Apartment Complexes Face Sex Trafficking Lawsuit After Minor Was Abused at Multiple Locations

Luxury apartment staff knew women and girls were being trafficked on the properties, telling them to hide their faces when entering and leaving buildings, according to survivor.

A California woman has filed a lawsuit against a San Francisco apartment complex, which she says helped sex traffic her as a minor.

The complaint (PDF) was brought by a plaintiff identified only as A.V. to protect her anonymity, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on January 6. It names Avalonbay Communities Inc., which does business as Avalon Mission Bay and South Beach Marina Apartments, as well as other unidentified corporations and individuals as defendants.

According to the lawsuit, while A.V. was still in high school in 2018, she was forced into servitude by a known sex trafficker named Tom Roe, who has been named in numerous similar claims. Roe allegedly groomed and addicted A.V. to drugs before forcing her into prostitution, which led to physical abuse, being sex trafficked to customers, drug use and a tattoo on her inner thigh marking her as Roe’s property.

A.V. states she was placed with other tattooed sex trafficking victims in an apartment complex, whose staff clearly knew that it was the base of operations for a sex trafficking operation.

Employees at South Beach Apartments, and later the Avalon Apartments, did not just know about the trafficking, they often contributed to it as well, the lawsuit states.

In many similar trafficking lawsuits, survivors were trafficked through budget or discount motels and hotels. However, this case involves buildings known to be luxury apartments in the San Francisco area, which Roe thought made the women and children he was trafficking look more appealing to potential customers. In fact, the move to Avalon Apartments was because they were more luxurious, the lawsuit notes.

“Roe purposefully placed his trafficked women, including Plaintiff, at luxury apartment buildings to attract wealthier clientele, Tom Roe moved between apartments when another luxury apartment became available.”

– A.V. v. Avalonbay Communities Inc. et al

The complaint alleged that management knew of Roe’s movements and that he was paying for apartments for several women, including A.V., who was only 17 years old when the trafficking began. In addition, A.V. states that men constantly walked into the apartment building at all hours, despite the presence of a doorman, who ignored them.

Security and the front desk saw A.V. and Roe and other women who were clearly being trafficked regularly enter the building, she says. Security staff, instead of rescuing the provocatively dressed and obviously trafficked young women, told them to hide their faces when entering and leaving the buildings.

She was finally rescued in 2019 during a Federal Bureau of Investigation sting operation, when the operation was broken up and Roe was arrested.

A.V. presents claims of violation of federal anti-trafficking statutes and the California Civil Code, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress and negligence.

Hotel and Motel Sex Trafficking Lawsuits

The complaint expands litigation that has already suggested that these problems are common, and claim that motel and hotel operators, often in charge of national chains, place profits before the safety of children being sexually exploited in their rooms and on their properties. These entities allegedly failed to enact and enforce procedures that would have prevented child sex trafficking, instead turning their heads to the abhorrent practices to increase profits.

In April 2024, plaintiffs petitioned the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) to consolidate more than 100 similar hotel sex trafficking lawsuits before one federal judge for coordinated pretrial proceedings. 

However, the JPML refused the petition, expressing doubt that consolidation would lead to efficient coordination, due to the wide variety of defendant hotel operators involved in the claims, specific facts relevant to each individual incident and other factors that made the cases more individualized. This means the claims are proceeding as individual lawsuits in their respective districts.

Last year, what is believed to be one of the first claims to go before a jury resulted in a $40 million verdict for a motel sex trafficking survivor, who was held at United Inn & Suites in Decatur, Georgia, for more than 40 days, where she was repeatedly raped for money more than 200 times, according to allegations presented at trial against the motel owner.