You Are Not What Happened to You in That Room
If you are reading this at 2 a.m. in Athens, or in Covington, or somewhere in New York where you were taken from, or in any bedroom in this country you ended up in after a Days Inn room key changed hands for cash we know it is not a “consultation” you were ever planning to make. You may not even call what happened to you “trafficking.” You may call it survival, or the only option, or something you are not ready to put a name on yet. You may be sixteen or you may be forty-six. You may still be inside the situation, or you may have gotten out last week, or ten years ago. You may be the parent who got the phone call. Whatever brought you to this page, one thing is certain: what happened to you was a crime, and the people who made money from it can be made to answer in a courtroom.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We represent survivors of sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation in civil cases against the businesses that profited from their abuse. We do it under a federal statute most people have never heard of — the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) — and we do it under Georgia common law that holds every hotel, motel, and inn in this state to a duty of reasonable care to the people inside its rooms. If a hotel took money from a venture it knew, or should have known, was trafficking you, the law is on your side, and the clock is longer than you think.
This page is about what happened in March 2016 in a Days Inn on North Finley Street in Athens, Georgia — and about what the law allows survivors and their families to do about it. It is also about every other trafficking case that has played out in the same kind of room since, and about the legal machinery that is built to put the cost back on the businesses that built the trap.
What Sex Trafficking Actually Is Under Federal Law
Before we get to the civil case, it helps to be clear on what the law calls what happened in that room. The federal sex trafficking statute — 18 U.S.C. § 1591 — makes it a crime to recruit, entice, harbor, transport, provide, obtain, advertise, maintain, patronize, or solicit a person knowing, or in reckless disregard of the fact, that force, fraud, or coercion will be used to cause that person to engage in a commercial sex act, or that the person has not yet turned eighteen.
Two things matter in that language for a survivor reading this page. First, the law does not require physical force when the victim is a minor. A sixteen-year-old cannot consent to commercial sex under federal law, period. The pimping and trafficking charges filed in Athens on March 19, 2016, were brought under the parts of the Georgia code that mirror that federal rule — pimping a person under eighteen, and trafficking commercial sex acts — and they apply even where the survivor, like most minors caught in this life, was not beaten into the room.
Second, the statute recognizes that trafficking is a venture, not a lone wolf. The word “venture” in the federal definition means any group of two or more people associated in fact. Two men in a Days Inn room with a sixteen-year-old is a venture. A “Snow Gang” with members across two or three states is a venture. A hotel that hands the room key to the venture and accepts the room rate is, under the civil remedy we are about to describe, potentially a participant in it.
“Whoever knowingly benefits, or attempts or conspires to benefit, financially or by receiving anything of value from participation in a venture which that person knew or should have known has engaged in an act in violation of this chapter may be found liable in a civil action brought by the victim.”
— 18 U.S.C. § 1595(a) (Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act civil-remedy provision)
That is the federal civil-remedy statute in plain text. It is the spine of every case we bring against a hotel, motel, or short-term rental that housed trafficking.
What “Should Have Known” Looks Like in a Hotel Trafficking Case
Element four of a TVPRA case — knowledge — is where the hotels fight hardest, and where the evidence is often strongest when the right records are pulled. The industry itself trains its staff to recognize the warning signs of commercial sexual exploitation. The Department of Homeland Security, the National Human Trafficking Hotline, and major hotel-brand training programs all publish the same list. When a hotel ignores every item on that list and accepts the room money anyway, the law treats that as knowledge.
The red flags we look for in a case like the Athens Days Inn situation are:
- Cash payment for the room, especially cash paid by a person who is not the occupant, or by an occupant who is a different age, race, or gender than the people who will be in and out of the room.
- Refusal of housekeeping or “Do Not Disturb” for multiple days. Hotels that are part of legitimate operations want their rooms turned over; a trafficking operator wants privacy to keep the victims out of staff sightlines.
- Heavy, irregular foot traffic. A single room with a stream of different men coming and going at odd hours, often late at night.
- Minimal or no luggage, with bags that look like they belong to the trafficker, not the victim.
- Requests for rooms near exits, on lower floors, or in sections with poor sightline from the front desk or hallway cameras.
- A young-looking guest who never appears at the front desk, who looks frightened, controlled, or is not free to speak for herself.
- Used condoms, drug paraphernalia, or unusual trash in hallways or trash cans outside the room.
- Prior law-enforcement calls for service at the property that were not escalated, and not learned from.
