CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, Calif. - December 6, 2024
Jane Doe, a resident of Contra Costa County, CA, has filed a sex-trafficking lawsuit against various hotel and hospitality entities, alleging they monetarily benefitted from and had knowledge of sex trafficking occurring at their properties, yet took no action to prevent the illegal conduct. The hotels, including the Civic Center Motel in Richmond, CA, the Astro Motel in Santa Rosa, CA, the Welcome Inn in Oakland, the Motel 6 in Embarcadero, CA, and many others listed in the complaint, ignored blatant sex trafficking red flags and traffickers that should have been considered red flag visitors of their businesses.
Some of those red flags include: requesting certain rooms away from guests; obvious signs of illegal drug use; unusually large numbers of used condoms in the trash; unusually large numbers of male visitors going in and out of plaintiffs’ rooms at all times during the day and night; visible signs of physical abuse and injuries; loud noises of abuse and other violence audible to staff and/or other rooms, among other indicators.
Plaintiff Jane Doe alleges each entity played a role in facilitating her being trafficked for sex. She and her traffickers would repeatedly encounter the same hotel employees, the front desk staff would consistently see Plaintiff with her traffickers, and they would have realized these guests kept returning and exhibiting the same red flags of trafficking. Staff at the hotels saw and heard the fights occurring on their properties and would witness frequent visitors to the rooms, yet they did not contact law enforcement.
“For far too long, hotels have turned a blind eye to the devastating reality of sex trafficking occurring on their premises,” said Meagan Verschueren, counsel at Singleton Schreiber and attorney for the plaintiff. “This widespread issue demands accountability. We are fighting for justice for our clients and to deliver a clear message to the hospitality industry: more must be done to prevent these heinous crimes.”
The hospitality industry plays a crucial role in the sex trade. Hotels have long
profited from the sex-trafficking industry and have provided safe harbor for traffickers to harm victims. Traffickers choose to traffic victims at hotels and motels that they know they can commit crimes without being disturbed. Sometimes they have explicit agreements with employees that actively assist traffickers, and sometimes they have implicit agreements in which employees agree to look the other way. The industry’s complacency, complicity, and reckless disregard for addressing the well-documented
issue of sex trafficking has made certain hotels a favored venue for these criminal acts and Singleton Schreiber seeks to hold those hotels fully accountable.
The case is 3:24-cv-08301-TSH filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
Singleton Schreiber is a client-centered law firm, specializing in mass torts/multidistrict litigation, fire litigation, personal injury/wrongful death, civil rights, environmental law, and sex abuse/trafficking. Over the last decade, the firm has recovered more than $2.5 billion for clients who have been harmed and sought justice. The firm also has the largest fire litigation practice in the country, having represented over 26,000 victims of wildfire, most notably serving plaintiffs in litigation related to the 2023 Maui wildfires, the Colorado Marshall wildfire, the Washington Gray wildfire, and others.
