Oakland City Attorney John Russo upped the city’s fight against sex trafficking of children this week by filing lawsuits against three hotels on allegations they let their businesses be used for prostitution.

“Certain hotels in this city have allowed and profited from this criminal industry -- an industry in which horrific crimes against women and girls are routine,” Russo said at a press conference he held Wednesday to announce the suits. He is seeking to shut them down or extract penalties of up to $25,000, according to the suits filed in state Superior Court in Alameda County.

One of the hotels sued, the Economy Inn at 122 East 12^th St., has been the scene of numerous violent rapes and kidnapping of young women, according to evidence cited in the lawsuit.

In October, police rescued a woman who had been kidnapped in San Diego and brought to the Economy Inn and “severely beaten with fists and a whip, burned,” penetrated with a foreign object and forced to solicit acts of prostitution, according to the city’s lawsuit against the Economy Inn.

In July, the suit says, a 14-year-old girl was raped by two men at the Economy Inn and in April, Oakland police rescued a 16-year-old girl who had been kidnapped and brought to the same hotel and forced into prostitution.

The suit also cites an August kidnapping in Sacramento of a woman who was brought to the Economy Inn and raped and an April arrest at the hotel of a man with two 14-year old girls. Furthermore, in 2008 in the Economy Inn parking lot, a minister was shot as he was trying to help a young girl escape her pimp.

Economy Inn owners and co-defendants listed on the suit, Hansaben Khatri, Kantilal Khatri, Rajesh Khatri and Rajeshkumar Khatri, did not answer phone calls to the inn or respond to voice messages. Employees inside the hotel's office on Wednesday would not answer questions or inform the owners that reporters wanted to speak with them.

District Attorney Nancy O’Malley said she will prosecute the cases against these hotels and any others found to aid traffickers, under the state’s Red Light Abatement Law.

The lawsuits against the other two hotels - the Sage Motel at 4844 MacArthur Blvd. and the National Lodge at 1711 International Boulevard - cite less evidence, but still list numerous arrests at the hotels of prostitutes who had solicited undercover police and offered sex at the hotels in question. Some of those prostitutes were under age, according to the suits.

But the manager of one of them, the National Lodge, protested and said he turns away pimps and prostitutes every day and has pleaded with the police to help him combat prostitution in the neighborhood.

“The legend is we allow prostitution. It is not true,” said Hiral Patel, manager of National Lodge. “I turn away 10 to 15 people each day” whom he suspects of being pimps or prostitutes.

 “I’ve turned down so many people. I’ve kicked out so many people," Patel said. "We keep a check list of people we will not rent to.”

All three of the hotels sued by the city are situated in or relatively near "the track" or a long stretch of International Boulevard where prostitution and the trafficking of minors are rampant.

Hundreds of youth in Oakland - and hundreds of thousands nationally – have been caught up in the sex trade, law enforcement agencies estimate. Often the kids involved have run away from home or have been kidnapped. Traffickers and pimps lure vulnerable seeming kids into the trade and then often keep them in bondage through threats, coercion and brainwashing, police and DA officers say.

Oakland Police Officer Holly Joshi was until recently part of an investigative unit that pursued pimps and traffickers and rescued their victims.

“We discovered a world of exploitation, violence and modern day slavery,” Joshi said. "We were encountering children 11 to 17 years old. Young girls are being forced by predators and traffickers into a life of prostitution that benefits only the pimps.”  

The child exploitation unit still exists, however, Joshi is now the OPD’s public information officer.

In recent years, the Alameda County District Attorney’s office and the Oakland Police Department have been in a joint and concentrated effort to combat child sex trafficking. The DA’s office has prosecuted 180 cases of human trafficking for sex.

The DA’s office launched a program called H.E.A.T. Watch - Human Exploitation and Trafficking Watch - a year ago to get businesses and residents to be the watch out for young victims of sexual exploitation and to report trafficking. 

O’Malley said H.E.A.T. Watch has had some successes in the year with businesses reporting incidents they see. But she said the lawsuits likely will strengthen the program by putting businesses on notice that they cannot just turn a blind eye to what goes on under their roofs. 

“If you are a business in Oakland and you facilitate the sale or sexual exploitation of children, we will act on it,” O'Malley said.

California has had a Red Light Abatement Law, O’Malley said, that makes businesses liable for fines up to $25,000 or to closure if they turn a blind eye to prostitution happening on their premises. 

O’Malley said anyone suspecting an incident of child sex trafficking can call the H.E.A.T. Watch tip line at (510) 208-4959.