured, now wishes she had kept her upset to herself. ‘If I’d just said nothing, none of this would have happened,’ she says now, shaking her head. ‘And, although Craig doesn’t like me saying this, I feel guilty for speaking up and all the trouble it’s caused.

‘But saying you’re going to go to someone’s room and have sex with them, when they clearly don’t want you to, is a rape threat. I was very scared.’

With the benefit of hindsight, Craig, who insists his wife has no cause for remorse, would also probably have responded differently.

‘I could have let it go, just said: “You have to put up with that sort of stuff in the region, it’s a nice hotel, let’s just move on,” ’ he says. ‘But I did what felt right at the time. Not just to protect my wife but also any other women considering staying at the hotel.

‘To all intents and purposes, although he never used the word, my wife had been threatened with rape by a man who said he would go to her room and have sex with her, against her will.

‘I was horrified, and angry, and reacted on instinct.’ On top of the fine, he is forbidden from visiting Qatar for five years – a decision that can only be overturned if he receives a pardon from the Qatari royal family. The sanction makes it impossible for him to continue the work he had done for three years for the country’s health service.

The ordeal has cost the couple £15,000. The loss of Craig’s income has led to him selling his car and they estimate only being able to afford another three months’ of mortgage repayments.

‘This experience has robbed me of the essence of who I am as a man,’ says Craig. ‘I’m a protector and one way I try to do that is by ensuring my wife’s – and other women’s – physical safety, standing up for her and believing her.

‘The other is by going out and earning money, to pay the mortgage and the bills. Never could I have foreseen that, by doing the first, I’d be in a position where, despite spending my days looking for a new job, I am no longer able to do the second.’

• gofundme.com/f/help-sarah-and-craig-after-qatar-marriott-ordeal