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The first online-only news site in state history to get media credentials to cover the state capitol and Seattle city hall, PubliCola has been called a “must-read” by the Seattle Post Intelligencer and a hot “New Media Mover and Shaker” by Seattle Magazine—which also cited our own Erica C. Barnett as the city's No. 1 news nerd.

Burgess’s Solution To the Backpage.com Problem

On Other Blogs   September 12, 2011 at 3:30 pm Jonah Spangenthal-Lee

City Council member Tim Burgess thinks he has a solution to Backpage.com’s child prostitution problem:  a decade-old internet payment system you’ve probably heard of if you’ve ever bought anything on the internet.

In a post on his City View blog this morning, Burgess name-checks Paypal.com as an example of online-ID checks done right, says the company should switch to a similar system to prevent “criminal predators” from exploiting young women, (even though they “likely” won’t).

Village Voice claims that proper online technology doesn’t exist to screen ad buyers like they can at the offices of their print publications. But that’s not true.

A virtual version of the “in-person check-in” is readily available using technology that many of us use on a regular basis to conduct Internet-based transactions. To truly reduce the sexual exploitation of girls and young women, backpage.com—and other online advertising portals—could immediately change their payment practices to only accept payment from ad buyers through services like PayPal that have accurate and reliable protocols in place to verify the identity of the person making the payment and their bank account details. If they can’t hide their identities, these criminal predators will be far less likely to make use of these sites.

Will backpage.com and other online sites make the switch? Not likely.

…

The profitable choice is to maintain the lie, deny the scope of the problem and make excuses for why they can’t do much to prevent it.  This choice continues the exploitation of our children and young women.

Backpage has until Wednesday to respond to 47 attorneys general, led by Washington AG Rob McKenna, who have demanded the company shut down its escort section or turn over records to prove it is actually working to prevent juveniles from being sold into the sex trade on the site.

There’s one other point in Burgess’s righteous post that’s worth flagging: the fact that juveniles aren’t the only ones being trafficked and sexually exploited through sites like Backpage.com.

While the majority of the recent discussion about human trafficking and sexual exploitation on Backpage.com has focused on children, there’s a whole group of victims out there who’ve been largely ignored, just because they’re over 18.

Just as Josh wrote here on PubliCola a few weeks ago, Burgess notes that “in recent years, we have become more aware of how prostitution almost always involves someone exploiting another person.”

While we’re undoubtedly a long ways off from seeing a large-scale discussion amongst legislators about victimization within the sex industry, t’s nice to see that Burgess is laying the groundwork for a larger discussion somewhere down the road.


  • FrequentPoster

    I see Jonah has brought his vendetta against Seattle Weekly6 from over to Publicola. On his former blog, he tried to deny that Seattle Weekly had been a critic of Jonah’s hero, Michael McGinn, throughout 2010 and 2011. In fact, Jonah quite blatantly lied about it. Now he’s coming to Publicola and floggin’ the sex scandal. Not that he or Publicola have an agenda.

  • repete

    As I said before, Burgess, McGinn et al, ought to at least send those girls checks for using them so.

  • Jakers

    “There’s one other point in Burgess’s righteous post that’s worth
    flagging: the fact that juveniles aren’t the only ones being trafficked
    and sexually exploited through sites like Backpage.com.”

    You’re right, but you have to start somewhere and the most vulnerable seems like the right place to start. Fewer abused underage people will result of fewer of them moving into adulthood and continuing being abused.

  • Jakers

    “There’s one other point in Burgess’s righteous post that’s worth
    flagging: the fact that juveniles aren’t the only ones being trafficked
    and sexually exploited through sites like Backpage.com.”

    You’re right, but you have to start somewhere and the most vulnerable seems like the right place to start. Fewer abused underage people will result of fewer of them moving into adulthood and continuing being abused.

  • Snoman

    I’ve yet to read one of the stories Jonah tells about child prostitution that “involved” Backpage and thought, “That totally wouldn’t have happened if Backpage didn’t exist”. I usually think, “that pimp would have just dropped her off on Aurora Ave.”. The stories where I don’t think that are the ones where the pimp posted on Backpage in addition to dropping her off on Aurora Ave or near Seattle Center.

    I’m not surprised that this issue has gone from being about underage prostitution to being about all escort listings on Backpage. From Day 1 this controversy has been about Publicola wanting to stick it to a business rival and Mayor McGinn wanting to stick it to a political enemy.

    Adults being victimized isn’t a result of the Backpage escort section, it is a result of domestic abuse or kidnapping or blackmail. All of those things are already illegal and all of those things get under reported to the police because the victims have to worry about getting arrested themselves. The more legal prostitution becomes, the safer it becomes.

    I’d like to see Erica weigh in on the issue of adult prostitution. I want to see how she squares the circle between believing that a 12 year old has the capacity to consent to an abortion and believing that a 30 year old woman lacks the capacity to consent to trading sex for rent money.

