Sex Trafficking of Women and Girls Online: Dozens of Anti-Trafficking Experts Dispute Village Voice’s Claim That Its Efforts to Stop Sex Trafficking Are ‘Effective’
On December 2nd, FAIR Girls (an agency I co-founded in 2003 to help find and empower high risk and exploited girls) and fifty-three leading anti-trafficking experts and organizations sent a letter to Village Voice Media demanding the immediate and permanent removal of the Adult section of its subsidiary’s Web site Backpage.com where advertisements placed by others have resulted in the sex trafficking of women and girls. FAIR Girls chose to sponsor this letter because we have worked with over 125 sex trafficked girls in the United States. Many were advertised by their traffickers on web sites like Backpage.com. These girls were treated like commodities even though they are our sisters, daughters, and in some cases, the girl next door. Our letter comes on the heels of similar appeals by 36 prominent clergy and 51 Attorneys General. Furthermore, a petition, led by Change.org, is also collecting thousands of signatures.
In the past few months, numerous indictments of individuals in cities such as Brooklyn to Memphis who are beating, raping, and forcing teenage girls into sex trafficking. Their traffickers are advertising these young girls for sex with photographs on Backpage.com.
The Village Voice responds to criticism by the Attorneys General, clergy, and nonprofits by claiming that they are indeed trying to clean up their web site through their screening process. Clearly, their efforts are not sufficient. Our coalition maintains that as long as Backpage.com allows individuals to use its site to post “service” ads, there is no way to guarantee that women and girls will not be subjects of sex trafficking.
In our media advisory yesterday, I claimed that web sites such as Backpage.com that accept adult advertisements allow individuals who seek to sexually exploit women and minors to hide the identify of their victims, making prevention and rescue nearly impossible. I know this first hand because I personally am trying to find missing and exploited girls.
Please take a look at our media advisory and coalition letter to Village Voice. Then, consider signing the petition (70,000+ signatures so far). Girls are not commodities.
The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of MomsRising.org.
MomsRising.org strongly encourages our readers to post comments in response to blog posts. We value diversity of opinions and perspectives. Our goals for this space are to be educational, thought-provoking, and respectful. So we actively moderate comments and we reserve the right to edit or remove comments that undermine these goals. Thanks!