BackPage.Com is an online advertising site, similar to Craig's List. But it's also notorious for hosting an adult section that has long been accused of providing a platform for online sex trafficking. This week BackPage executives suspended the adult section on the eve of their scheduled testimony before a Congressional Committee. The controversial website has had a major impact locally.
Audrey Morrissey, who was prostituted at age 14, has worked for years to keep girls and women out of what she calls... 'the life'. And Morrissey says Backpage-dot-com is leading many toward the same horrible fate that she endured:
"The stories I've heard of girls being in these hotel rooms, their pictures are taken, the ads are posted on BackPage; a series of strange men are coming in and a lot of times it's not always just simply about you know being paid for sexual act, that's a rape within itself. But but that's not the worst that happens behind those closed doors."
Morrissey is with My Life My Choice, which advocates on behalf of exploited girls and women. She says the language in the ads posted on Backpage's adult section were sometimes subtle, but sex buyers know it will get them close enough to what they want.
"If you just put a person in a room, without the ads how would anyone know that they're in that room? Like how is that possible? So Back Page is playing a huge role in children and a lot of adult women that are being forced into this life."
A 2016 US Senate report described BackPage as "the largest commercial sex services advertising platform in the United States". But BackPage executives counter that they provided just an advertising service and deny knowledge of any ads that intentionally facilitated prostitution. In a statement, executives say they were forced to close the website's adult section because of - quote - "government censorship." The move to close the adult section came just hours before BackPage CEO Carl Ferrer appeared before a Senate hearing on Tuesday. Ferrer refused to answer his senate inquisitors.
John Montgomery, with the Boston law firm Ropes and Gray, represents three survivors of underage sex trafficking. The law firm has sued Ferrer and Backpage -- unsuccessfully so far -- for supporting online trafficking and petitioned the Supreme Court last August to hear their complaint. But federal law largely indemnifies websites that claim any illegal content they hosted was without their knowledge. And, Montgomery says, the federal courts are eager to punt the issue back to Congress.
"And So it's perhaps just coincidental that the very day that the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear our case, the US Senate issued a report, which in graphic detail charged that BackPage— just as we have been claiming for several years— engaged in the intentional criminal conduct facilitating the trafficking of children."
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey supported the Ropes and Gray lawsuit. And in a statement reacting to the BackPage announcement, Healey says - somewhat cautiously - that if the website is truly removing adult ads, she is pleased. But some anti-traffickers say they have every reason to doubt the sincerity of the Backpage.
Ashley Lyons, a human trafficking survivor with the Eva Center for Women, says when she checked the BackPage site after they pledged to close the adult section and its adult ads she found:
"...Censored, censored, censored, on all the adult ads. But then using my common sense and my experience, having worked in this field for some time now, I went over to the dating ads—similar to what happened when Craig's List shut down its adults jobs page, its escort page—unfortunately [they] just switched over to a different link on the page, on the exact same page-- the dating ads. And it's all the same women in the same ads."
Meanwhile, a local group called the Sex Workers Outreach Project or SWOP-Boston, which advocates on behalf of people in the sex trade, says Backpage's closure of the adult section closure removes - to paraphrase - a low-cost way for some of the most marginalized individuals in the adult industry… to earn a living.”
Cherie Jimenez doesn’t buy it.
"You can’t address trafficking unless you address prostitution."
Jimenez is executive director of the Eva Center.
"I've seen this industry grow, become more brutal than it ever was. Women that come through our programs are usually in coercive relationships. The economic disparity has driven so many young people vulnerable to this, so we need to end this. It’s harmful. It is a harmful practice."
Jimenez says she hopes the controversy will lead to a larger discussion about prostitution and human trafficking.