  • Macontish

    Burgess is simply wrong: There’s no reason a pimp can’t have a PayPal account, and there would still be no way to detect whether or not the person he’s pimping is underage. The technology he thinks exists simply doesn’t. Let’s hope his mayoral campaign is better thought out than this bandwagon crash.

  • http://www.twitter.com/joeszi Joe Szilagyi

    This is all bullshit. Make people show up in person to place ads. Done.

  • Bob Feemster

    “in recent years, we have become more aware of how prostitution almost always involves someone exploiting another person.”  Let’s see…and that is different from employment in general? He’s obviously never worked at a corporation. When you work every goddamn day until you die for mediocre pay and shitty benefits so the person at the top can cash in your flesh for money, your just another whore. 

  • Colin B

    How about this.  Pass a law that they can only accept regular credit cards.   No prepaid credit cards which Paypal already block to register on their site.  Several politica campaigns apparently had that software to block prepaid Visa and American Express credit card donations.  That’s the best solution

  • Colin B

    The reason that would work is because in many of the stories, you hear about the girls carrying a prepaid credit card and phone. Prepaid credit cards can be bought at Walgreens, 7-11, literally anywhere and someone can pay cash.  they then can make credit card payments anonymously at a Kinko’s, internet cafe, or prepaid smart phone or wireless air card and completely hide their identity.  Yeah, they can use a friends credit card or get a stolen one but that is way harder and they are shut down faster. Think about how easy a prepaid card is to use and it’s legal vs. commiting another federal crime. If they do, easier to get them in prison longer. Use software to identify prepaid cards and don’t allow their payment for escort services.  

  • Will

    Here is a radical idea:

    Stop concerning yourself with whether grown, adult, of-legal-age-to-consent men and women are voluntarily exchanging sex for money.

    Stop indulging your silly and selectively hypocritical outrage at the idea that women trying to feed, shelter, clothe and care for themselves and their families are surviving in this cruel economy thanks to the donations of horny men.

    Stop sputtering in rage at the fact that women are being saved from having to cram themselves and their family members into sleazy, frightening and dangerously unsafe shelters, thanks to the financial contributions of their cusomers.

    Learn to get a grip and accept the fact that there are women who are grateful to have a roof over their head, clothes on their back, food in their stomachs, coffee and cigarettes and the occasional medical care when they need it — and that all of this is made possible by the $40-to-$60 contributions they receive in exchange for 10-20 minutes’ work in performing oral sex.

    If you truly want to crack down on underage prostitution and the sexual abuse of minors (and we all should want that, and most of us generally do — including most men who pay for sexual services)…

    … then, here is your solution.

    Stop wasting time, energy and taxpayers’ money on chasing, arresting, prosecuting and criminalizing grown, of-legal-age-to-consent sexual providers and sexual customers.

    Instead, adopt the safe, sensible, enlightened and low-key approaches adopted in other, more-enlightened countries around the world:

    * Decriminalize the sale of sexual services by people over the age of 18.

    * Decriminalize the purchase of sexual services by people over the age of 18.

    * Set aside a particular area of town (almost certainly one zoned primarily for commercial or industrial use, not a residential area) to be a dedicated full-time red-light district.

    * Require women wishing to work “The Zone” to purchase an individual license good for 3 months at a time. 

    * In return for issuing the license, require women to supply proof of legal age along with fingerprints and DNA samples. The fingerprints and DNA can be cross-checked against databases containing fingerprints and DNA samples from convicted criminals (to verify age) and families of missing children (to determine if women applying for the licenses have ever been reported as missing or kidnapped).

    * Use the funds collected from issuance of licenses to fund programs to perform regular health checks of working girls and/or assist underage sex workers to exit the sex trade and receive training in life skills, non-sexual employment and becoming independent and self-sufficient.

    * Focus on arresting and prosecuting pimps, abusive / violent customers  and sexual predators to the fullest extent of the law.     

     

  • Anonymous

    Tony Ortega, Village Voice editor, in an effort to protect prostitution ad revenue, belittles anti-child trafficking activists and tries to manipulate statistics on child sex trafficking to create an illusion that this is a minor problem.  See here: http://villagevoicepimp.com/tony-ortega-2/

  • Willy_wonka787

    So-called “child sex trafficking” is not only a minor problem, it is a NEARLY NONEXISTENT problem. The LIES about “massive numbers of children being sexually trafficked” have been exposed and the LIARS debunked.NEW RESEARCH DEMOLISHES THE FALSE AND MISLEADING STEREOTYPE OF “Underaged sex workers” — AND SPARKS AN OUTBREAK OF DENIALAMONG “CHILD-SEX-TRAFFICKING” ALARMISTS NATIONWIDEhttp://www.riverfronttimes.com/2011-11-03/news/commercial-sexual-exploitation-of-children-john-jay-college-ric-curtis-meredith-dank-underage-prostitution-sex-trafficking-minors/