If You Were Raped in a New Rochelle Hotel Room, the Hotel Itself May Be Legally Accountable
We understand what just happened to you. You checked into a hotel room in Westchester County and were violently sexually assaulted — someone you did not consent to being alone with, in a space the hotel was paid to keep safe for you. You may be reading this at 2 a.m. with shaking hands. You may be reading this with a detective’s case number on a piece of paper. You may be reading this because the criminal case against your attacker is moving but nobody has yet told you that you have a civil case against the hotel itself — a separate path, with separate remedies, that the criminal system alone cannot give you.
We built this page to tell you what the criminal system cannot: the hotel that rented you the room had duties it may have broken, and the law gives you a way to hold it accountable. We will walk you through what New York law says about hotel liability for sexual assault, what the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPRA) adds, what evidence is about to disappear if no one moves to preserve it, what the insurance company for the hotel is going to try, and what your case is actually worth. You will not pay us a fee unless we win.
“An individual who is a victim of a violation of this chapter may bring a civil action against the perpetrator (or 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)… and may recover damages and reasonable attorneys fees.” — 18 U.S.C. § 1595(a)
The case the Westchester County District Attorney announced — felony first-degree rape, third-degree rape, first-degree sexual abuse, and misdemeanor unlawful imprisonment — is a criminal prosecution of the individual attacker. It is not your only remedy. A civil claim against the hotel, its owner, its management company, and potentially a franchisor (if the property carries a national flag) is a separate fight that can put real money behind the harm done to you, hold institutions accountable for how they failed you, and create a documented record the criminal verdict alone cannot produce. New York law is more favorable to a sexual assault victim than the law of almost any other state: it follows pure comparative fault (so even if a defense tries to blame you, you still recover), it has no cap on non-economic damages (so juries can value the full harm), and under CPLR 213-b it gives crime victims up to seven years to sue the perpetrator for damages.
The New York Laws That Govern Your Case
A New Rochelle sexual-assault case is built from three layers of law: New York common-law negligence (the hotel’s duty of care), New York criminal-victim civil remedies (CPLR Article 16-A and CPLR 213-b), and federal civil-rights and trafficking law (the TVPRA, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1591, 1595, and related statutes). We will walk through each, and we will tell you which parts of which laws apply to the facts of your situation.
The New York Statute of Limitations and the Crime-Victim Window
New York has a more generous statute of limitations for sexual-assault civil claims than most states understand. Under CPLR § 213-b, a victim of a crime has seven years from the date the crime was committed to bring a civil action against the perpetrator for damages arising from the crime. The clock does not start on the date of the criminal indictment, and it does not depend on the criminal case being resolved first. If you were attacked on December 29, 2024, the seven-year window for the civil claim against the individual attacker runs through December 29, 2031 — a deadline that is real but not yet urgent. For claims against the hotel and other third parties (which is where the money usually is), the standard CPLR § 214(5) three-year negligence statute of limitations generally applies, which means a claim against the hotel is typically strongest if filed within three years of the assault.
“An action by a victim of a criminal offense to recover damages from such victim’s offender or offenders may be commenced within seven years of the date the criminal offense was committed.” — N.Y. CPLR § 213-b
The point of the seven-year window is that you are not required to chase the criminal case before you preserve your civil remedies. The two tracks can move in parallel. Many of our clients pursue both. The hotel’s exposure under a negligence theory runs on the shorter three-year clock, so we file early there even if the criminal case against the individual attacker is still unfolding.
New York’s Pure Comparative Fault Rule
New York is a pure comparative fault state under CPLR § 1411. This is one of the most important things the law does for sexual-assault survivors. In a state with a modified comparative fault rule, a defendant who can blame the victim for even 50% of the harm can walk away with no payment. In a contributory-negligence state, the victim can be barred entirely. In New York, a victim’s recovery is simply reduced by their percentage of fault — and a sexual-assault victim cannot be found comparatively at fault for the assault itself. Insurance defense lawyers will try to argue that you should not have been in the room, that you were drinking, that you accepted a ride or an invitation, that you did not fight hard enough. New York law is clear: those arguments go to mitigation of damages, not to bar of recovery, and in a sexual-assault case they are nearly always rejected at the threshold. You recover, and you recover in full proportion to the harm done to you. The argument is over how much the hotel is responsible for, not whether you are.
