Corporations Are Enabling Human Traffickers - A New Lawsuit Hopes To End That

A popular budget hotel chain is being sued for allowing sex trafficking to take place right under their noses and for failing to do anything about it, even as the warning signs were all over. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins talks with attorney Carissa Phelps about the lawsuit.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

The month of January is Human Trafficking Awareness month, and right now there is a major lawsuit against the Red Roof Inn hotel chain for their, let's say, tacit involvement, I guess, in human trafficking. Joining me now, once again, she's been on the show before, is Carissa Phelps attorney, co-chair of the Empower Her Network, and Carissa this lawsuit against Red Roof Inns, they themselves are not doing the human trafficking, but human trafficking has basically, from what I've read, been going on right under their nose, and they have turned a blind eye to it, I guess we could say. So tell us what we know about what Red Roof Inn did and did not do. Well, what we know, especially during this time period and more recent time periods, is that there has been plenty of information around trafficking, what it is, what it looks like, how hotels are used by traffickers, the number of trafficking victims who have been taken to hotels, specifically around sex trafficking at hotels, where those venues have been used. So it's no longer turning a blind eye and not knowing or, or really should have known. There's enough information that they should have known what has been going on. And this case may be about one Red Roof Inn location, but what we're finding and what we see across the board, across various chain operations is that this is happening at various locations. They have the information like no one else does about all of these hotels and all of the activity that's going on and how their hotels are being used by traffickers, and it's right under their noses and they're refusing to look. And, and one of the things I've seen too, and this is just very interesting, is even on the reviews, you have people that have just stayed at the hotel and they've said, hey, if you're planning on staying here, just know there seems to be a lot of prostitution, you know, people soliciting in this building. So for these hotels to act like, oh, we didn't know this was happening. This is absolutely not the case. The people who just stayed at the hotel were warning them that this was taking place in their hotels. And there's resources that hotels have now too, that they didn't have several years ago. They, they have specific guidelines, you know, that, that they can follow. Numbers they can call to report this and, and based on what we know, none of that happened. Did it? Correct. I mean, not in this case and even 10 years back when they had the information, they weren't doing it. So, ECPAT has had a code for a number of years that various hotel chains have signed on to that outlines what to look for in terms of how traffickers use hotels and utilize hotels to exploit. And that's been something that's been well known across the industry that hasn't been implemented because of either cost or because maybe perhaps they wanted to continue to enjoy revenue and room bookings from both the buyers, the people who are exploiting from the obtaining end of it, and also from the traffickers who are exploiting and renting the rooms out for the purpose of trafficking. But all that information, the resources they have been there, training, effective training has been available and has not been utilized. And we, we can only imagine how they value the lives of the people who are being trafficked in front of their eyes, how they devalue them because they haven't done anything. And, and so these resources that they have, you know, you mentioned even 10 years ago, are, are these from the federal government? Where, where did all this come from?