In Athens, the reporting from the Days Inn case identified several of these dynamics: a third-party name on the registration, a self-identified gang member, a gun on the premises, the smell of marijuana from inside the room, the discovery of more victims across state lines. None of those facts is hindsight. Each is the kind of pattern the hotel industry has been trained to recognize for years.
When a hotel accepts the room revenue anyway, that is the constructive knowledge the TVPRA requires. The hotel does not have to be told in writing. It has to fail to act on what was already in front of it.
Georgia Law — The State Framework That Travels With the Federal Case
A TVPRA case is filed in federal court under federal law. But state-law claims — negligent security, premises liability, negligent hiring and supervision, and any wrongful-death or personal-injury cause of action — are filed in state court, typically the Superior Court of Clarke County for an Athens incident, and they travel on the back of the federal case for strategic reasons.
Premises liability in Georgia is the legal doctrine that a hotel, as the possessor of land opened to the public for business purposes, owes its guests a duty of reasonable care to keep the premises safe. That duty is not theoretical. It includes the duty to provide adequate security, lighting, locks, surveillance, and staffing for the foreseeable risk of third-party criminal conduct. Where prior similar incidents have occurred at the property, or where the property sits in a high-crime area that the owner knew about, the foreseeability of a violent act is established — and the duty to protect against it becomes enforceable.
Georgia’s comparative-fault rule is a modified 50% bar. Under O.C.G.A. § 51-12-33, if a plaintiff is found to be 50% or more at fault, recovery is barred entirely. Below 50%, the recovery is reduced by the plaintiff’s percentage of fault. In a trafficking case, the defense will try to argue comparative fault — that the survivor “consented,” “chose this lifestyle,” “failed to leave when she had the chance.” None of those arguments should succeed under a correct reading of the law, but we prepare for them, and we never assume a jury will see past them on its own.
The Athens-Clarke County context matters. North Finley Street sits a short walk from the University of Georgia campus, in a corridor long familiar to Athens police for high call volumes related to narcotics and property crime. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Athens-Clarke County Police Department have both run operations targeting exactly the pattern that played out in that Days Inn room. A hotel that operates in that corridor and accepts cash-paying guests with no local address and no ID cannot credibly claim it was surprised by what the room was being used for.
The Evidence That Disappears — And the Preservation Letter That Saves It
The single most important thing you can do in the first days after a trafficking case comes to light is preserve the records. None of them last long. Here is what we know exists, who holds it, and how fast it goes:
| Record | What It Proves | How Fast It Can Legally Die |
|---|---|---|
| Hotel surveillance video | Who came and went, when, what they were carrying, who the desk clerk spoke to, what the victim looked like | Routinely overwritten on a rolling 30-day loop. Some systems are shorter. No federal statute governs the retention. |
| Property management system (PMS) / key-card logs | Which room key was used, when, and by whom; which rooms were accessed, and how often | Vendor- and chain-set; commonly short. The Athens Days Inn would have had this. |
| Guest folios and payment records | Cash payments, third-party names on reservations, no-shows, daily rate, length of stay | Tax and PCI recordkeeping can preserve pieces for years, but the PMS detail window is short. |
| Housekeeping and maintenance logs | Refused service, no-entry DNDs, room turnover anomalies | Short retention absent litigation hold. |
| Front-desk incident reports | What the staff observed, what they reported up the chain | Short retention absent litigation hold. |
| Police CAD / call-for-service records | Prior calls to the property — the foreseeability backbone | Agency-set retention; pull early. |
| Internal brand / corporate records | Brand standards, training materials, prior incident reports from other properties in the chain, executive emails | Discovery-protected; preserved only by litigation hold. |
The moment we are retained in a case, a litigation-hold letter goes to the property owner, the franchisor, the booking platform, and the management company. We name the specific records we are ordering preserved. We do this in writing, and we do it within days, because the camera at the Days Inn front desk may not survive a month, and the case dies with the footage.
We will never ask you to wait while evidence is lost. The first action we take on a trafficking case is to freeze the proof.
The First 72 Hours — What to Do and What Not to Do
If you or a loved one has just been identified as a survivor of trafficking in an Athens hotel, or if you are a parent who has just learned where your child has been, the first three days matter more than the next three years. Here is the roadmap we walk every client through.
Day 1
- Medical care first. If the survivor is still in immediate danger, call 911. If she is safe but has physical or psychological injuries, get her to a hospital or a trauma-informed care provider. The medical record that starts today is part of the case. Athens Regional / Piedmont Athens Regional has a behavioral health unit; the National Human Trafficking Hotline (1-888-373-7888) operates 24/7 and can refer to a local provider.
