Slavery By Its Other Name

By any reasonable accounting this has been a very bad year for James Larkin and Michael Lacey, the former _capi di tutti i capi_of the Backpage family — the largest online advertiser child sex trafficking the world had ever seen.

Despite the perfectly transparent attempts by the likes of Tony Ortega to deflect attention from their sordid enterprise and attack critics who dared to raise their voices in protest we have seen how, if anything, the furor has only increased as Backpage’s day in court draws closer.

It wasn’t so very long ago that president Obama said:

“It’s a debasement of our common humanity.  I’m talking about the injustice, the outrage, of human trafficking, which must be called by its true name — modern slavery.”

More recently, President Trump signed an executive order creating a new position in the White House to focus exclusively on fighting human trafficking, saying:

“We will not rest until we’ve stopped every last human trafficker and liberated every last survivor… My administration is 100 percent committed to eradicating human trafficking from the earth. There’s nothing more horrible than this.”

At the height of its powers Backpage dominated a global sex trafficking market which saw 20 million people around the world, including many in the United States, trapped by traffickers, whether as prostitutes or barely paid workers. Maintaining this status quo is what Tony Ortega devoted himself tireless to.

While the last two presidents of the United States may not hold many common objectives or ideals, at least on one point they are in unanimous agreement: Human sex trafficking of the sort Backpage traded in daily and which Tony Ortega pounded the table in shrieking defense of is nothing short of modern day slavery of the worst kind.

And nowhere was it more profitable than it was at Backpage.

Tony Ortega and his friends have every reason to expect the rest of this year to go just as poorly for them. The whole Backpage crew is in for some very heavy heat. If this trial exposes anything it will most certainly call their flesh mill to the attention of a national audience who really, really don’t like the notion of slavery of any sort.