Website accused of allowing pimps to sell kids into prostitution
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PORTLAND, Ore. – A website called Backpage.com is under fire around the country for allowing pimps to advertise sex ads for children under 18.
The site is also a problem in Portland and police say the problem of underage escorts is growing.
The website is a lot like Craigslist. It’s a place where people can post ads about just about anything, even prostitution, including teen prostitution.
Craigslist shut down its escort ad section but Backpage says it will not. On Backpage, in Portland, there are more than a hundred ads promising sex every day.
“We’re confronted by page after page of advertisements of people who are claiming to be adults – 18, 19, 20,” said Sgt. Mike Geiger with Portland police’s Vice Squad. But he says he knows many are not.
In one case, Darius Yancey pleaded guilty to taking a 15-year-old girl from Vancouver and selling her on Backpage in Bellevue.
“I’ve seen them as young as 14 years of age posted on Backpage.com claiming to be 19,” Geiger said.
Police can’t keep up. The Oregon and Washington attorneys general signed on to a national letter to Backpage, saying the site is a “hub” for teen prostitution and needs to change. Backpage told them the site simply provides a place for others to post. It’s freedom of speech, it says.
Some say it’s freedom for pimps but not for the children they sell.
“If you don’t have the ability to leave, if you or someone you love will get killed or seriously injured because you try to walk away – that’s slavery,” said Jessica Richardson, who was sold as a teenager.
She was 17 and working at a restaurant in North Portland when a regular struck up a friendship.
“He saw something in me,” Richardson said. “I felt he was one of the few people who really took interest in me.”
What he saw was a vulnerable teen he could manipulate. Richardson says he shopped her, not just in Oregon, but in Hawaii, Washington and California.
He had her send postcards to her mother in Oregon as he sold her to johns. Suicide seemed like her only option.
“When you’re raped 15 or 20 times a day, it’s painful,” Richardson said. “Not just psychologically, but physically, emotionally. There isn’t a part of your body that is left untouched.”
Police estimate as many as 200 hundred kids are sold for sex in Portland at any given time, and they think Backpage feeds the problem. Groups working against prostitution believe those children and the community will suffer.
“What happens is drugs, what happens is beatings, what happens is poverty, what happens is falling out of the work force,” said Lila Lee, with the Council for Prostitution Alternatives. “She will need support of some kind probably for the rest of her life.”
Backpage says it has made changes. It has rules for users who promise they will not post prostitution ads and will not exploit minors. Also, Backpage says it reviews the ads, looking for signs of underage prostitution and sends those ads to law enforcement.
In Oregon, it sent more than 40 ads to law enforcement in the last year. Is that working?
“Well, the answer is no,” Geiger said. “Because if it were actually working, then we wouldn’t continue to see so many children being posted on Internet websites.”
Richardson became pregnant and finally escaped. Now, she tells her story to try to save others for sale online.
“As long as anyone’s children are being sold, we will fight,” she said.
A Washington lawmaker is working on a bill that would force sites like Backpage to verify the ID of people in those ads. Backpage says that law would violate its rights.
