Human Trafficking Lawsuit

Our attorneys are pursuing human trafficking lawsuits, including sex trafficking suits, for those who have been kidnapped, raped, and/or forced into work or prostitution. We offer a free legal case consultation.

Pimps and other criminal elements aren’t the only people responsible for America’s human trafficking tragedy. Those who own and operate businesses such as hotels, airlines, truck stops, and social media platforms and websites are also potentially liable. These entities, some with eyes wide shut, make profits in the millions of dollars each year by helping to support and promote criminal elements in their soulless efforts to profit from what constitutes modern-day slavery. Most potentially culpable businesses have ignored their responsibility and escaped liability, so far. Today, however, that may all be changing. Some businesses are being sued right now for knowing, or because they should have known, that their services were being used to aid human trafficking.

Survivors of human trafficking and sex trafficking may be able to recover compensation from businesses which benefited financially from unspeakable acts of human rights abuse, including sex abuse.

$150 Billion Industry

Human trafficking is a $150 billion a year industry. The FBI says it is the fastest growing business of organized crime, and third largest criminal enterprise in the world. Human trafficking, sexual slavery, and exploitation bring some $99 billion a year in profits to perpetrators. A substantial portion of those profits have come with the cooperation of “legitimate” businesses, which have been used to entice, capture, hide, and transport victims. Many businesses have made human traffickers’ dirty jobs easier, and helped increase traffickers’ profits while increasing their own.

Commercial airlines, buses, trucks, taxis, and trains have all been used to transport enslaved human cargo. Many human traffickers use hotels and motels as virtual brothels to hold and exploit their victims. Second only to actual brothels, hotels are the most common site used for sex trafficking exploitation.

Victims Step Forward

Many victims are shamed or threatened into never coming forward, but coming forward and outing one’s abuser(s) may be the best chance a victim has to help not only herself, but also others. Sex trafficking survivors who have blown the whistle on their abusers have undoubtedly saved the lives of others. The courage to come forward and hold commercial business interests accountable may be one of the best weapons humanity has for fighting human trafficking.

Human Trafficking involves many jobs

While sex trafficking involving forced prostitution gets the lion’s share of media attention, human trafficking involves many forms of human rights abuse, including forced labor, domestic servitude, sweatshop factory work, jobs in construction, in restaurants and hotels, and sexual exploitation that includes forced marriages.

40 Million Human Trafficking Victims

The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that more than 40 million people around the world are victims of human trafficking. More than 80 percent are forced into marriages or labor against their will, one quarter of whom are children. Some 75 percent of trafficking victims are women and girls.

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), signed into law in 2000, was the first federal law to address the issue of modern-day human trafficking. That law defines human trafficking as “the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a person” for labor or sex services through the use of “force, fraud or coercion.”

The TVPA has been reauthorized and amended several times since it was first made law. One of the most recent additions was the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act of 2015.  JVTA applies criminal liability against those who purchase sexual services from victims of trafficking. The JVTA also established the U.S. Advisory Council on Human Trafficking, which consists of trafficking survivors who advise the federal government and review current policy and efforts to stop these crimes.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers have filed several lawsuits over human trafficking in the past two years.  Defendants include the hospitality industry, a software company, and the Church of Scientology. Plaintiffs in these cases claim the defendants either failed to take action against traffickers, or aided and abetted acts of trafficking and exploitation.

Free Legal Consultation

Our law firm is actively pursuing human trafficking lawsuits for human trafficking victims, including sex trafficking victims and survivors. If you or someone you love was a victim of human trafficking, contact our law firm today for a free legal consultation involving a human trafficking lawsuit.

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