New Houston Case could Hurt Sex Workers

A woman is now suing Backpage.com, as well as various hotels and truck stops in Houston, Texas for human trafficking, because they allowed her to be sold as a minor, against her will, at their venues.

This is a landmark case, because previously, only pimps and the actual traffickers were being sued for this type of trafficking. Now the hotels and truck stops, as well as Backpage, a site many sex workers use to advertise services, whether they were working freely or being trafficked, will be potentially held liable for the human trafficking of this woman.

It is clear that when a hotel or truck stop should be aware when an underage girl is on their premises and selling sexual services. They should be aware of the pimp who is most likely with them, and the fact that he most likely has more than one girl with him selling these services. The should be aware of multiple men visiting one hotel room of an individual girl. However it seems unlikely Backpage could actually be at fault for knowingly allowing the trafficking of underage women on their site, when they are not involved in the fully online process.

As of right now, of course it is illegal for anyone to advertise directly for sexual services on Backpage based on state laws, but not illegal to advertise for adult services. However, what Backpage is being charged with in this lawsuit is much more egregious -- it is the cleansing of ads so that they do not appear to be created by those who are holding underage women as slaves.

Backpage alters the words of ads that would appear to promote child trafficking, and added that would make the ads seem to be for legal escorts. They also concealed their editing processes, but internal documents were released in the complaint against them filed by the young Texas woman.

Backpage, used moderators to take certain search terms such as “young”, “fresh”, and “teen” out of the titles of advertisements. They also implemented an error message to appear when someone entered a poster age under the age of 18. Instead of not allowing a user to make another posting, Backpage allowed the the user to re-enter the age of 18 and create the same posting. Not only were the moderators instructed to delete those types of words, but executives from the company sent private notes to remove the words “daddy’s little girl” and “lolita” from postings, because they recognized these were used as code for underage girls in the ads.

In the Complaint, the young woman alleges that Backpage had internal processes, and trainings to clean up their site, which would allow postings, but would not allow certain search terms that would show that underage girls were being sold or sexual pictures. However, Backpage did not delete the postings, just “sanitized” them. This would allow more postings to be on Backpage, while the site continued to receive revenue from the advertisements which potentially were used to sell human trafficking victims.

Backpage moderators emailed their supervisors to verify whether they should report photos of beaten and starving women used in advertising to the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children, but the moderators were told just to delete the photos, keep the advertisement, and not to notify authority.

Because Backpage showed they intentionally told their employees to clean up the posts, and to avoid authorities, the anonymous formerly trafficked woman is bringing her lawsuit against them for fraud, negligence, and aiding and abetting her former pimp.

The biggest problem Backpage faces in this case is the emails they sent to their employees basically encouraging them to allow advertisements that promote young women, even those with their pictures, and not alerting authorities.

Independent sex workers also may be affected by the laws that force third parties to take action against human trafficking. Instead of actually protecting young victims, this often is portrayed as an attack on sex workers an people of color. We will keep watch of this lawsuit, and report on what the court finds.