New York Hotels Allowed Sex Trafficking of a 10-Year-Old Girl, $10M Lawsuit Claims

A 10-year-old girl was raped, beaten, and tortured while she was being sex trafficked at New York hotels, and hotel staff never reported the criminal activity, a $10 million lawsuit alleges. The lawsuit claims Wyndham Hotels & Resorts and Choice Hotels Corp. were complicit in the girl’s sexual abuse by operating franchises that chose “to ignore the open and obvious presence of sex trafficking on their properties.” The New York Post reports the lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court, is the first of its kind in the state. The plaintiff claimed she was sexually abused as many as 15 to 20 times a day at a Howard Johnson in Queens, operated by Wyndham, and an Econo Lodge in the Bronx, operated by Choice Hotels, between 2006 and 2009, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges that “numerous used condoms” were left “scattered across various surfaces” at the end of each motel stay, which should have indicated to staff that criminal activity was taking place in the room. Wyndham said in a statement to the Post that it “condemn[s] human trafficking in any form.”