A woman is suing three hotel chains, claiming management knew she was being trafficked and benefited from the business, allowing her to be raped nearly a thousand times.
In the suit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, a woman identified as Jane AB Doe alleged hotel workers at Wyndham Hotel Group, Red Roof Inn and a franchisor for several Motel 6 outlets in California and Texas knew what was happening, enabled it and occasionally participated.
The suit claims Doe was “raped nearly one thousand (1,000) times” at eight hotels in the two states, according to legal documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times.
Complicity ranged from hotel employees witnessing Doe being trafficked, to “actively” helping the trafficker commit the crime, to watching Doe being raped, to participating in a rape themselves, the lawsuit stated, the Los Angeles Times reported. At best employees ignored “obvious signs of abuse” as Doe was visibly bruised, malnourished or drugged.
The California locations were in downtown Los Angeles and the suburb of Gardena, both Motel 6s, the suit said. In Texas, a Red Roof Inn in Houston, a Studio 6 in Dallas, and a Days Inn and a Super 8 owned by Wyndham were also named, though their locations were not given.
“These defendants’ failure to investigate and monitor human trafficking is sufficient to establish defendants knew or should have known of human trafficking for commercial sex occurring at their brand properties, including the locations where Plaintiff was trafficked,” the complaint said, according to KTTV-TV.
Doe had run away from child protective services in Dallas at age 13, and met the trafficker soon after; he allegedly sexually assaulted her at gunpoint and forced her to commit sex acts, the suit stated, KTTV reported.
The trafficker would imprison her in various hotel rooms, and workers stood by as “her trafficker would beat, yell, and torment Doe often and loudly in the public common areas of the hotels in which she was trafficked,” the suit stated.
Several lawsuits have been filed in recent years attempting to hold hotels accountable for allegedly turning a blind eye to sex trafficking.