Your Child Was Assaulted in a Hotel Room. The Hotel Is Liable.
If your daughter was sexually assaulted at a hotel in Indianapolis, you are reading this page at the worst moment of your life, and we are sorry. You are also reading it at the right time, because the single most important thing you can do in the next 72 hours is protect the evidence that proves the hotel let this happen. That evidence is already disappearing. Every day you wait, the hotel’s surveillance video records over itself. The key-card logs that show who was in the room cycle out. Staff who saw the man at the front desk move on to other jobs. This page is written to give you the truth about what the law requires, what the hotel did wrong, and what we do next.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We represent families in Indiana who have been injured because a hotel failed to protect them. We work on contingency — no fee unless we win — and the consultation is free. We answer the phone 24 hours a day, seven days a week, at 1-888-ATTY-911 (1-888-288-9911). Hablamos Español.
This page covers the legal ground for a negligent-security claim against a hotel in Indianapolis after a child sexual assault, the evidence that wins these cases, the hotel’s defense playbook and how we break it, the value of the case, the Indiana statute of limitations, and the first 72 hours of action. We are writing for a parent in Indianapolis who needs answers tonight, not a law student who needs a treatise.
The Criminal Case and the Civil Case Are Two Different Fights
A common mistake families make is believing the criminal conviction will take care of everything. It will not. The criminal prosecution belongs to the State of Indiana, not to your family. Even a maximum sentence on every charge — decades in prison — does not pay for one day of therapy, one lost year of school, or one night of the nightmares your child will carry for the rest of her life. The criminal case holds the wrongdoer accountable to the State. The civil case holds the entities that made the wrongdoer possible accountable to your family.
Indiana law provides the mother with full civil immunity for her use of force. Under IC 34-30-2-149.5 and IC 35-41-3-2, a person who uses justifiable force to prevent a forcible felony — including child molestation and rape — is immune from civil liability. The mother cannot be counter-sued by the assailant for the shooting. Her actions were legally justified. That immunity is settled Indiana law. Our concern is not the mother’s defense — it is the hotel’s accountability.
“A person is justified in using reasonable force against any other person to prevent the other person from committing suicide, the commission of a forcible felony, or interference with the lawful possession of property. A person is not required to retreat before using deadly force if the person has a legal right to be where the person is and has reasonable cause to believe that the other person is about to use unlawful deadly force, or to commit suicide, or to commit a forcible felony.”
— Indiana Code § 35-41-3-2
What the Hotel Knew or Should Have Known
Foreseeability is the heart of a negligent-security case. The jury must be able to answer one question: was this attack foreseeable to the hotel? If the answer is yes — and the hotel failed to take reasonable steps to prevent it — the hotel is liable.
A convicted child molester with a firearm at an economy hotel in Indianapolis is a foreseeable danger. The hotel industry has known for decades that:
- Convicted sex offenders who re-enter the community pose a documented, ongoing risk, particularly to children. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the U.S. Department of Justice maintain publicly available sex-offender registries. A hotel that does not screen its guests against these registries — or that ignores a match when one comes up — has failed a basic, industry-known precaution.
- Economy hotels with hourly, weekly, or cash-payment options are over-represented in crime data, including sex offenses. The hotel trade press and law-enforcement training materials acknowledge this. A Baymont Inn on Eagle View Drive on Indianapolis’s northwest side sits at the intersection of multiple known risk factors.
- Firearms in hotel rooms violate nearly every major hotel chain’s stated policies. A man found with a firearm during a sexual assault at a hotel that claims to enforce a no-weapons policy has demonstrated that the policy is paper, not practice.
- Prior incidents at the property are the single most powerful piece of evidence in any negligent-security case. If the hotel has a history of assaults, drug activity, or other violent crime — and we will pull the IMPD call-for-service records and the hotel’s own incident logs to find out — that history is proof the hotel knew, or should have known, that dangerous people were using the property.
