A child sex trafficking survivor has filed a lawsuit against Village Voice Media, claiming they knowingly promoted the forced prostitution of a minor on their online classified site, Backpage.com. The suit comes just days after Craigslist
testified before Congress that their "adult services" section was closed for good in the U.S. Is this lawsuit the next wave of a changing tide in the fight against online exploitation of children?
The survivor bringing the suit, identified only as M.A. since she is still a minor, was first sold into the commercial sex industry at age 14 after running away from home. Her pimp
pled guilty last week to taking pornographic photos of a minor and posting them to Backpage.com, promoting sex with a minor on Backpage, and several related crimes. That child pornography was posted to Backpage and that child trafficking was facilitated through Backpage is not debated. The question is, did the operators of Backpage know these ads were 1.) pornographic pictures of a minor and 2.) promoting prostitution of that minor. The law suit claims they did, although the details as to how are left pretty vague. According to the
filing,
“Defendant had a strong suspicion that the aforementioned crimes were being committed. Defendant had a desire that these posters accomplished their nefarious illegal prostitution activities so that the posters would return to the website and pay for more posting. Therefore, actual knowledge of the specific crime is unnecessary under the 'ostrich rule' which allows an inference of knowledge, in that at best defendant was deliberately ignorant of the specific crimes that were being committed on its website.”
Backpage does accept money for adult ads, which gives them a financial incentive not to boot paying users off the site. But will that incentive be enough to demonstrate Village Voice Media was willfully ignorant of the child prostitution on their site? And will it be enough to override the liability immunity normally granted to websites like Backpage in the Communications Decency Act? It will likely take more concrete evidence than what was presented in the filing to hold Backpage accountable for their role in M.A's trafficking. Still, the suit poses the important question as to how much responsibility sites like Backpage.com should take to prevent their sites from being used to traffic kids.
M.A. was
not the first young girl sold on Backpage, and she won't be the last. Unless, of course, Backpage chooses to follow Craigslist's lead and either seriously reform or get rid of their adult advertisements all together. Will it be a lawsuit from a 14-year-old girl whose repeated rape they helped facilitate that finally gets their attention? Or the over 4,000 letters from Change.org readers they've received? Hopefully, all it will take is a company-wide commitment to preventing pimps and traffickers from using their website to sell enslaved women and children. Surely, Village Voice Media can agree to that, right?