- Do not sign anything. Not a release, not an authorization, not a statement. Not for the hotel, not for the brand, not for an insurance carrier, not for the police, not even for the hotel’s “loss prevention” investigator.
- Write down everything you remember. Dates, room numbers, names, license plates, descriptions, the smell of the room, what the desk clerk said. Memory is freshest now. Write it in a notebook, not on social media.
- Do not delete anything. Do not delete texts, voicemails, social media, phone records, browser history, photos, or videos. The defense will ask for it later. The prosecution will want it. Save it.
- Call us. 1-888-ATTY-911. Free consultation. 24/7. We move on the evidence immediately.
Days 2–3
- Preservation letter to the hotel and the brand. We send it within 24 hours of being retained. The letter orders the hotel to freeze all surveillance, key-card, folio, housekeeping, and incident-report records. The letter goes to the local operator and to Days Inn Worldwide, Inc. and Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Inc.
- Athens-Clarke County Police Department records request. The incident report, the CAD log, the evidence inventory, and the detective’s supplemental report are public records. We pull them. We also pull any prior calls for service at the same property.
- Identify witnesses. The desk clerk. The housekeeper. The people in the rooms on either side. The other guests in the parking lot. The convenience-store clerk who saw the same car at 2 a.m. Witnesses forget; we identify them now.
- Connect the survivor to non-legal support. Counseling, housing, food, legal advocacy. The Statewide Georgia Human Trafficking Hotline (1-866-363-4842) and the National Hotline connect survivors to local services. We do not represent survivors in the criminal case — that is a District Attorney’s job — but we coordinate with prosecutors and victim advocates to make sure the civil case does not undermine the criminal one and vice versa.
Within the First Week
- The full interview with the survivor. We sit down, in a safe place, with a trauma-informed approach, and we let her tell us what happened. We do not push. We do not lead. We do not record. We listen. We write it down.
- The defendant file opens. We pull the corporate records on the Days Inn owner in Athens, the franchisor entities, the management company, and the booking platform. We map the insurance.
- The FBI / GBI coordination. If the case has a federal nexus — interstate transport of a minor, the use of interstate facilities in furtherance of the venture — federal prosecutors may be involved. We do not duplicate their work. We coordinate.
The legal calendar is built for the corporation’s comfort. The seventy-two-hour clock is built for the survivor. We run both.
What the Athens-Clarke County Case File Tells Us About the Hotel
A few things are already public from the 2016 Athens case that help any survivor thinking about a similar claim.
First, the men charged were not the only people involved. Reporting on the case identified that other suspects were already on their way to Florida when the room was raided, and that with help from Florida law enforcement, another juvenile victim was recovered and five more suspects were arrested and extradited to Athens. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Athens-Clarke County Police Department, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Georgia were all involved. A case that produced that kind of multi-state, multi-agency response produced discovery — phone records, financial records, hotel records, vehicle records — that survives. We know how to find it, and we know how to put it to work.
Second, the case was reported on by local outlets who covered the bond hearing, the arraignment, and the case progression. Public records exist. The Athens-Clarke County Clerk of Superior Court, the Western Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office, the Athens-Clarke County Police Department, and the FBI’s Athens Resident Agency are all sources of information we work with regularly.
Third, the hotel itself — the Days Inn on North Finley Street — has been and remains a franchised property under the Days Inn Worldwide, Inc. brand, itself a subsidiary of Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Inc. The corporate structure of who owns and operates that specific property at any given moment is something we verify with the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, the franchise filings, and the hotel’s own registrations, before we name a defendant.
If you have information about that property in March 2016 — what the desk looked like, who was working, what the parking lot looked like at 2 a.m. on a Friday night in March, whether you saw things that did not look right — that information is part of the case. We protect your identity. We do not put witnesses at risk. We use what you tell us to do the work.
The Long Shadow on the Survivor — The Medicine We Have to Prove
Sex trafficking leaves a documented medical signature. The literature on complex PTSD in trafficking survivors is unambiguous: nightmares, flashbacks, hypervigilance, sleep disturbance, dissociation, depression, self-harm, substance use disorders, suicidality, and a long, slow recovery that often takes years of trauma-focused therapy to begin. For a survivor who was trafficked as a minor, the developmental consequences are also documented: disrupted education, delayed identity formation, difficulty with trust, and a life that was rerouted at the exact moment it should have been forming.
The defense will try to argue that the survivor’s injuries are pre-existing, that they are exaggerated, that they are unrelated to the trafficking, that the survivor is malingering. The medical literature answers every one of those arguments, and a qualified trauma specialist will answer them in testimony. We retain the right expert for the case — and we build the damages case on a life-care plan, a forensic economic projection, and a treating-clinician record that begins on day one and continues for the rest of the survivor’s life.