The hotel will argue the attack was a “freak event” — that no one could have predicted a convicted child molester would target a child in that room on that night. The response is simple: a hotel is not required to predict the specific attack. It is required to take reasonable precautions against the type of attack that is foreseeable. A convicted child molester with a firearm assaulting a child in a hotel room is exactly the type of attack the industry has been warned about, and it is exactly the type of attack reasonable security measures — guest screening, registry checks, weapon detection, adequate staffing, room-access controls — are designed to prevent.
The Hotel’s Defense Playbook — and How We Beat It
The hotel and its insurance company will run a predictable playbook. We have seen it in every hotel negligent-security case we have handled. Here are the plays and our counter for each.
Play 1: “We had no idea this guest was a sex offender.”
They will say they screen guests against sex-offender registries and that this man was not on their radar. The counter: a hotel’s “screening” is often a check-the-box function with no real follow-through. We will demand the hotel’s actual screening protocol, the vendor they use, the training given to front-desk staff, and the records of every guest screened during the period leading up to the assault. If the screening was a rubber stamp, that is the hotel’s failure — not your child’s.
Play 2: “The attack was a criminal act by a third party — not our responsibility.”
They will argue the criminal act of the assailant breaks the chain of causation between any hotel negligence and the injury. Indiana law does not support that argument when the hotel’s negligence created or increased the risk of the criminal act. A hotel that fails to screen, fails to enforce its own weapons policy, and fails to provide adequate security has not been a passive bystander. It has been an active enabler. The criminal act does not break the chain; it is the foreseeable consequence of the hotel’s failure.
Play 3: “We had adequate security — locks, cameras, staff.”
They will point to the cameras, the key-card system, and the front-desk staffing as evidence they met the industry standard. The counter: the standard is not whether the hotel had security measures. The standard is whether the security measures were adequate in light of what the hotel knew or should have known about the risk. Cameras that are not monitored in real time are not security. A key-card system that does not prevent unauthorized access is not security. A front desk that does not screen for registered sex offenders is not security. The presence of equipment is not the same as the use of it.
Play 4: “The mother should not have left the child alone in the room.”
They will attempt to shift fault to the mother — the comparative-negligence play. The counter: a 12-year-old child is not at fault for being sexually assaulted, period. The mother left briefly to carry bags to a vehicle. She was present in the hotel. She returned the moment the assault began and used justifiable force to stop it. Indiana’s 51% comparative-fault bar does not apply to a child victim. As to the mother, no reasonable jury would find her more than 50% at fault for briefly stepping away from a hotel room in a hotel where she had every right to expect basic security.
Play 5: “Let’s settle quickly and quietly.”
Within days of the incident, an adjuster will call. The tone will be sympathetic. The check will arrive with a release printed on the back. Do not sign anything. Do not give a recorded statement. Do not let the adjuster into your home or on the phone without counsel. The first offer is the lowest offer. It is designed to close the case before the hotel’s internal records, the surveillance footage, and the police reports are fully reviewed. We exist to make sure that does not happen.
The Defendant Map — Who You Are Really Suing
The sign on the building said Baymont Inn, but the company you sue is not the name on the sign. The hotel industry is built on a layered structure, and understanding that structure is the difference between a case that recovers and a case that stalls.
The franchisee/operator is the entity that owns and operates this specific Baymont Inn. It is the LLC or corporation listed on the county property records, the Indiana Secretary of State business registration, and the hotel’s own front-desk paperwork. It is the entity that hired the front-desk staff, set the security protocols, and decided whether to screen guests. It is the first defendant in any negligent-security case.
Baymont Franchise Systems, Inc. is the franchisor entity that licenses the Baymont name and brand standards. It is a subsidiary of Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Inc., one of the largest hotel companies in the world. The franchisor sets the brand standards that the local operator is required to follow — the security training, the guest-screening protocols, the incident-reporting procedures, the property-walk standards. When those standards are inadequate, or when the franchisor’s own control over the property goes beyond a bare license and into operational control, the franchisor is in the case too.
The management company is a separate entity that may manage the day-to-day operations of the hotel on behalf of the owner. In some structures, the management company and the owner are the same; in others, they are different. Either way, the management company is a potential defendant.
