Sex trafficking survivor sues hotel chains in Massachusetts
Lawsuit alleges hotels profited from prostitution
Lawsuit alleges hotels profited from prostitution
Lawsuit alleges hotels profited from prostitution
Audra Doody does not remember a lot about her time being trafficked in and out of hotels in eastern Massachusetts. But she does remember the other women she was trafficked with.
"They're not alive anymore, so I hold them dear to my heart. That's what I try to remember."
She prefers that some of the other details remain a blur.
"It's pretty gross, to be honest, what you have to do. I don't think a human body's meant for all of that," she said. "There's no sleep. It's just your phone continuously goes off all the time. You can't keep up with the amount of calls or text messages you're getting."
She spent hours and days in hotels, forced to hand over money to her trafficker, all while hooked on drugs.
"I was so tired when I got out. That's what I remember. It seems like a short period, 2012 to 2015, but literally every day in a hotel doing that," she said. "It's exhausting. It drains the life out of you. And that's why I think I wanted to die at the end."
Doody has emerged on the other side and now serves as co-executive director of Safe Exit Initiative in Worcester, which aims to create a safe and sustainable way out from the sex trade.
But she still wonders why no one at the hotels helped her.
"I don't know how you wouldn't know what was going on. You see three, four girls getting dropped off by one guy," she said. "If there's four of us, 10 dates a day, that's 40-plus men in and out of one hotel room. How do you not see what's happening? There's maids, there's maintenance. The person at the front desk."
Doody is convinced the hotel staff knew exactly what was going on.
"I do believe they see it. I just don't think they care unless there's a problem," she said.
Doody has decided to try and make it a problem for the hotels. She is suing several chains that ran the hotels in which she was trafficked.
Her attorney, Michael Glennon of Brody, Hardoon, Perkins & Kesten, highlighted the industry's role, saying, "You can imagine what sort of things can be found in these rooms or what the rooms look like after 20, 30, 40 different buyers have come through in a single day."
He added, "The hospitality industry is making a substantial amount of money off of it. And so they bury their head in the sand, right? They turned a blind eye to it."
Doody's lawsuit is one of many filed by trafficking survivors across the country against hotel chains. Glennon said he expects hundreds more will be filed in the future.
The hotel chains named in Doody's lawsuit declined to comment on her complaint.
"We're hoping that survivors like Audra can be compensated for the harm that was caused at these hotels and at these locations and that it'll cause change on their end," he said.
He emphasized that the lawsuit is not only about compensation, saying, "We're just asking them to take steps to train their staff properly, what to do, what to look out for, who to contact."
Doody recalled her interactions with hotel staff, saying, "I remember looking at the housekeepers and I had a black eye at the time."
She believes hotel workers can and should be a lifeline for women trapped in "The Life."
"Just be aware. Don't turn a blind eye. You could really save somebody's life if you just made one call. You just never know what could happen," she said.