New York Has No Cap on Non-Economic Damages
A number of states cap the non-economic damages (pain, suffering, loss of enjoyment of life) a jury may award. New York does not. A New York jury may award the full measure of damages for the assault — the terror, the lasting trauma, the loss of the life you had before the attack — without an artificial statutory ceiling. For a catastrophic sexual assault, that makes New York one of the most favorable venues in the country to try a case in. Combined with the fact that the federal TVPRA permits a victim to recover punitive damages and attorney’s fees against a knowing beneficiary of the venture, the damages model in a New York hotel-rape case is built to capture the real cost of the harm.
The TVPRA — Federal Civil Liability for Trafficking Beneficiaries
If the facts suggest that the hotel — or any person or business that received money from the room in which you were assaulted — knew, or should have known, that the room was being used to facilitate the assault, the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act gives you a ten-year statute of limitations and a right to recover damages plus reasonable attorney’s fees. The TVPRA defines a “venture” as any group of two or more people working together and “participation in a venture” as knowingly assisting, supporting, or facilitating a violation. The hotel does not have to have trafficked you itself; it has to have knowingly benefited from a venture it knew or should have known was trafficking. We will not pretend every hotel-rape case is a TVPRA case. We will say honestly that the TVPRA is one of the weapons in the arsenal, and we will know how to use it if the facts support it.
“The term ‘participation in a venture’ means knowingly assisting, supporting, or facilitating a violation of this chapter.” — 18 U.S.C. § 1591(e)(4)
New York’s Wrongful-Death and Survival Causes of Action
If the attack resulted in a death, the victim’s estate may bring a wrongful-death action under EPTL § 5-4.1 and a survival action under EPTL § 11-3.2. The wrongful-death action belongs to the statutory distributees (spouse, children, parents) and compensates their losses; the survival action belongs to the estate and compensates the victim’s pre-death pain and suffering. New York permits both to be brought in the same case. There is no cap on wrongful-death damages in New York, and the standard for compensatory damages in a survival action is the same as in a personal-injury case.
How We Build the Case: The Proof Story, Week by Week
The work of proving a hotel is responsible for a sexual assault in a guest room is not a single dramatic moment. It is a chain of small, disciplined steps that turn scattered documents into a story a jury cannot dismiss. Here is how we build it, in the order we build it.
Week one — preservation and the first look at the hotel. Letters out, vendors confirmed, the CCTV and key-card records frozen. We obtain the incident report the hotel filed (if any) and the police report. We talk to the housekeeping staff who found or responded to the room, and we talk to the front-desk and security staff on the relevant shifts. The hotel’s own employees know the building; their testimony is often the most direct evidence of how security was or was not run.
Weeks two through six — the documentary spine. Subpoenas and document demands for the hotel’s security plan, training records, prior-incident reports, vendor contracts, maintenance and lock work orders, the reservation and folio records, and the franchisor’s brand-standards manual if the hotel is a flag. We pull the police CAD history for the address. We retain a forensic psychologist to evaluate the survivor (separately from any criminal evaluation) so we can document the PTSD, the depression, the sleep disruption, the loss of functioning in concrete clinical terms.
Months two through six — the experts and the deposition phase. We retain a security consultant to evaluate whether the hotel’s security program met industry standards and whether the omissions are what allowed the assault. We retain a forensic economist to project the lifetime cost of the trauma (therapy, lost earning capacity, loss of household services, future medical care). We take the depositions of the hotel’s general manager, the director of security, the front-desk manager, the housekeeping supervisor, and the on-duty staff from the night of the assault. We depose the franchisor’s brand-standards representatives. We depose the attacker if discovery allows it.
The pre-trial phase — laying the value. A life-care plan and an economic-loss model that translates the harm into a number the jury can grasp. A demand package that ties the number to the documents the hotel tried not to produce. Mediation in the right case. Trial when the case calls for it.
The criminal case against the individual attacker proceeds on its own track. The civil case against the hotel does not have to wait for it, and the civil case is the one that puts money behind the harm and creates a permanent record of institutional accountability. The two cases can — and often do — run in parallel.
What Your Case Is Worth — Honestly Framed
We will not give you a marketing number. We will give you the framework a jury in Westchester County actually uses, and we will tell you the range a case in your posture has historically produced. The honest answer depends on four variables: the severity and permanence of the physical and psychological injury, the documentary record against the hotel, the identity and assets of the defendants, and the venue. Here is the framework.
