Legion Troll
A fine upstanding poster
In an old home movie, young Natalie is laughing and running around with a soccer ball. She’s around 12 years old, and she looks at the camera and says, “When I grow up, I would like to be a doctor.”
But a few years later, that laughing, carefree young girl was sold for sex allegedly through the website, Backpage.com. She estimates she was paid for sex over 100 times, and she firmly believes that the site made it possible for her pimp to post ads offering her for sex over and over again.
“Continuously. All day, every day. 24/7,” Natalie told ABC News “Nightline.” She has asked us to refer to her as “Natalie” for this report, and her parents have asked that we do not use their last name.
Natalie is now a 21-year-old mother with a toddler and another baby on the way. She is part of a major lawsuit against Backpage.com, the highly controversial online classifieds site that is currently being investigated by the U.S. Senate for its alleged connection to underage sex trafficking.
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, told “Nightline” that Backpage “requires more of someone who wants to sell a motorcycle than of someone who wants to sell a child.”
Backpage’s site is surprising simple, similar to Craigslist, but with a racy adult services section with categories like “Escorts” and “Body Rubs.” These are technically legal categories, but many in law enforcement say these ads are thinly veiled code for prostitution. While it is free for someone to post adult services ads, Backpage makes money by offering paid add-ons, including the ability to re-post the ad every hour and to post it in multiple neighboring cities.
“He put me in all these clothes, took some pretty provocative pictures of me and then got to Backpage, and then you can click on to post an ad,” she said.
Natalie said the website asked if she were 18 years or older, but “a simple yes click was about as far as that went.”
With Backpage ads posted with titles such as “Well worth it, 150 an hour” and “It won’t take long at all,” Natalie started earning as much as $4,000 a weekend, handing over all the cash to Hopson.
Natalie's mother said she was shocked to learn there was a website where this could to happen to underage girls, like her daughter.
“I live in an American town, how can my kid be sold on the internet?” she said.
But the sad truth is many American mothers have had to ask themselves the same question.
"Megan," another mother who asked us to use an assumed name, said her 15-year-old daughter was also sold for sex on Backpage.
Megan said she called the police and told them she saw Kim on a Backpage ad, and that they needed to do something.
“I told them they had to go get her,” she said.
Both of these girls were eventually rescued by police. The adults who posted them to Backpage were convicted in court. Kim and Crystal are also suing Backpage, and they are also represented by Natalie’s lawyers, Erik Bauer and Jason Amala. Backpage is fighting them in court.
But so far, every lawsuit filed by a trafficked underage girl against Backpage has been dismissed because of a law called the Communications Decency Act of 1996.
The law protects Backpage, among others, from being held legally responsible for what users post on its website. Also called the CDA, the law shields websites or online publishers for information posted by third parties.
Backpage, which is based in Dallas, has repeatedly claimed that they are part of the solution, not the problem. .
"Backpage told "Nightline" in a statement today, "The solution does not lie in making online service providers responsible for millions of posts by third-party users."
In March, the Senate voted to hold Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer in contempt of Congress after he failed to appear at a hearing about online sex trafficking conducted by the Senate Subcommittee for Permanent Investigations.
When asked why to specifically include Backpage in a hearing on online trafficking, Sen. McCaskill replied, “Backpage is the major player in this space. Therefore they have to be investigated. That’s as complicated as the subject is.”
A circuit court is expected to rule on the contempt charge sometime in the coming months.
Backpage also refused to respond to the Senate Subcommittee’s subpoenas for internal company documents relating to how it moderates its adult services ads, and exactly how much money they’re making off of them.
The Senate is now seeking to enforce the subpoena.
Backpage declined to comment on the Senate’s findings, but their lawyers are currently fighting the contempt charge in a D.C. court.
Backpage’s corporate group is projected to have a revenue of $173 million dollars this year alone, although they will not say what percentage of that comes from the adult ad section, according to documents from the Senate Subcommittee on Permanent Investigations.
“I'm betting that when we get all the financials they're not making much money selling motorcycles. But they're making a whole lot of money selling children,” said Sen. McCaskill. “I'm betting that's why they're working so hard at keeping this information out of the public eye.”
Ferrer declined “Nightline’s” repeated requests for interview, and when we tracked Ferrer to a classified ad industry conference in downtown Amsterdam, he again refused to speak with us.
“He is in Amsterdam,” McCaskill said. “I don't think Amsterdam is far enough for him to go.”
Reports of child sex trafficking have increased over the last five years due to the internet. According to the AIM Group, Backpage controls 80 percent of that market. This is a big business. AIM Group is an interactive media and classified advertising consulting organization.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/daughters-sale-young-american-girls-sold-online/story?id=39350838