13 Workers Allege Criminal Activity At Westchester Hotel In Lawsuit

ELMSFORD, NY — A lawsuit filed in NYS Supreme Court on Wednesday by employees of a Westchester hotel follows a whistleblower's complaint about rampant criminal activity at the workplace.

A group of 13 former and current employees at the Hampton Inn by Hilton, on West Main Street in Elmsford, filed the complaint through their attorneys against the hotel's owners and management.

According to the court filings, the complaint was filed pursuant to the NYS Human Rights Law and the Trafficking Victims Protection Act seeking "equitable relief and monetary damages to redress the injuries they have suffered as a result of... sexual harassment, criminal activity, prostitution and human trafficking, created, condoned, and tolerated by" the defendants.

The lawsuit outlines evidence that sex traffickers felt free to ply their illicit trade at the property.

"Due to the failure of the Defendants to enact and enforce company-wide policies to quash the criminal activity, egregious sexual harrassment, prostitution and sex trafficking, the Hampton Inn has become a venue of choice for criminal activity, as pimps and prostitutes capitalized on the Defendants' general complacency bordering on complicity, in regard to these illicit activities, which, in turn, operated to subject its employees to insufferable daily acts of the most extreme forms of workplace sexual harassment imaginable."

According to the current and former employees who are suing, prostitution activity and sex trafficking have openly operated in and out of the Hampton Inn for years, while the management and ownership continued to "neglect, condone and assist in this criminal misconduct to continue earning a profit."

The employees said they were not only forced to endure the hostile work environment this created, but were also subject to instances of sexual harassment and humiliation because of the culture that was being fostered in the name of the bottom line. In the court filings, workers said they felt pressured to accept the exploitative conditions, in many cases, because they are almost all foreign-born with limited English skills. The workers felt both "threatened by the ongoing criminal activity and egregious sexually hostile work environment and fearful of losing their livelihoods, should they complain about the criminal activity at the Hampton Inn," according to the lawsuit.

According to the allegations, the staff members "were targets of daily sexual harassment, sexual propositioning, and dangerous and threatening behavior by pimps as well as patrons of this illegal prostitution activity."

The employees claim they "observed prostitutes openly conducting business, wandering the hotel hallways and lobby scantily clad, and on occasion, being brutalized, in addition to 'Johns' roaming the hallways, lining up outside of various rooms and lingering by the elevators."

Pimps were also a constant presence on site, according to the workers, who claim, "as many as 15-20 Johns would go in and out of prostitutes' dedicated guest rooms at the Hampton Inn; often with lines of men forming in the hallway outside of the doorways to these rooms."

The lawsuit contends that the situation created a place of employment that was not only uncomfortable, but potentially dangerous: "The sex for sale was part of daily working life, including the hazards and dangers that come along with pimps, Johns, and drugs in the workplace."

The lawsuit cites specific incidents to back up that claim.

One housekeeper named as a plaintiff said she knocked on a door, received no reply, and "found a John sitting naked on the couch, pulling on his penis." When she complained to her manager, who is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, he "told her that if she did not like it, she could leave."

That same housekeeper claims in court filings that she also "witnessed [the manager] direct the staff to give the prostitutes whatever they wanted, or they would be fired."

Another room attendant claims in court documents that she witnessed a naked prostitute run out of a room, chased by a man with a knife.

The same room attendant said that when a John died in a room, she was told not to say anything and was warned, "what happens in the hotel, stays in the hotel."

"The female Plaintiffs, in particular, were regularly exposed to men leering at them, propositioning them and making various offensive remarks of an explicitly sexual nature," according to the recently filed legal action. "They endured the experience and fear of being stalked by strange men, following them throughout the Hampton Inn and attempting to try to enter one of the guest rooms with them. The problem of female staff being stalked was so prevalent and concerning that they locked themselves in the rooms they were cleaning to ensure against encounters with men that roamed the hallways of the Hampton Inn in search of sex."

In November 2022, one of the hotel workers filed an anonymous whistleblower complaint, reporting the prostitution and drug trafficking at the Hampton Inn and the staff's complaints to onsite managers about their safety fears. The complaint was not answered by the company, according to lawyers representing the employees.

Illinois-based Schulte Hospitality Group, Inc., several Hilton Companies and their officers were named in the lawsuit along with two holding companies, listed as franchisees, based in Tarrytown and Elmsford.