A Contra Costa County resident is claiming that employees of hotels and motels where she said she was trafficked as a sex worker should’ve been more cognizant of what was happening and done something to help.
The resident, identified as Jane Doe, has filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court’s Northern District of California against those hotels and motels. Three of them — the Welcome Inn and Motel 6 at the Embarcadero in Oakland, and the Civic Center Motel in Richmond, still operate in the East Bay. A fourth, the Sands Inn in San Pablo, no longer operates.
The lawsuit also names the Astro Motel in Santa Rosa.
“There is a federal statute that allows us to hold accountable and responsible any entity that knew or should’ve known that there was trafficking going on there,” said Katie Llamas, an attorney for the woman. “We believe that there was trafficking and that the hotels and motels had knowledge of it. Some of the red flags were more noticeable than others.”
That federal statute is the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. It first became law in 2000 and has been tweaked several times, the last time in 2013.
The lawsuit claims the chains that operated the hotels and motels allowed their employees to look the other way and do nothing during times when law enforcement clearly should’ve been called.
Attempts to reach spokespeople for the companies named in the lawsuit were not successful. Calls to numbers associated with G6 Hospitality and its sister companies, which own the majority of the hotels including the ones in Oakland, were not answered. Calls to the hotels and motels in the lawsuit were referred to corporate headquarters.
Emails to Civic Hospitality Group, which, according to the lawsuit, owns the Richmond motel, were not returned.
According to the lawsuit, those who worked at the hotels and motels should’ve noticed Doe’s visible signs of physical abuse and injuries; sounds of violence audible to staff and employees; and the unusually high number of male visitors going in and out of Doe’s room at all times of the day and night.
Llamas said other clues that hinted at the illegal activity were frequent, specific requests for certain rooms away from guests; obvious signs of drug use; and the fact that the trash cans were filled with birth control methods.
According to the lawsuit, Doe was trafficked from 2012 until early 2017 and forced to engage in sex work.
“They allowed it to happen, because they were profiting off it,” Llamas said of the hotels and motels. “The hotel industry needs to do better.”
Doe didn’t come to her decision to file her lawsuit for years, Llamas said. That’s a pattern that often is part of the culture that Llamas hopes this lawsuit will address.
“It’s tough for survivors to come forward,” she said. “They’re scared and have gone through so much trauma. A lot of them, they don’t even know they have options. These cases are becoming more and more prevalent, as more survivors find out they do have civil recourse.”