They Had It Coming To Them

We informed our readers about the vile practice of ‘grooming’, which we defined as the process of developed dependence in order to lead someone into sex trafficking.

We argued that the sex pimping sites like Backpage, and even far less popular sites like Tony Ortega’s regrettable basement blog, incorporate a lot of these same tactics in order to generate a learned helplessness that makes them easy targets for pimps, online predators, and other Internet lowlifes.

Today we received word that a woman in Texas has decided enough is finally enough by instigating a lawsuit against both Backpage and Facebook, saying it was complicit in the circumstances that led to her being sex trafficked as a child.

The unidentified woman is seeking monetary damages in excess of $10,000, arguing the companies’s ‘morally bankrupt cultures’ left her vulnerable to predators and was a factor in her being groomed online by a pimp who drew her into sex trafficking.

The civil case filed last in county court accuses Facebook of providing ‘an unrestricted platform’ that allows criminals to ‘stalk, exploit, recruit, groom and extort’ children into the sex trade. In the case of this particular victim, it was a vicious spiral that sent her from the cesspool of Facebook straight to the horrors of Backpage’s infamous child sex site.

Attorney Annie McAdams, counsel for the unnamed woman was quoted as saying, “For over a decade Facebook has been providing predators unrestricted platform to prey on victims.”

She also suggested sites like Backpage and Facebook both had a moral responsibility in cases where their platforms are used to exploit victims adding, “[p]rofiting from connecting people requires you to protect those with whom you connect.”

But of course this idea of ‘moral responsibility’ was nowhere present in the sick soapbox litanies of Tony Ortega’s spineless public defenses of Backpage. Emptor caveat, as the saying goes, let the buyer beware.

By Tony Ortega’s logic, shared by rapists and exploiters everywhere, those girls knew what they were getting into because they chose it. The fate of victims is in no way the responsibility of his employers or dirtbags like himself. They had it coming to them.