How Pimps Use the Web to Sell Girls

[Stuart]

In November, a terrified 13-year-old girl pounded on an apartment door in Brooklyn. When a surprised woman answered, the girl pleaded for a phone. She called her mother, and then dialed 911.

The girl, whom I’ll call Baby Face because of her looks, frantically told police that a violent pimp was selling her for sex. He had taken her to the building and ordered her to go to an apartment where a customer was waiting, she said, and now he was waiting downstairs to make sure she did not escape. She had followed the pimp’s directions and gone upstairs, but then had pounded randomly on this door in hopes of getting help.

Baby Face said she hurt too much to endure yet another rape by a john. She told prosecutors later that she was bleeding vaginally and that her pimp had recently kicked her down a stairwell for trying to flee.

That 911 call set in motion the arrest of Kendale Judge, then 21. Judge has pleaded not guilty to charges of sex trafficking, kidnapping, rape and compelling prostitution. He is in jail, and we haven’t heard his side of the events yet.

The episode also shines a spotlight on how the girl was marketed — in ads on Backpage.com, a major national Web site where people place ads to sell all kinds of things, including sex. It is a godsend to pimps, allowing customers to order a girl online as if she were a pizza.

Lauren Hersh, the ace prosecutor in Brooklyn who leads the sex-trafficking unit there, says that of the 32 people she and her team have prosecuted in the last year and a half — typically involving victims aged 12 to 25 — a vast majority of the cases included girls marketed through Backpage ads.

“Pimps are turning to the Internet,” said Hersh. “They’re not putting the girls on the street so much. Backpage is a great vehicle for pimps trying to sell girls.”

Craigslist backed out of this sector after public protests. Pimps then moved to Backpage.com, which is owned by Village Voice Media, owners of The Village Voice weekly newspaper.

Attorneys general from 48 states wrote a joint letter to Backpage, warning that it had become “a hub” for sex trafficking and calling on it to stop running adult services ads. The attorneys general said that they had identified cases in 22 different states in which pimps peddled underage girls through Backpage.

The attorneys general cited a 15-year-old girl who was being forced to have sex with men last year in Dorchester, Mass. The pimp marketed the girl through Backpage.

But Backpage isn’t budging. Indeed, it has fought back with personal attacks on those, such as Ashton Kutcher, who have linked it to human trafficking.

Steve Suskin, legal counsel to Village Voice Media, gave me a lengthy statement in which he argued that the company is already cooperating closely with law-enforcement authorities. He cited a 16-year-old girl in Seattle who was rescued as a result of a tip the company had made.

“Censorship will not rid the world of exploitation,” Suskin asserted.

It’s true that there’s some risk that pimps will migrate to new Web sites, possibly based overseas, that are less cooperative. But, on balance, that’s a risk worth taking. The present system is failing. Pimps aren’t the shrewdest marketers, and eliminating a hub for trafficking should at least chip away at the problem.

Backpage suggests that it is battling censors and prudes. In fact, what drives it seems to be greed. In their letter, the attorneys general said that Backpage earns more than $22 million annually from prostitution advertising.

On Backpage, the pimps claim adult ages for the girls they market, but Hersh scoffs. “I see 19,” she said, “and I immediately think 13.”

“I’m not seeing a lot of cases where there’s not coercion,” she added. “The average age where a girl is forced into prostitution is 12 to 14. And most of these 16- or 17 year-olds are being run by pretty vicious pimps.”

While there are no reliable figures for human trafficking, the more we look, the more we find. The Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, says that in the year before he set up a sex-trafficking unit in June 2010, his office prosecuted no trafficking cases. Since then, the office has become a national model, indicting 32 people, with 10 convictions and no acquittals so far.

Among those rescued was Baby Face, who had run away from home in September. Judge allegedly found her on the street, bought food for her and told her that she was beautiful. Within a few days, he had posted her photo on Backpage and was selling her five to nine times a day, prosecutors say. When she didn’t earn enough money, he beat her with a belt, they add.

When Baby Face ran away from her pimp and desperately knocked on that apartment door in Brooklyn, she was also in effect pounding on the door of the executive suites of Backpage and Village Voice Media. Those executives should listen to her pleas.

Source

Censors and prudes? Seriously?

[StarBound]

Purge

[KALSTER]

Censors and prudes? Seriously?

Typical. Whenever you try and stop people from doing whatever they want, they claim censorship etc. Screw them. Lock them away and throw away the key. The site's attorney said the make more than $22m a year on prostitution ads. Why isn't that illegal? They are facilitating it.

[Tribble]

Would wishing that horrific acts of torture be rained down on these "humans" make me a bad person?¿

[StarPhoenix]

Censors and prudes? Seriously?

Typical. Whenever you try and stop people from doing whatever they want, they claim censorship etc. Screw them. Lock them away and throw away the key. The site's attorney said the make more than $22m a year on prostitution ads. Why isn't that illegal? They are facilitating it.

++

Culling season?

[hamin_aus]

Backspace.com you say
I must check it out sometime...

