Criminals use hotels, motels for sex trafficking. Can a new NC law curb that?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- New NC law mandates anti-trafficking training, reporting at all lodging sites.
- HB971 upgrades sex buyer penalties from misdemeanors to felony-level charges.
- Victims increasingly sue hotels; industry faces rising legal and financial pressure.
A newly enacted state law requires all hotels, motels and vacation rentals to report possible sex trafficking and train staff to detect the crime.
National data identifies hotels and motels as one of the most common locations for sex trafficking, with many criminal prosecutions confirming that it occurs in North Carolina.
This comes as a growing number of lawsuits target lodging businesses for the role they can play in enabling the crime, across the country and here.
Last month, a woman filed a lawsuit against a Charlotte-based Super 8 Motel where she claims she was trafficked in 2014 while just 16-years-old.
Operators of the motel missed “red flags” signaling the woman’s situation and profited by renting rooms to a man that allegedly sold her for sex dozens of times a day to a steady stream of men, entering and exiting the hotel, the lawsuit states.
But will the new legislation make a difference at reducing the number of people forced into this shadow industry here?
Some of the training provisions included in the law have already been implemented by major hotel chains, but the problem persists, some experts and advocates for trafficking victims say.
What may be more important is language in the law that enables police to file more serious criminal charges against those looking to buy sex, said Pam Strickland, founder of North Carolina Stop Human Trafficking. Specifically, “sex buyers” will be charged with a felony rather than a misdemeanor, she said.
North Carolina is one of only two states that make a first arrest for buying sex a felony. Texas passed stricter penalties in 2021.
“For some people, that will be enough to prevent them from doing it,” Strickland told the News & Observer.
A known problem
Among hotel chains, locally owned lodging were the top venues for known trafficking in 2023 nationally, according to cases tracked by the Human Trafficking Institute – a group working to curb the crime by targeting traffickers – 2023 federal report.
Hotels and motels were one of three among the top known trafficking venues in North Carolina last year, along with illegal massage operations and homes, according to data from the National Human Trafficking Hotline.
Court records provide some details on these crimes. After an undercover officer responded to an online advertisement offering sex for sale in 2022, he was directed to a hotel in Jacksonville, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina.
They found a “young woman” under the control of two men who had moved her to hotels in Jacksonville, Charlotte and Durham, as well as to Virginia, to find “customers”. She was not allowed to leave a room and had to request food and water from the men, who required her to perform oral sex on them to “ensure she was a ‘good product’,” according to federal officials.
The men were sentenced last year to a combined 39 years in prison.
A 12-year-old girl “overdosed“ in a Budgetel Inn and Suites in Raleigh in 2022, authorities say. Investigators found out the girl had “been advertised for commercial sex on two separate websites,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Advertisements included explicit photographs of the minor that falsely claimed she was 19. Last year the girl’s trafficker pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit sex trafficking — and earlier this year she was sentenced to 216 months in prison for the charge.
New training
House Bill 971 passed last year and became effective this month. Now, hotels, motels and vacation rental operators are required to create systems to report sex trafficking situations to either the National Human Trafficking Hotline — or local law enforcement.
The legislation also requires operators to train employees every two years on trafficking prevention — and to include sex trafficking awareness signage around their properties.
State legislators tapped the North Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association – along with two other state agencies — to help the Department of Labor come up with training courses.
A lot of large hotel chains had already implemented training required by the new law before it was passed, an effort underway since at least 2001, said Lynn Minges, president and CEO of the trade association.
“The systems were in place, the training modules were in place. Most of the employees had already been trained,” she said.
Hotels, motels and vacation rentals can be fined for not complying with the new legislation. Operators could owe up to $2,000 for violating the training or reporting requirements.
But the legislation is also protective. It doesn’t allow individuals to sue hotel operators for not complying with the mandates.
Hotel litigation
Minges said her industry is trying to do its part to be aware of – and help limit – sex trafficking in hotels. But blame can’t always be put only on lodging operators, she said.
Lodging operators can’t “police for human trafficking.” But they can be trained to spot obvious signs.
People who were trafficked are able to sue hotels now due to a federal law passed in 2000.
In 2024, the majority of over 200 federal sex trafficking cases were mainly aimed at hotels and the hospitality industry, according to a report from the Human Trafficking Legal Center.
Hotel and hospitality industry defendants vastly outnumber others from 2003 to 2024, including religious, athletic and financial institutions, according to the same report.
Sometimes the financial cost to defendants can be dramatic. Earlier this month a jury in Georgia decided a hotel owes $40 million in settlement money to a woman who alleges she was trafficked under its roof, possibly the largest settlement of its kind, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
But pursuing such lawsuits isn’t always simple and can take time.
A woman identified only as Jane Doe (L.M.) in court records, in 2023 sued a Raleigh Hampton Inn under the Hilton franchise where she said she was trafficked repeatedly.
L.M. alleges in court records that the hotel’s staff should have noticed the signs of sex trafficking and yet failed to report the activity.
That includes people paying for rooms with cash or prepaid cards, showing up with few personal belongings and a steady stream of unregistered visitors coming and going “at unusual times,” according to the lawsuit.
The woman’s trafficker developed an “implicit understanding” with the hotel’s staff about what was happening under its roof, according to the complaint. Staff allegedly called the trafficker by his “pimp name.”
A judge initially threw that case out, saying L.M. did not present enough evidence to prove she was trafficked.
But after L.M.’s attorneys filed for an altered judgment, it may continue. Attorneys on both sides will have time to submit more evidence to help their cases. A hearing is scheduled for April 2026.
Both Hilton and the company operating the Raleigh Hampton Inn have denied the allegations in court records.
The company managing the motel and lawyers representing the Hilton company did not return The News &Observer’s request for comment. Nor did the company managing the Charlotte-based Super 8 Motel named in the more recent lawsuit about allegations dating back to 2014.
Stricter penalties
In addition to requiring more training to try to disrupt some sex trafficking, HB971 created a more severe punishment for people caught trying to pay for sex. Instead of a misdemeanor charge for the first offense, defendants can face a felony.
That’s in line with a tactic called “demand reduction,” said Strickland, which aims to make it “uncomfortable” for people buying sex. That includes shame, guilt — and “actually charging sex buyers with the crime of solicitation of prostitution.”
To Strickland, the tougher penalty — and maybe media attention for those arrested — could be the recipe to curbing sex trafficking.
In some situations where a hotel might have a legitimate case of sex trafficking to report, management may not because of “negative publicity,” Strickland said, even with the threat of new financial penalties in the new law.
“It’s hard because some managers think that if they report a potential case of human trafficking at their property, that that will get them negative publicity,” Strickland said.
But when people are arrested with a felony criminal charge for trying to buy sex from a trafficker, that could be a stronger deterrent in reducing the demand for sex trafficking, she said.
“Their name is in the paper and other potential sex buyers see that and they go: ‘Oh my goodness, that guy got arrested for buying sex,’” said Strickland.
Her hope, she said, is that thought would be followed by another: “I need to rethink this.”
This story was originally published July 28, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Criminals use hotels, motels for sex trafficking. Can a new NC law curb that?."
