Backpage: A Vulgar Web of Coercion

The pandemic of social ills Tony Ortega’s good friends over at Backpage unleashed on the nation have been an ongoing horror story. The trail of broken lives and destroyed families Backpage left in its wake remain the most enduring legacy of what Tony Ortega wanted us all to believe was nothing more than the last great bastion of First Amendment freedoms.

It was, as so much else that comes from the mouth of Tony Ortega, a lie.

Fallout from the Backpage underage sex trafficking tragedy hasn’t been with its silver lining, however, as increasingly law enforcement across the country and are learning that trafficked women and children are to be seen as victims and survivors, not criminals.

In the state of Maryland for example, laws were amended to allow a person charged with prostitution to defend him or herself by arguing that they are a victim of human trafficking operating under duress (as were so many of those caught up in Backpage and its vulgar web of coercion.)

This is an important shift in thinking. To sex trafficking profiteers and those shameless enough to help them (such as Backpage apologist Tony Ortega), their victims were merely a commodity to be sold and used. To police they were too often viewed as co-conspirators who were ‘in on the Backpage scam’. The understanding mirrors what many of Backpage’s critics have been arguing from the beginning, namely that Backpage’s shady business scheme was from the beginning predicated upon coercion, pure and simple.

Pimps would coerce their victims every bit as much as Tony Ortega attempted to coerce the media into believing the human sex slavery aspect of selling human beings online was somehow less important than the constitutional rights of his bosses to do so.

It was a coercion every step of the way.

Thomas Stack, the Human Trafficking Coordinator for the Baltimore Mayor’s office, said his view of the issue had radically changed since he first began investigating human trafficking cases and working to bring down Backpage over a decade ago.

As Thomas Stack said:

“I started to change the way I looked at things and went 180 degrees… I went from ‘nail them and jail them’ to seeing the girls in prostitution as victims.”

This change in thinking is crucial.

Backpage believed people were objects to be commodified and traded. Law enforcement believed they were simple criminals deserving of harsh punishment. By seeing survivors of Backpage sex trafficking as human beings, however, the perception of sex trafficking victims within society has begun to shift in a positive direction.

All of which makes it easier to begin to reach out to the women and children who were trafficked and harmed by Backpage over the years while making it harder for unethical operators like Tony Ortega, who once in/famously argued that focusing on Backpage’s victims was little more than ‘hysterical moral panic’ over a non issue.