Under the 2014 law, a lawsuit has been filed against a Philly motel after a young girl was allegedly forced into sex slavery with men up to four times her age for over 2 years. The complaint accuses Roosevelt Inn in Northeast Philadelphia of regularly providing rooms to human traffickers who exploit girls, forcing them to be prostitutes.
The suit contends that the teenage girl, who was just 14 years old when the alleged abuse began and is now 17, was enslaved and forced to perform sexual acts with men in 2013 and 2014 at the motel, and that the motel — for its own financial gain — regularly provided rooms to her traffickers.
The lawsuit claims that the teenage girl was forced to have sex with more than 1,000 men over two years at a motel in Philadelphia, and was paid for as little as $50.
The allegations were laid out Friday in a suit filed in the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court against the hotel, its manager, and its parent company, UFVS Management Company, of Purchase, N.Y. It was filed by Kline & Specter on behalf of the girl is only identified in the suit as “M.B.”
Lawyers allege employees at the Roosevelt Inn knew that a 14-year-old girl was being held here against her will for two years.
“This child was forced into sex slavery, paid to do things with men double, triple, quadruple her age, ” said Nadeem Bezar, with Kline & Specter PC.
Philly.com reported that the traffickers are alleged to have advertised sex with the girl online, before encouraging men to come to the motel after agreeing a price over the phone.
However, the motel manager named Yagna Patel denies the allegation and said: “I was always in the office I didn’t see anything wrong.”
“You have to be blind deaf and dumb not to know that over 100 men are showing up over a period of a couple days,” says Attorney Tom Kline, who’s representing the victim. “You have a cleaning crew, that comes into the room and often times finds boxes or waste cans full of use condoms…this is about as open and obvious as it gets.”
A hotel clerk named “Abdul” was fully aware that the girl “and other underage children were compelled to perform sex for money,” the suit says. It also claims that the room ‘frequently smelled of marijuana’ and that men and minors were allegedly seen leaving it.
The girl was allegedly treated ‘aggressively’ and would have seemed scared, court documents claim, adding that she often ‘dressed in a sexually explicit manner’.
It is the first known civil suit to use the Pennsylvania Human Trafficking Law of 2014 that allows for compensation for victims against those who profit directly or indirectly from human trafficking, the plaintiff’s attorneys, who include Nadeem Bezar and Emily Marks, also of Kline & Specter, said in a statement.
The teenager, who is in therapy, is seeking more than $50,000 in compensatory and punitive damages.
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