Should Hotel Chains Be Held Liable for Human Trafficking?
Should Hotel Chains Be Held Liable for Human Trafficking? The New Yorker
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Should Hotel Chains Be Held Liable for Human Trafficking?
Introduction
Shortly after Elizabeth turned seventeen, in the summer of 2018, she began selling sex from a room on the second floor of a Days Inn off the interstate in Marietta, Georgia. Her pimp, a twenty-six-year-old member of the Gangster Disciples, who went by the street name Fresh, had likely chosen this Days Inn for a few reasons. Its location—off of a twelve-lane freeway, past a line of strip malls, in a warren of office parks—had the benefit of being both hidden and easy to get to. The building itself was a drive-up motel, constructed in the eighties, without modern safety features such as interior hallways and elevators secured by key cards. A hotel manager allegedly gave Fresh room discounts in exchange for Ecstasy and pot.
Background
Elizabeth, who asked that I use only her middle name, is petite, with dark hair, big eyes, and a barbed sense of humor. When she was growing up, outside of Atlanta, her mother struggled with mental-health issues and worked multiple jobs to stave off homelessness. Elizabeth has never met her father. “I was the product of a one-night stand,” she said. “Well, my mom said it was three nights, to be specific.” By the age of eleven, she was helping her younger sister get ready for school and preparing her dinner. One of her mother’s ex-boyfriends molested Elizabeth when she was twelve. That same year, she said, she was raped for the first time in an abandoned house where she’d gone to smoke weed with a friend. The next year, she was sent to an inpatient behavioral-health facility because she was cutting herself; while there, she was diagnosed as having A.D.H.D. and bipolar disorder.
Human Trafficking and Exploitation
About a year later, an older friend introduced Elizabeth to her first trafficker. She was already having sex for attention, she said, and the trafficker told her, “You’re doing it anyway. You might as well get paid.” She became the youngest member of a group of teen-agers coerced into prostitution. “He’s teaching us how to do it,” Elizabeth said of the trafficker. “He’s glorifying it. He’s making it seem like it’s the best life.” He also took Elizabeth’s money, often yelled at her, and once pointed a loaded gun at her chest. “He always had a gun in his hands,” she said. “A slight slip of the finger and I could have been gone.”
Hotel Chains and Responsibility
The modern American hotel industry is built on franchising, and the popularity of the model can be tied, in part, to Howard Deering Johnson. In the nineteen-forties, Howard Johnson restaurants, or HoJos, became beloved throughout the Northeast for their fried clams, twenty-eight flavors of ice cream, and iconic orange roofs. To maintain consistency, Johnson distributed a “bible” to his franchisees that described, in exacting detail, the type of signage, décor, and staff uniforms to use, and how to prepare and serve food. In 1953, Johnson opened his first motor lodge, in Savannah, Georgia, which he positioned next to the restaurant. The idea was that road-trippers needed comfortable places to stay after finishing a meal. Within a decade, Howard Johnson had become one of the country’s largest motel chains.
Legal Challenges and Lawsuits
The first civil trafficking case against a hotel, which was filed in 2004, was based on forced-labor claims. It wasn’t until 2015 that a sex-trafficking case was lodged against a hotel, when a victim sued the owners of the Shangri-La Motel, in Seekonk, Massachusetts, for aiding and abetting the man who was exploiting her. Lawyers representing victims soon began bringing cases against the corporate franchisers who collect royalty payments from hotels where trafficking has occurred. Wyndham Hotels, for instance, whose properties include Days Inn, Super 8, and Howard Johnson, collects four per cent from every room that’s booked, plus additional fees that can add up to twelve per cent of a property’s total revenue.
Responsibility and Liability
The modern American hotel industry is built on franchising, and the popularity of the model can be tied, in part, to Howard Deering Johnson. In the nineteen-forties, Howard Johnson restaurants, or HoJos, became beloved throughout the Northeast for their fried clams, twenty-eight flavors of ice cream, and iconic orange roofs. To maintain consistency, Johnson distributed a “bible” to his franchisees that described, in exacting detail, the type of signage, décor, and staff uniforms to use, and how to prepare and serve food.
Conclusion
Elizabeth was once again using meth and selling sex when she learned from her lawyer that Savannah had died. After she left the group home, she had moved to a hotel where she met someone a few doors down who got her addicted to meth again. In the summer of 2019, she moved to Texas, where her mother lived. To pay for drugs, she began seeing clients at a dodgy hotel in Houston. She started dating an older man. Soon, he was helping her score meth, keeping all of her money, and physically abusing her. He only brought her food—usually a Big Mac—every few days. One night in late winter, as Elizabeth prepared for the arrival of a client, she dabbed concealer on her face to cover up her bruises. Years of violence, drugs, and near-starvation had turned her fine features and high cheekbones into a coarse and swollen mass. “I just decided then and there, This is enough,” she said. “I was tired of getting beat up, and I was tired of being sexualized.”
SDGs, Targets, and Indicators
1. No Poverty
- Target 1.2: By 2030, reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women, and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions.
- Indicator 1.2.2: Proportion of men, women, and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions.
5. Gender Equality
- Target 5.2: Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation.
- Indicator 5.2.1: Proportion of ever-partnered women and girls aged 15 years and older subjected to physical, sexual, or psychological violence by a current or former intimate partner in the previous 12 months, by form of violence and by age group.
8. Decent Work and Economic Growth
- Target 8.7: Take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labor, end modern slavery and human trafficking, and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labor, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labor in all its forms.
- Indicator 8.7.1: Proportion and number of children aged 5-17 years engaged in child labor, by sex and age group.
16. Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions
- Target 16.2: End abuse, exploitation, trafficking, and all forms of violence against and torture of children.
- Indicator 16.2.2: Number of victims of human trafficking per 100,000 population, by sex, age group, and form of exploitation.
Table: SDGs, Targets, and Indicators
| SDGs | Targets | Indicators |
|---|---|---|
| No Poverty | Target 1.2: By 2030, reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women, and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions. | Indicator 1.2.2: Proportion of men, women, and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions. |
| Gender Equality | Target 5.2: Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation. | Indicator 5.2.1: Proportion of ever-partnered women and girls aged 15 years and older subjected to physical, sexual, or psychological violence by a current or former intimate partner in the previous 12 months, by form of violence and by age group. |
| Decent Work and Economic Growth | Target 8.7: Take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labor, end modern slavery and human trafficking, and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labor, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labor in all its forms. | Indicator 8.7.1: Proportion and number of children aged 5-17 years engaged in child labor, by sex and age group. |
| Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions | Target 16.2: End abuse, exploitation, trafficking, and all forms of violence against and torture of children. | Indicator 16.2.2: Number of victims of human trafficking per 100,000 population, by sex, age group, and form of exploitation. |
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Source: newyorker.com
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