A trafficking case that ignores the medical evidence is a case that settles for a number the defense is comfortable with. A case that builds the medical evidence from intake onward is a case the defense cannot settle cheaply, because the number the jury will see is real.
Frequently Asked Questions
I was trafficked out of a hotel in Georgia years ago. Is it too late to sue?
Probably not. Under the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, you have ten years from the date the cause of action arose to file a civil claim. If you were under 18 at the time, the clock does not start until you turn 18, and you then have ten years from that birthday. A sixteen-year-old trafficked in 2016 turned 18 in 2018, which means her federal case is alive until 2028. Georgia’s state-law deadlines, under O.C.G.A. § 9-3-90, are also tolled during minority, giving the same survivor two years past her 18th birthday to file her state-law claims. The deadlines are longer than most people think. Call us at 1-888-ATTY-911 so we can run them for your specific case.
Do I have to prove the hotel “knew” the room was being used for trafficking?
Not exactly. The federal civil-remedy statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1595(a), allows a claim against anyone who knowingly benefited from participation in a venture, “which that person knew or should have known” was engaged in trafficking. Constructive knowledge is enough. Hotels are trained to recognize the warning signs of commercial sexual exploitation — cash payment, third-party names on registrations, refused housekeeping, heavy foot traffic, minimal luggage, a young guest who never appears at the desk. When a hotel accepts the room revenue anyway, that is the constructive knowledge the statute requires.
Can I sue the hotel brand, or just the local hotel?
Both, in the right case. Days Inn in Athens is operated by a local franchisee, but the brand — Days Inn Worldwide, Inc. — sits underneath Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Inc., one of the largest hotel companies in the world. The TVPRA reaches any defendant who knowingly benefited from the venture, which can include the franchisor if the franchisor had real control over how the property was run. The law on franchisor liability is actively developing — some federal courts have allowed franchisor claims past motions to dismiss, others have not — and the right answer depends on the specific facts of control at the specific property. We investigate the franchise agreement, the brand standards, the reservation system, and the training before we name the brand. When the facts support it, we name the brand.
What about the person who bought sex from me? Can I sue the buyer?
Possibly. The buyers — the “customers” — are individually liable under both the federal trafficking statute and Georgia law. In a TVPRA case, the more important defendant is usually the hotel that made the room available, because the hotel has insurance and a balance sheet, but individual buyers are not off the hook. We evaluate every potential defendant — the operators, the brand, the booking platform, and the buyers — when we build the case.
What if I went back to the trafficker voluntarily? Does that hurt my case?
No. Human trafficking victims often return to the trafficker. The reasons are well documented: trauma bonding, fear of retaliation, lack of safe housing, addiction, threats against family members, and the simple fact that the trafficker is sometimes the only person the survivor believes will not hurt her. None of those reasons makes her the cause of her own victimization. The defense will try to use a return to argue comparative fault. Under Georgia’s modified 50% bar, a jury could in theory reduce or bar recovery if the survivor is found to be 50% or more at fault. The way we beat that argument is with the medical record, the trauma specialist’s testimony, the documentation of the threats and the conditions, and the law — including 18 U.S.C. § 1591, which makes the trafficking a federal crime whether or not the victim appeared to consent.
How much is my case worth?
We will not quote a number on the phone. The value of a trafficking case depends on the evidence, the injuries, the venue, the defendants, the insurance, and the survivor’s life. We build the case from the medical record, the lost-earnings projection, the life-care plan, the pain and suffering, the loss of enjoyment of life, and the punitive exposure where the defendant’s conduct supports it. Recent Georgia verdicts in trafficking cases have been in the tens of millions where the evidence supports it. We will tell you, after we have the medical records and the rest of the proof, what we believe the case is worth. Until then, anyone who quotes a number without seeing the records is selling, not advising.
I am a parent. My child was trafficked out of a Georgia hotel. What do I do first?
Get her safe. Get her medical care. Get her to a trauma-informed counselor. Do not sign anything. Do not let an insurance adjuster interview her. Do not let the hotel’s “loss prevention” investigator interview her. Call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888 for immediate referrals. Then call us at 1-888-ATTY-911 so we can begin the preservation work and the legal case. The criminal case will be prosecuted by the State of Georgia; the civil case is the one that pays for the lifetime of care she is going to need.
I am in jail or prison because of what I did in connection with the trafficking. Can I still sue?
