Minnesota sex trafficking survivor sues the Brooklyn Center hotel where abuses occurred

The 15-year-old girl was given the illusion of safety and comfort but instead lived a life of horror for half a year in 2013.

A group of sex traffickers “kidnapped” the Minnesota girl, threatened her, advertised her body online and forced her to have sex for money at a suburban hotel, according to a group of attorneys now representing the survivor.

“After acquiescing to her traffickers demands under the constant threat of violence, she began to find herself forced to do increasingly depraved things, in increasingly depraved locations, such as the Brooklyn Center Super 8,” attorney Jeffrey Montpetit wrote in a federal civil complaint filed against managers of the hotel in which the girl, identified only as T.S., endured repeated torment.

First filed late last year, the lawsuit leans on two federal laws that allow sex trafficking victims to hold businesses civilly liable for facilitating their abuse. Now 26, T.S. is suing Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Inc., Sarah Hospitality, Inc., Wyndham Hotel Group, LLC and Super 8 Worldwide, Inc. — entities with varying degrees of control and oversight of the Brooklyn Center Super 8 at which the crimes are said to have taken place.

Erica MacDonald, a former U.S. Attorney for Minnesota now leading the legal team defending the hotel management group, wrote in a recent response to the lawsuit that the defendants “deny any liability for sex trafficking.” She previously cast doubt on T.S.’s lawsuit by saying it relied on news stories, online travel reviews and general information that was not enough to show that Wyndham interacted with the traffickers or should have known that the teen was being trafficked at the hotel.

But T.S. won a key legal victory recently when Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz refused to dismiss the case, instead ruling that the survivor had “plausibly alleged” that Wyndham and its franchisee, Sarah Hospitality, facilitated her traffickers and benefited from her harm.

“We are very pleased with Judge Schiltz’s ruling, we look forward to proceeding with discovery and the eventual trial of our client’s case,” Montpetit told the Star Tribune last week. “We are also happy for our client and what the ruling means moving forward for her and the many other victims of sex trafficking.”

The Star Tribune left a message seeking comment from Wyndham, as well as information about the company’s training and policies for identifying and stopping suspected sex trafficking.

T.S. is suing under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), which lets trafficking survivors sue businesses that benefit from facilitating their abuse even if they are not criminally liable for the acts. She is also suing under Masha’s Law, designed for child victims to recover financial damages.

Attorneys for T.S. say that the staff at the Brooklyn Center Super 8 not only had reasonable opportunities to spot “red flags” that she was being trafficked, they also gave her traffickers accommodations beyond what was provided to typical lodgers. The hotel allegedly furnished extra housekeeping services, including an “excessive” number of towels “to clean the activities of the trafficking venture.”

Because of this, T.S. is alleging that two organizations trafficked her — the people who kidnapped her and advertised her services and the Brooklyn Center Super 8 that rented rooms to her traffickers.

“Given the prevalence of human trafficking in hotels and the abundance of information about how franchisors, owners, and hotel employees can identify and respond to this trafficking, it has become apparent that the decision of a hotel chain to continue generating revenue from traffickers without taking reasonable steps to identify and prevent trafficking in its hotels is a decision to financially benefit by supporting and facilitating unlawful sex trafficking,” Montpetit wrote in the lawsuit.

The suit cited a 2011 change.org petition to stop Wyndham hotels from supporting child sex trafficking, and noted that the National Center on Sexual Exploitation named the brand a “major contributor to sexual exploitation.” In February 2014, a man was charged after holding two young trafficking victims at the Brooklyn Center Super 8 and two others were arrested for trafficking minors at another nearby Super 8.

Schiltz, in his order refusing to dismiss the case late last month, sharply criticized the language of the two statutes being used to sue the hotel operators. The judge wrote that Masha’s Law does not specify whom a plaintiff may sue and added that it wasn’t clear whether that law created an independent cause of action or just modified the financial relief available under other statutes such as the TVPRA.

But for the purposes of deciding whether to keep T.S.’s lawsuit alive, Schiltz concluded that T.S. sufficiently offered allegations such as hotel staff being aware that she was staying in a room where sex acts were occurring and that the staff intentionally accommodated her traffickers with extra housekeeping services. This, Schiltz said, made plausible her claim that Sarah Hospitality violated the law “by harboring her despite knowing or recklessly disregarding that she would be caused to engage in a commercial sex act in a room at the Brooklyn Center Super 8.”

Schiltz also ruled that there were enough allegations to show that Sarah Hospitality acted as an agent for Wyndham and that Wyndham “maintained control over a number of facets of the hotel’s daily operations that either facilitated or could have prevented her harm.”

The judge, however, concluded that T.S. did not show that Wyndham had “actual or constructive” knowledge of the sex trafficking venture that harmed her. General knowledge of sex trafficking in the hotel industry, complaints from guests about crime and prostitution at the hotel and voluntary reports by the Super 8 of criminal acts were not enough to allege that Wyndham would’ve known that the hotel itself was participating in sex trafficking.

“After all, if the hotel was knowingly participating in a crime, it would almost certainly not make a record of that crime,” Schiltz wrote.

But Schiltz determined that T.S.’s ability to “plausibly” allege an agency relationship between Wyndham and Sarah Hospitality saved her liability claim against the defendants.