We name every entity in the chain — the local operator, the franchisor, the management company, and any parent entity. The local operator is usually thinly capitalized and may have minimal insurance. The franchisor — Wyndham — is the deep pocket. The corporate structure was built to keep claims at arm’s length from the deep pocket, and it works unless a lawyer who knows the structure sues through it.
The First 72 Hours — What to Do Right Now
Hour 0–12: Medical and Emotional Stabilization
The child is at Riley Hospital for Children. Follow every medical recommendation. Do not minimize what happened. Do not tell your daughter to “be strong” or “move on.” She needs a pediatrician who specializes in child sexual-abuse trauma and a therapist trained in trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT) or eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). We can connect your family with specialists.
Hour 12–24: Preserve Everything
Do not delete text messages, photographs, voicemails, or any communication related to the incident. Do not post about the case on social media. Do not talk to the hotel’s insurance company, the hotel’s lawyer, or anyone they send. Every text, every photo, every timestamped communication is potential evidence. We send a litigation-hold and preservation demand to the hotel, the franchisor, the management company, and the third-party data vendors the same day you retain us.
Hour 24–48: Law Enforcement Communication
The IMPD investigation is active. Cooperate fully with detectives. Provide every fact you can. Do not speculate, do not guess, and do not let an officer put words in your mouth. Request the incident report number and the detective’s name and contact information. We work alongside — not around — the criminal investigation.
Hour 48–72: Retain Counsel
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. You pay no fee unless we win. We begin the preservation work, the record demands, and the investigation on day one. Every day you wait is a day the hotel’s evidence cycles out and the hotel’s lawyers build their defense.
Why Attorney911
We are a trial firm. We do not refer cases out. We do not farm cases to other lawyers. When you call Attorney911, you get Attorney911.
Ralph P. Manginello is our Managing Partner. He has been licensed in Texas since 1998 — over 27 years of courtroom practice, including federal court. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer, and he still thinks like one: find the story in the documents, tell it to the jury, and do not let the other side bury it. He is a member of the State Bar of Texas, the Houston Bar Association, the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, NACDL, and the Pro Bono College of the State Bar of Texas. He is rated “Excellent” on Avvo. He works in English and Spanish.
Lupe Peña is our associate attorney. He was a former insurance-defense attorney at a national defense firm before he switched sides to fight for injured people. That experience matters. Lupe sat in the rooms where insurance companies priced claims like yours, where adjusters decided how low to go, and where defense lawyers planned the strategy to deny or minimize your recovery. He knows the playbook from the inside because he used to run it. Now he runs it against them. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter.
Our practice areas cover the full range of injury and wrongful-death work — from car and truck crashes to workplace injuries to brain injuries to wrongful death. We have the medical-expert network, the corporate-structure expertise, and the trial experience to take a negligent-security hotel case to verdict. We are the firm that does not settle for a number that covers the adjuster’s quota.
Learn more about Ralph Manginello and Lupe Peña.
The Path Forward
Your child was sexually assaulted in a hotel room by a convicted child molester who should not have been free near children, in a hotel that should not have given him a key, on a night when the evidence of what went wrong was recorded on cameras the hotel controls. The criminal case will hold the assailant accountable to the State. The civil case will hold the hotel accountable to your family.
We do not know yet exactly what the hotel knew, when it knew it, and what it failed to do. We do know that the evidence to answer those questions is disappearing right now, and that a lawyer who knows hotel negligent-security law can stop the disappearing.
The consultation is free. You pay no fee unless we win. We answer the phone at 1-888-ATTY-911 (1-888-288-9911), 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Contact us now.
Hablamos Español. If you prefer to speak in Spanish, ask for Lupe Peña. He will take your call himself, in your language, and walk you through the same options he would walk an English-speaking client through — because the law does not care what language you speak, and neither do we.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. What we can guarantee is this: we will investigate the case, we will preserve the evidence, we will name every defendant who belongs in the case, and we will fight for every dollar your family is owed under Indiana law.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911 now.