It depends on the facts. A survivor of trafficking who committed offenses as a direct result of being trafficked may have defenses under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s vacatur provision, 18 U.S.C. § 1593a, which can result in expungement or vacatur of certain convictions. A civil case against the hotel and the brand is a separate question. We work with post-conviction counsel on the criminal side and we work the civil case on the civil side. If you are incarcerated, we can still represent you in the civil case. Call us at 1-888-ATTY-911 so we can talk through the specifics.
How do I pay for a case I cannot afford to bring?
You do not pay us. Attorney911 works on a contingency fee. We are not paid unless we win. The first consultation is free, and the consultation is confidential. We advance the costs of the case — the filing fees, the expert witnesses, the depositions, the trial exhibits. If we do not recover for you, you owe us nothing. If we do recover, our fee is a percentage of the recovery, agreed in writing at the outset so you know the math before you sign.
Will the case be public?
The case file is not public, but a civil lawsuit is a public filing. Once we file the complaint in federal or state court, the filing is a public record. The survivor’s name is on the case, and the court record is open. We work with the survivor to protect her identity in every way the law allows — pseudonyms in the caption where the court permits, sealed medical records, restricted access to the most sensitive exhibits, protective orders on the deposition transcripts. We do not control whether the case is reported on. We do control how much of the survivor’s story is told in the public record, and we keep the public record as small as the law allows.
What if the trafficker threatens me if I sue?
Tell us immediately. We coordinate with law enforcement on the threat side. Threats against a witness in a federal civil case are a federal crime — 18 U.S.C. § 1512 (tampering with a witness) and § 1513 (retaliating against a witness). A threat does not end a case. A threat can be the beginning of additional criminal liability for the trafficker and additional civil liability for anyone who knew about it. We take threats seriously. We tell the District Attorney. We tell the FBI. We tell the U.S. Attorney. We take protective measures. We do not let a threat be the reason a survivor does not get her day in court.
How long will the case take?
It depends. A federal TVPRA case can resolve in eighteen months on a motion to dismiss, or it can take three to five years through discovery and trial. State-court negligent-security cases in Georgia run on similar timelines. The fastest way to slow a case down is to let the discovery clock expire on the evidence. The fastest way to speed a case up is to preserve the evidence early and force the defendants to face the record. We cannot promise a calendar, but we can promise that the work we do in the first ninety days shapes how long the rest of the case takes.
What We Do Today
If you are reading this and you recognize the Athens Days Inn on North Finley Street — or any other Days Inn, Red Roof Inn, Motel 6, La Quinta, Super 8, Microtel, Ramada, Baymont, Hawthorn, Wingate, Travelodge, Howard Johnson, or any other Wyndham-branded property in Georgia, or any hotel anywhere in the country where a trafficker rented the room — the next step is a free, confidential conversation. We do not require you to file a case to talk to us. We do not require you to be ready to sue. We require you to tell us what happened, in your own words, on your own time.
We will tell you what the law allows. We will tell you what the deadlines are. We will tell you who the defendants are. We will tell you what the evidence is and what is left of it. We will tell you what your case is realistically worth, after we have seen the records, and we will not promise a number before we have. We will tell you who else can help — law enforcement, victim advocates, shelter, counseling, medical care, and the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888.
If you decide to hire us, we do it on contingency — no fee unless we win. If you decide not to, we still have the conversation, and the conversation is free. We have been doing this for more than twenty years across the country. We have worked cases in Texas, in Georgia, and in federal courts from one end of this country to the other. We are not the largest firm in the country. We are not the firm that will put a billboard on the highway. We are the firm that will read every page of the record, take every deposition we need, and try the case in front of a jury if that is what it takes.
Hablamos Español. Lupe Peña conducts full consultations in Spanish, and the rest of the firm has bilingual support. The trafficking cases we have seen in Georgia have hit Spanish-speaking communities hard, and we are built to serve those clients without an interpreter.
The Days Inn on North Finley Street is still standing. The men who were arrested in March 2016 are either out or still paying their debt. The sixteen-year-old who was found in that room is now a woman in her mid-twenties, and the law gave her until 2028 to make the hotel and the brand and the people behind them answer for what was done to her. If she is reading this — or if her mother is, or her grandmother, or her child — call us. The case is not too old. The proof may still be in the system. And the law, federal and state, is on her side.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911 any time, day or night. It is free to ask. It costs nothing unless we win. And the work that has to be done to hold a Days Inn, or any other hotel, accountable for a trafficking case in Athens, in Georgia, or anywhere in this country, starts the moment you pick up the phone.
We are Attorney911. The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We fight for the people the system has not yet caught up to. If that is you, or if that is someone you love, we are ready.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.