But seriously, I[m with backspace.com on this.
You can place adult ads in any print newspaper, pretty sure they dont do fact checking, just take the money and print what you say. This is another case of of dumbfarks not knowing how the internet works. You take down Backspace.com, they move to Backspace.ru - and then good luck to you.
Rather than pull down everything including what is probably largely "legitimate" prostitutes adverts, why not subpoena backspace for the IP addresses and details of people placing ads and follow up on the suspicious ones?
Nah, that is too much work, lets just shut it down and let the scumbag pimps move to a new, probably harder to police website.
That is how we "chip away" at the problem... And then the morality police show up in full support of an idiot move.

As if under-age girls will stop being prostituted just because backspace.com gets shut down.
Meh.
Typical SOPA/PIPA mentality.

[RuadRauFlessa]

Damn since when did I start agreeing with jamin_za....

It's gonna snow I tells ya... Seriously they are going about it the wrong way. Rather than actually doing some decent grunt work they are just chasing their tails. It is like The Pirate Bay, every time it gets hit it just moves to a different domain.

[jee]

Where are the mothers and fathers when their children are playing where they should not?

[hamin_aus]

Damn since when did I start agreeing with jamin_za...

Oh don't exaggerate.
We agree on heaps of stuff. In fact every time you make a decision or form an opinion using common-sense and rationality, we usually find ourselves in an awkward moment where we have nothing to argue over

[Anakha56]

I side with jamin on this...

[Tribble]

Just to clarify - I was referring to the pimps

[GreyWolf]

Where are the mothers and fathers when their children are playing where they should not?

Good question.

[hamin_aus]

Where are the mothers and fathers when their children are playing where they should not?

Good question.

Not really. We all know where they are.
Too busy not giving a fark about their kids to know what is going on.
A lot of under-age prostitutes are runaway kids who left behind abusive parents or guardians.

[KALSTER]

Backspace.com you say
I must check it out sometime...

But seriously, I[m with backspace.com on this.
You can place adult ads in any print newspaper, pretty sure they dont do fact checking, just take the money and print what you say. This is another case of of dumbfarks not knowing how the internet works. You take down Backspace.com, they move to Backspace.ru - and then good luck to you.
Rather than pull down everything including what is probably largely "legitimate" prostitutes adverts, why not subpoena backspace for the IP addresses and details of people placing ads and follow up on the suspicious ones?
Nah, that is too much work, lets just shut it down and let the scumbag pimps move to a new, probably harder to police website.
That is how we "chip away" at the problem... And then the morality police show up in full support of an idiot move.

As if under-age girls will stop being prostituted just because backspace.com gets shut down.
Meh.
Typical SOPA/PIPA mentality.

Why can't they check adds? Because it costs money and it will cost them $22m from allowing prostitution and human trafficking on their site?

We don't know whether they have been subpoena'ed or not. It is an ongoing investigation though and I am not saying close down the site, I am saying what they are doing is supposed to be illegal. So, force them to do something about it and if they won't, then throw the lot of them in jail and use the data to catch those pieces of crap.

I can't even imagine what those girls must be going through. I am by no means a part of the "morality police", but this is simply unacceptable.

[Stuart]

Craigslist backed out of this sector after public protests.

If Craigslist could afford to back out, why not Backspace?

[hamin_aus]

Craigslist backed out of this sector after public protests.

If Craigslist could afford to back out, why not Backspace?

What are we, Craigslist board of directors, how would we know?

The fact is that it's not illegal. The only pressure they can put on Backspace is "think of the children" but the authorities are doing nothing for the children, just sweeping the epidemic back under the rug by shutting out the very public place where it happens.

I do think the article sensationalises the problem tho.
There have been tonnes of hookup threads on places like <Rhymes with floor-chin> where people discuss their experiences with prostitutes off websites like these. None of them have mentioned under-aged prostitutes - which is especially surprising for <Rhymes with floor-chin>
If it was an andemic as the article claims people would be posting in those threads about it. Quite the opposite from what I've seen, the complaint seems to be booked a 19 year old and got a 30 year old meth-head

[GreyWolf]

Not really. We all know where they are.
Too busy not giving a fark about their kids to know what is going on.
A lot of under-age prostitutes are runaway kids who left behind abusive parents or guardians.

It is a good question, not because the answer eludes us, but because it leads us to a better solution than shutting down/censoring the internet.

My solution is simple...
1. Sterilize EVERYONE at birth.
2. Set out criteria / tests for evaluating child raising capability
3. Only those that pass are un-sterilized, and allowed to have ONLY 2 children.

[hamin_aus]

You may like China

[GreyWolf]

You may like China

Actually yes, I do agree with some of their methods...

[hamin_aus]

So you find their ideas intriguing...
Do you wish to subscribe to their newsletter?

[Stuart]

You may like China

Actually yes, I do agree with some of their methods...

Because China does not censor the Internet.

[hamin_aus]

Because China does not censor the Internet.

Leave Greywolf alone
He just wants to have his cake and eat it too.

Is that too much to ask

[Tribble]

Depends which cake you are referring to With you one never can be sure

[GreyWolf]

Actually yes, I do agree with some of their methods...

Just in case you missed it.

Also... SARCASM!!!

Just in case you missed it...