Sex Trafficking Victims

Sex trafficking isn’t some far-off problem happening in shadowy corners of the world you’ll never visit. It’s here. In South Carolina. Right now. In one recent year alone, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) investigated 285 human trafficking tips across 40 of our 46 counties. A staggering 94% involved sex trafficking, and disturbingly, 315 of the 392 victims linked to these cases were children or youth.

If traffickers or the businesses that enabled them shattered your life or the life of someone you love, South Carolina law provides a path to fight back. You can pursue justice and compensation to help rebuild what was taken. It’s not about erasing the past, because nobody can do that. It’s about demanding accountability and securing the resources needed to move forward.

If you are ready to explore your legal options and hold the responsible parties accountable, contact Joye Law Firm today at (888) 324-3100 for a free, confidential consultation.

Making Sense of Sex Trafficking Claims Legally

Let’s break down some key aspects relevant to sex trafficking civil claims in South Carolina. The core idea is holding accountable not just the direct trafficker, but also any person or entity that knowingly benefited from or facilitated the trafficking.

Common Settings Where Trafficking Occurs & Liability May Arise:

• Hotels and Motels: Hotel chains and individual establishments can be held accountable for ignoring obvious signs like excessive male foot traffic to a room, visible injuries on a victim, cash payments for extended stays, refusal of housekeeping, or staff acting as lookouts. Recent cases, some involving South Carolina locations, specifically allege hotel owners/operators profited while ignoring red flags, potentially violating the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) and state laws.
• Transportation Hubs: Truck stops, bus stations – places facilitating transient movement.
• Online Platforms: Websites and apps used for recruitment, grooming, and advertising victims.
• Illicit Massage/Spa Businesses: Often used as fronts for commercial sex operations.
• Residential Settings: Apartments or houses where victims are held and exploited.
• Bars/Clubs/Strip Clubs: Sometimes used for recruitment or facilitating encounters.

Types of Harm Endured (Beyond the Obvious):

Survivors suffer a devastating range of injuries, both visible and invisible:

• Physical Injuries: Bruises, broken bones, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), forced abortions, reproductive health issues, injuries from restraints or assault.
• Psychological Trauma: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Complex PTSD (C-PTSD), anxiety disorders, depression, suicidal ideation, dissociation, Stockholm Syndrome, trust issues.
• Financial Devastation: Debt bondage created by traffickers, inability to work, loss of assets.
• Social Isolation: Damage to relationships with family and friends, stigma, difficulty reintegrating into society.
• Substance Abuse Issues: Often forced upon victims or used as a coping mechanism.

Key South Carolina Legal Tools:

• South Carolina Human Trafficking Act (C. Code § 16-3-2010 et seq.): This is the cornerstone. Specifically, § 16-3-2060 explicitly grants victims the right to bring a civil action in the court of common pleas and allows for actual, compensatory, and punitive damages, plus attorney’s fees and costs for prevailing plaintiffs. It mandates treble damages for willful and malicious acts.
• Statute of Limitations (S.C. Code § 16-3-2060): This law recognizes the unique challenges survivors face. The clock doesn’t start running for a minor until they reach 18. Survivors of human trafficking often suffer psychological trauma, isolation, and the inability to access legal services. Thankfully, the running of the statute of limitations may be suspended when a victim could not have reasonably discovered they had a right to sue due to circumstances resulting from the trafficking situation.
• Premises Liability: Existing laws may hold property owners (like hotels) accountable if they fail to take reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable criminal activity, including trafficking, on their property.
• Negligence: Businesses or individuals could be sued for negligence if they had a duty to protect the victim (or not facilitate harm), breached that duty, and directly caused the victim’s damages.

Battling Traffickers and the Businesses That Enable Them

Taking legal action against those responsible for sex trafficking isn’t just about suing the individual monster who directly abused you. Often, the exploitation was made possible, or even profitable, for businesses that looked the other way – or worse, actively participated. Fighting these entities requires tenacity because they have resources and tactics designed to protect their bottom line, not to ensure justice for survivors.

Tactics Used Against Survivors:

When you pursue a claim, especially against corporate entities like hotel chains or online platforms, expect them to fight back hard. Common defensive strategies include:

• Denial of Knowledge: Claiming they had no idea trafficking was occurring on their premises or via their services, despite potential red flags.
• Blaming the Victim: Trying to shift responsibility by suggesting the victim was complicit or made poor choices, ignoring the elements of force, fraud, or coercion central to trafficking.
• Minimizing Their Role: Arguing they were merely a third party with no control over the trafficker’s actions (like a hotel franchisor distancing itself from a franchisee’s operations).
• Delay and Obfuscation: Using legal maneuvers to drag out the process, hoping the survivor will give up due to emotional or financial strain.
• Aggressive Legal Teams: Employing large law firms to overwhelm the survivor’s legal counsel with paperwork and procedural challenges.
• Pointing Fingers: Blaming the direct trafficker solely, trying to deflect any responsibility from their own negligence or participation.

How Joye Law Firm Fights Back for You:

Confronting these tactics requires a strategic, aggressive, and well-resourced approach. Here’s how our team levels the playing field:

• Thorough Investigation: We dig deep. This involves gathering evidence like police reports, witness statements (from staff, other guests, etc.), electronic records, financial transactions, and internal company documents to expose what really happened and who knew what.
• Identifying All Liable Parties: We look beyond the obvious trafficker to identify all individuals and corporate entities whose actions or inactions contributed to the trafficking. This could include hotel owners, operators, franchisors, managers, websites, transportation companies, or any business that knowingly benefited financially.
• Leveraging Legal Discovery: We use subpoenas, depositions (sworn questioning), and requests for documents to compel defendants to reveal information they might prefer to hide, such as internal policies (or lack thereof), incident reports, staff training records, and communications about suspected trafficking.
• Demonstrating Negligence or Complicity: We build a case showing that a business either knew or should have known about the trafficking based on obvious signs, yet failed to act reasonably (negligence), or that they knowingly participated in or profited from the trafficking venture (complicity under laws like TVPRA or S.C. Code § 16-3-2020).
• Expert Consultation: We may work with experts in hotel security, psychology, economics, and trafficking dynamics to strengthen your case and counter defense arguments.
• Relentless Advocacy: We prepare every case as if it’s going to trial. Our reputation for being willing and able to take cases to court often encourages more favorable settlement negotiations, but we won’t hesitate to present your case to a judge and jury if that’s what it takes to achieve justice.