When their legal traumas began back in 2018, the publishing pimps of Backpage.com had their assets confiscated by the government. But now a staggering $215 million will be kept by the government and used to create a compensation fund for Backpage’s victims.
For over a decade until the site was shut down by the federal government, pimps used the Village Voice Media classified ad service to market their slaves to “johns” on the hunt for easy, underaged sex.
Ortega, then editor of The Village Voice, went to bat to defend the disgusting operation, writing that, because of the work of anti-trafficking advocates, “The First Amendment was [being] shouted down in the name of children.”
Ortega went so far as to brag that owners Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, who profited from the horrors of underage sexual slavery, “were smart enough to start Backpage.com.” (“Immoral enough,” “greedy enough” or “sleazy enough” would have been more apt descriptions.)
“Underage prostitution,” Ortega wrote, “is nothing like what is being trumpeted.” Characterizing child sex trafficking as “a mass panic,” “national fantasy,” “small problem” and “nonexistent epidemic,” he even blamed the victims: “Recently, we’ve come under attack because a small number of those ads involve underage users who violate our terms of use,” he wrote.
Some of those “underage users” were forced into sexual slavery on Backpage when they were as young as 13 years old.
But payback time finally came.
After a recent trial in Phoenix, Lacey was sentenced to five years and a $3 million fine, while two other Backpage executives, Jed Brunst and Scott Spear, each received 10-year sentences.
Larkin committed suicide before the trial began.
Karma can be really tough, no?
Ortega was never brought into the trial, but anti-trafficking activist and expert Andrea Powell definitely thinks he has dirty hands.
Powell, founder of Karana Rising, a support group for sex trafficking survivors, and author of Believe Me, the story of one young victim, said she believes Ortega should have been criminally tried for his role in Backpage.
When Powell’s group attempted to post a listing offering help to sex trafficked victims on Backpage, a law enforcement source told her to contact Ortega about it.
Ortega replied, refusing to post the ad. This, in spite of repeated claims by Backpage executives that they were “hands-off” on the ad content, thereby excusing their lack of action to shut down child sex trafficking on the site.
“I thought this was fabulous,” Powell told Freedom. “Tony just hung himself. He proved that Backpage, in reality, does control content.”
The first trial ended in a mistrial because the government brought sex trafficking into it, despite Larkin and Lacey not being charged with that crime.
Throughout the recent trial, therefore, sex trafficking was studiously avoided. Lacey, for example, was convicted only of money laundering. Victims weren’t offered the chance to testify.
“The charges did not fit the crime and the punishment is too low for what they actually did,” Powell, a long-time Backpage opponent, said. “The vast majority of the survivors I work alongside were sold on Backpage for a good 10-year period. There is no way Backpage didn’t know that was their business model.”
Speaking of the December 11 settlement between Backpage and the Department of Justice, US State Attorney Martin Estrada said that the agreement “marks a significant milestone in a criminal case involving the sexual exploitation and trafficking of countless women and children. The nine-figure dollar amount forfeited in this case will allow for victims to recover and show that individuals who profit from such exploitation and trafficking risk both prison time and financial ruin.”
Powell, for her part, agreed that the existence of the compensation fund is validation of the suffering of victims. “It is meaningful to be recognized as someone who has been through something and to be treated with respect. But, unfortunately, there was no way to really get at the heart of the true crime in the trial—facilitating and profiting off of sex trafficking,” Powell said. “Real justice would have meant addressing those actual charges.”
The compensation fund is equal to more than 80 percent of the value of the assets the government confiscated from Backpage in cash, cryptocurrency and San Francisco real estate.
“This certainly won’t take away the trauma,” Powell said. “It won’t take away the pain, and it doesn’t absolve anyone on the Backpage team of anything. Two hundred fifteen million dollars is petty compared to the riches they made off the backs of trafficked children.”
