Tony Ortega
In recent posts we’ve been examining how Backpage blatantly abused the system set in place by federal laws regarding human trafficking broadly and the victimization of children in related online sex trafficking more specifically. And throughout it all we’ve been witness to Tony Ortega’s indifference to so much human suffering.
Lost in the shuffle of this continuing conversation, however, are the voices of brave elected officials who stood up to would-be bullies like Tony Ortega.
It has been a tumultuous week for the pro-human sex trafficking camp. Tony Ortega may no longer be the cheerleader he once was for the vile exploitation of women and underage girls during his days as a talking head for the Backpage crime syndicate, but as we’ve reported to our readers previously the dark reverberations of his disgusting rhetoric continues to infect the thinking of a dangerous number of new online enterprises.
Terrific news announced Friday, as Mastercard and Visa have vowed to join the fight against those using Tony Ortega’s rehashed pro-sex trafficking rhetoric.
The two largest credit card companies in America have made it abundantly clear that the old arguments Tony Ortega used to defend his child sex-trafficking pals over at Backpage are no longer fooling anyone and any hopes the pro-sex trafficking crowd had of gaining a foothold in the exploitative war against young women and girls is dead-on-arrival.
Recently we reported to our readers about the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof article. Today, it seems the bombshell ripple effect it’s created has just about everyone talking.
We compared the subject of Kristof’s article, Pornhub, to the sex trafficking clearinghouse Tony Ortega shilled for and suggested the argumentation now being used by Pornhub and its defenders runs along the same lines as the bogus lies Ortega was peddling in order to whitewash Backpage’s rampant criminality.
In the world of ligation there are no shortage of dirty tricks for those unscrupulous enough to employ them. This seems to be the case especially when those charged with a crime understand how weak their legal defense is and, more importantly, just how guilty they are of the charges before them. This certainly seems to be the case in the upcoming Backpage trial, about which we have discussed much over the past few months.
This past week we’ve been examining Tony Ortega’s response to the numerous instances of protest aimed at him for his participation in the Backpage child sex trafficking scheme he so ardently defended while on their payroll.
We’ve seen how angry protestors fed up with Ortega’s two-faced ‘human-trafficking-as-First-Amendment-right’ defense of Backpage flocked to his offices to make their opposition to him felt in numbers too great to ignore.
We’ve seen how students from Tony Ortega’s own college raised their voices in defiance of his dogged insistence on protecting online perverts from anti-sex slavery advocates campaigning against the Backpage’s business model which commodified the sexual abuse of minors.
Here at the blog we wrote to explain a little context behind just how Backpage was converted into a human trafficking and prostitution enterprise, with men like Tony Ortega doing much of the heavy lifting to sell the idea to the public.
For six years Tony Ortega lived off the money directly generated through sex trafficking, much of it from minors. Unlike so much of Ortega’s reporting, this story is not based on hearsay or slanderous gossip.
Tony Ortega has been on a long, inevitable decline in both relevance and recognizability since his days as former editor-in-chief of The Village Voice.
Regular readers of this blog are already familiar with the undeniable facts that The Village Voice and Voice Media Group are both complicit in the sex and human trafficking of children and women through Backpage. Today we are going to pull the curtain back and further expose their hypocrisy.
We’ve long known that law enforcement takes a very dim view of those who give aid and assistance to known sex traffickers. Increasingly, the legal system is demonstrating a similar view, by allowing more and more cases to proceed against those who partnered with Backpage to exploit underage children and vulnerable women.
We’ve seen isolated cases cropping up against Backpage from individual victims seeking justice for the abuse and sexual violence they endured during that company’s time as the world’s largest online brothel.
As we’ve been discussing the events that would start in motion the beginning of the end for Backpage, we thought it might be helpful to explore the landmark case that started it all — the lawsuit filed by a 14 yr sex trafficking victim who was brave enough to stand against bullies like Tony Ortega who were seeking to discount stories like hers as ‘breathless hysteria’.
It should be said that, true to form, of course Tony Ortega would call his enemies ’breathless hysterics’.
The shutdown of the adult section on Backpage.com, one of the biggest classified ads sites in the world, sent shockwaves through the seedy world of online human sex trafficking across the globe only a few short years ago.
In the wake of the this uncommonly prescient move by federal authorities, many with guilty consciouses were sent running for the hills. Some, like Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer tried to run. He, however, was soon arrested in Houston after landing on a flight from Amsterdam and nailed on a warrant which charged him with pimping children and other counts of fraudulent criminal behavior.
Last week we first reported to you about a man in Boston who killed his young, elementary school teacher wife, and how the prosecution has been seeking to use his texting with Backpage prostitutes to establish a probable timeline of the murder.
While this isn’t the sort of Backpage story we typically cover on this blog the facts surrounding this case, and the legal precedent they may set, are of keen interest to those of us demanding a full an honest account of the myriad of crimes Backpage played a role in facilitating.
Yesterday we looked at how Tony Ortega was used as a ‘tool’ of the devious individuals behind Backpage. He was what the Soviet propagandists used to call, “a useful idiot”, a political term used to describes a person who, through manipulation, is useful to a cause that is not their own despite not fully realizing the role they play. This makes them “an idiot, an unwitting and useful pawn.
We saw how this same basic set up was essential to make the Backpage sex-trafficking business model work — from the executive board at the top to the rank and file pimps on the street.
Backpage.com Bosses
We have spoken openly and frankly here on the blog about how Michael Lacey and James Larkin piggybacked off their then-failing newspaper Village Voice to launch an international sex trafficking syndicate with a global reach. They succeeded in their efforts far beyond what they’d imagined and today we are all the worse for it.
They knew, if exposed, Backpage would be nothing short of a nightmarish PR disaster. But it wasn’t until their hired philandering Editor-in-Chief, Tony Ortega, weaseled into the picture that a ‘pro-active’ game plan came into focus.
In last week’s article we saw Tony Ortega up to his old tricks, attempting to spin the numerous critiques Backpage was receiving for its widespread sex trafficking as the work of “feminists, religious zealots, and bureaucrats”.
It’s clear in Tony Ortega’s desperate editorial that he knows he’s cornered. The only defense he knows how to make is to attempt to bully those he sees him for what he truly is. And so he flails about, firing off gross mischaracterizations (another Ortega hallmark!
