The provocatively dressed young women paying in cash for hotel rooms one night at a time didn’t prompt questions from staff at the Red Roof Inn on North Druid Hills Road in Buckhead, a jury in Atlanta was told Tuesday. Nor did the extra towels and bedsheets being used by the women, whose rooms bore other signs of sex trafficking.
“There was a lot of used condoms,” Tiffany, one of the 11 women who sued Red Roof Inn, saying they were victims of sex trafficking at two Atlanta locations, said during testimony. “We would stay three to five days at a time, maybe more, every two to three weeks.”
Allegations that Red Roof Inn participated in and benefited from years of sex trafficking at the Buckhead location and another on Corporate Plaza in Smyrna are before a jury for the first time. The plaintiffs, who are not fully identified in the case, have not settled their civil claims against the franchiser like the plaintiffs in similar cases have.
Tiffany, 31, said she’s telling her story for those currently being trafficked who “don’t have a voice,” and for her 17-year-old self who “should have been at prom and doing normal high school stuff” in 2010 and 2011 when she was being exploited by traffickers she knew as “Bless” and “Bagz.”
“I just think that this is beyond me,” Tiffany said when asked why she is involved in the case, having testified that it is difficult to relive the trauma her traffickers put her through.
Red Roof Inn denies that it participated in and benefited from sex trafficking at the Buckhead and Smyrna properties. When it settled a related case in November on the eve of trial, Red Roof Inn told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that it condemns sex trafficking and mandates human trafficking training for its employees and independent franchisees.
The trial underway in Atlanta’s federal courthouse has included testimony from a former front desk worker at the Buckhead location, who said about half the hotel’s patrons were traffickers and their victims.
Tiffany said traffickers would congregate at the Red Roof Inn, where they seemed more comfortable than at other hotels. They would hang out in the parking lot, “smoking weed and playing music,” she said. Hotel staff never asked Tiffany if she needed help, though it was “pretty suspicious” for teenage girls like her, dressed in “club wear,” to be paying for rooms, she said.
Tiffany grew up in Texas. Her father died in 2009 and her mother had a heart attack not long after, she said. At 16, Tiffany was fending for herself. Through a friend, she got invited by “Bless” to visit Atlanta under the impression that she would be featured in music videos.
For Tiffany, a first chair violinist who loved music and ballet, it seemed like an opportunity to “start something good for myself.” But after landing at the Atlanta airport, Tiffany testified, she was driven to a hotel and trafficked for a week.
After returning to Texas, Tiffany came back to Atlanta, having been promised modeling work by “Bagz,” who claimed to have a music studio. Instead she was again trafficked, from December 2010 through May 2011, at the Red Roof Inn in Buckhead and other hotels.
Tiffany said she and other victims were each required to earn at least $1,000 a day for “Bagz,” who would deny them food and beat them otherwise. She said clients typically paid $100 each, and that she was never allowed to keep any of the money.
“We had to take customers morning, lunch, dinner, midnight, after club hours. It was just around the clock,” she said. “We had to always be ready for a potential customer.”
Tiffany said escaping was difficult as she had nowhere to go and no one she could trust. She’s still afraid and feels like she’s being followed. Though she’s now a mother and a wife, Tiffany said she doesn’t think she’ll ever feel whole.
“You slowly lose pieces of yourself,” she said. “I don’t know how to put them back together. The innocence I had was taken from me.”
Sex trafficking has moved from the streets into hotels with online solicitation, said Buckhead clinician Anique Whitmore, who has interviewed more than 1,500 victims. She testified that traffickers are often savvy and skilled manipulators who can trick intelligent people.
“They’re the type of person who would pass a lie-detector test because they believe in what they’re doing so much,” Whitmore said. “What (sex trafficking) looks like is not what you see on TV. The reality is that it’s horrifying from level A to Z.”
The trial, which started with jury selection June 11, is expected to last several weeks.
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