Economic damages in a sexual-assault case include the cost of immediate medical care, the cost of the sexual-assense forensic examination, ongoing therapy and trauma treatment, medication, lost wages, lost earning capacity (a survivor whose career is derailed by PTSD is entitled to a full economic-loss model), and the value of household services the survivor can no longer perform. The forensic-economist projection for a working-age survivor with severe PTSD commonly runs into the high six figures over a lifetime, before pain and suffering.
Non-economic damages in a New York sexual-assault case are uncapped and include pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life, loss of consortium, and the lasting psychological injury. Verdicts and settlements in New York sexual-assault cases against hotels and commercial defendants have historically ranged from the low six figures (in cases with comparatively limited documentary evidence against the hotel and short-term injury) to the seven figures and above (in cases with catastrophic injury, clear institutional failure, and strong documentary evidence). The federal TVPRA adds the possibility of punitive damages and attorney’s fees against a knowing beneficiary, which can materially increase the recovery where the facts support it.
A range we have seen in cases with facts comparable to yours — a violent felony sexual assault in a commercial lodging setting, with both a named individual attacker and a viable negligent-security claim against the hotel — is low six figures to several million dollars, with cases involving permanent psychological injury, institutional failure, and the strongest evidence of hotel knowledge running toward the upper end of that range. Your specific number depends on the documents we develop during discovery. We will not give you a final number until we have read the hotel’s files, but we will give you a credible range at our first meeting, and we will not move from that range without telling you why.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. Every sexual-assault case is its own case. We tell you what we believe your case is worth because we have built enough of them to know the structure of a jury’s reasoning in Westchester County. We do not tell you what we cannot back up.
The People Who Will Work Your Case
You are not going to be handed to a call center. Your case will be worked by the people whose names are on this page.
Ralph P. Manginello is the Managing Partner of Attorney911 (The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC). He has been licensed since November 6, 1998 (27+ years) and is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas in addition to the Texas state bar. A graduate of South Texas College of Law Houston (J.D., 1998) and The University of Texas at Austin (B.A., Journalism & Public Relations), Ralph 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 National Association of Italian Lawyers. He is the lead counsel in the active $10M+ Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi hazing lawsuit (Harris County, November 2025). Before the law, he was a journalist. He brings a journalist’s discipline to fact development and a trial lawyer’s discipline to the courtroom. More about Ralph Manginello.
Lupe Peña is an Associate Attorney at the firm. He has been licensed since December 6, 2012 and is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. A graduate of South Texas College of Law Houston (J.D., May 2012) and Saint Mary’s University, San Antonio (B.B.A., International Business, 2005), Lupe is a former insurance-defense attorney who worked inside a national defense firm before joining our side. He understands the insurance-adjuster playbook from the inside — how claims are valued, how reserves are set, how IMEs are scheduled, how surveillance is run, how delay is weaponized — and uses that knowledge for the survivor rather than against her. He conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. More about Lupe Peña.
Together, we are the team that handles your case. The first call is to us. The strategy is ours. The fee is contingency: 33⅓% before trial, 40% if trial is necessary, and we pay nothing unless we win. See the firm’s practice areas. Contact us.
“Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.”
The Bottom Line
You were sexually assaulted in a hotel room in New Rochelle, New York. The criminal case against the individual attacker is moving through the Westchester County District Attorney’s office. The civil case against the hotel — and possibly against the property owner, the management company, and the franchisor — is a separate track, with separate remedies, that the criminal system alone cannot provide. New York law is among the most favorable in the country for a sexual-assault survivor: a seven-year window under CPLR § 213-b against the individual attacker, a three-year window under CPLR § 214 against third parties, pure comparative fault under CPLR § 1411, no cap on non-economic damages, and a federal TVPRA claim available where the facts support it. The evidence is perishable; the preservation letter goes out the day you call. The insurance company has a playbook; we know the playbook and we know the counters. The fee is contingency: we do not get paid unless we win.
The first move is yours. The second move is ours, the same day.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. The call is free, confidential, and answered 24/7. We will tell you what the next 24 hours look like and what the next 24 months can produce. Hablamos Español.
Contact Attorney911 for a free consultation. See all practice areas. Meet Ralph Manginello. Meet Lupe Peña.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
