Backpage Helped Criminals Sell Kids At Every Opportunity!

Tony Ortega

In our previous article we asked the very important question Tony Ortega seems never to have taken a moment to consider – we asked if the victims of the Backpage crime-spree were worth the cost. For years Tony Ortega pounded his fist on the table and demanded that Backpage be allowed to sexually exploit underage children and marginalized women without ever seeming to take seriously the devastation the organization paying his salary was so obviously responsible for.

This week we’ve been putting a human face on the tragedy and forcing those complicit in the Backpage sex trafficking scam to confront the reality of their unchecked greed.

The women and girls listed in the State’s indictment against the Backpage defendants respectfully omits using their names in the the charging documents, but their stories remain very real.

Stories like that of a young woman known as “Victim 11”. She was sold for sex, through the use of Backpage ads, in Arizona, Colorado, Minnesota, Oregon, California, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah for more than a year. Past around from pimp to john like a cheap commodity.

The Backpage ads used to traffic this young contained words and phrases indicative of prostitution and included pictures of Victim 11 in provocative positions. On some occasions, Backpage would remove certain explicit photos from the ads but publish the remaining text and other photos. Victim 11’s trafficker gave her drugs, took her identification documents, sexually assaulted her with a firearm, and forced her to work full-time as a prostitute.

This is one of the stories we are tragically seeing repeated so often that it becomes impossible not to see the pattern emerging.

In or around 2015, another woman, Victim 12, was sold for sex through the use of Backpage ads, in California and Arizona. Victim 12 was first advertised on Backpage in San Bernardino, California, but moved to the Phoenix metro area because the Super Bowl was being held there. Victim 12’s advertisements on Backpage contained words and phrases such as “ New In Town” and “ Sexy Dark Asian Bombshell with a Nice & Tight {Booty}” and included pictures showing Victim 12’s legs, stomach, shoulders and buttocks.

And, as we have said, it wasn’t just desperate women who were getting caught up in Backpage’s web. Around this same time Victim 13, a juvenile only 15 years of age, was being sexually sold on the Backpage website. Victim 13 and her trafficker both posted the Backpage ads, which falsely represented that Victim 13 was 19 years old and showed pictures of her face and body. On at least one occasion, a Backpage representative contacted Victim 13 with instructions on how to fix an ad so it could be published.

Tony Ortega’s line that he and his employers didn’t know what was going on is simply an impossible lie to swallow. As the above stories show, not only were Backpage and its defenders aware, they were actively helping the pimps to hide evidence of their crimes at every opportunity!

We need justice for these victims. And the men like Tony Ortega who stood by and continued to obfuscate and obstruct justice at every turn should be held every bit as accountable as the back alley pimps who strong-armed and intimidated their victims.