Backpage is exposed for the sex-trafficking business it is

The classified advertising site abruptly shuttered its adult services section Monday in the United States, hours after a U.S. Senate panel issued a report alleging the site facilitates sex trafficking. The report claims Backpage went so far as to delete information from ads indicative of sex trafficking and prostitution, especially of children – but not remove the posts entirely.

Last October, Backpage.com’s CEO was arrested after federal officials in Texas said that adult and child sex-trafficking victims had been forced into prostitution through escort ads posted on the website.

On Tuesday, links to advertisements for escort services in US cities linked instead to a press release from the company as well as links to the websites of organizations that advocate for free speech rights.

Lt. Hamlin has worked for the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) unit for almost seven-years and says shutting down the adult section is a double-edged sword. “But the shut-down of Backpage’s adult classified advertising is an assault on the First Amendment”. Ferrer, Lacey and Larkin are scheduled to testify Tuesday before the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which released the report on Backpage late Monday.

The federal Communications Decency Act provides immunity to website operators that publish third-party content online, but multiple lawsuits have argued that the 1996 law does not protect Backpage because it contributes to illegal activity – claims Backpage has vigorously denied.

Backpage released a statement that read, in part, “this act of censorship will not reduce the problem of human trafficking, and those who suggest otherwise are deluding themselves and their constituencies”. Compiled from more than 1.1 million pages of notes and emails, the report lays out damning evidence that Backpage officials sanitized ads seeking sexual services to knowingly hide that many of them involved underage children.

On Tuesday, the website’s St. Louis pages included bright red “censored” warnings on its adult pages, as if to assert that some outside entity had imposed a ban.

Lee explained, “Backpage.com was a critical investigative tool depended on by America’s vice detectives and agents in the field to locate and recover missing children and to arrest and successfully prosecute the pimps who prostitute children”.

Backpage also cited praise from law enforcement agencies and child-protection organizations who said the site had been helpful in rooting out human trafficking, in its announcement on Monday.

“Windie Lazenko, who serves victims of sex trafficking and exploitation through 4Her North Dakota, watched the hearing online and called the report ‘horrifying”.

“It points to the enormous burden that the government has placed on Backpage in various and sundry ways”, said Dale Leibach, a Backpage spokesman, on Tuesday. “That’s not censorship, that’s validation of the conclusions of the report”, he told the hearing.

“These are not the practices of an “ally” in the fight against human trafficking”, Senator Rob Portman said in a statement.

“Today, the censors have prevailed”. She and the other girls were led to believe they could find sugar daddies through the site.

“Our goal was to get to the truth-and Backpage fought us every step of the way”, Sens.