Detectives Attest: “Backpage Was Pimp Controlled Prostitution”

Making the case that Backpage knew full well it was in the business of sex trafficking just gets easier by the day. On the off chance, however, our readers are not yet convinced, consider this in-house document circulated amongst Backpage’s moderators on July 30, 2015, entitled “ trainingJuly2015“.

This training manual specifically told moderators that, if they saw a photograph depicting “ a person [who] looks young/minor,” they should “ approve don’t delete the ad unless it has a banned term.” The training manual also identified, under the heading “ THESE ARE ALL OKAY,” a long list of terms that are indicative of prostitution, such as “ 99% CUM BACK FOR MORE,” “ car service,” and “ lollipop special.”

Tony Ortega Backpage Apologist

But perhaps these were the kinds of ads Tony Ortega conveniently choose to ignore when he ruthlessly attacked CNN’s Amber Lyon for suggesting that Backpage was dealing in the illegal sex trade?

The media had long stopped believing Tony Ortega’s lies with regards to Backpage and, as we saw in our last post, stat and local authorities were beginning to look at the shadowy sex trafficking syndicate with increasing scrutiny.

And the assessments — made, incidentally, by multiple police departments on either side of the country — describing what they understood Backpage to be up to was nothing short of damning.

In or around August 2015, as part of a lawsuit in Illinois, Backpage was served with an affidavit from a detective employed by the Seattle Police Department.

In fact, in this affidavit, the detective solemnly avowed that:

“To date, no Detective within the Seattle Police Department’s Vice/High Risk Victims Unit has ever found a legitimate ‘escort’ (person who charges simply for companionship with no offer of sex) or ‘masseuse’ (person offering legitimate and licensed massage therapy rather than sex) while responding to ads placed in these categories on Backpage.com… Every time the Seattle Police Department’s Vice/High Risk Victims Unit has responded to an ad in the adult section of Backpage.com, we have found that the ad was a posting for illegal activity.”

Indeed in that same month, during the very same lawsuit in Illinois, Backpage was served with a different affidavit from a detective employed by the Boston Police Department.

In this affidavit, the detective avowed that:

“Backpage.com is the number one site in Boston for prostitution and sex trafficking… Since 2010 [their unit] arrested over 100 buyers of sex of both adults and minors through Backpage.com ads… [N]early all the cases we find associated with it [Backpage] involve pimp controlled prostitution.”

If there is any surprise to be found in the detectives’s categorization of the Backpage enterprise it can only be their description that, ‘ nearly all cases associated with Backpage involved pimp controlled prostitution.’

‘Nearly all’ feels like an understatement because pimp controlled prostitution was the name of Backpage’s game, no matter how often Tony Ortega tried to distort that truth.