Andrew Padilla
On April 24, 2014, Joye Vaught sent an email to Backpage’s moderators (while cc’ing Andrew Padilla). In this email, Vaught explained that if a moderator came across an ad containing a link to a a “ sex for money” website, the moderator should add the link to a list of banned terms but “ _don’t bother removing it from the current ad._” And that’s about as explicit an admission of guilt as there is.
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In our last installment we began to make the case that Tony Ortega’s role as Editor-At-Large at the Village Voice made him the final word on what was published in that paper concerning the defense of Backpage. As we concluded then, the words he published he bears responsibility for, whether he was the original author or not.
It seems that Tony Ortega’s readership agreed with us, as was evidenced by the outrage in the form of angry letters addressed to Ortega after he had the gall to publish an unhinged attack on Nicholas Kristof.
As we here at the blog were first to anticipate earlier this week, the initial shockwaves surrounding the recent lawsuit filed against Twitter for not removing sexually explicit content depicting a minor are suddenly beginning to be felt within the legal world.
Call it the lesson no one learned from Backpage, namely: that corporate media companies — no matter who they are — must be held accountable for illicit content posted on their platforms.
Tony Ortega
More information following our reporting on the developing bombshell Twitter child sex trafficking case we first told our readers about yesterday.
Indeed, the more we learn about the particulars of this case the clearer and more alarming we see the criminal pattern between the exploitation of minors on the Twitter platform and what was done to victimize the underage youth during Tony Ortega’s deceitful tenure as craven outspoken mouthpiece for the corporate pimps of Backpage.
Tony Ortega
Last week a federal lawsuit was filed against social media giant Twitter which carries with it potentially seismic repercussions for platforms promoting sex trafficking (such as Backpage) and those who would publicly advocate on their behalf (such as notorious Backpage shill Tony Ortega).
The suit, filed Wednesday on behalf of a teenager, claims that the company waited for days to remove sexually graphic videos of himself and another minor posted to its platform by sex traffickers.
Previous we here at the blog reported to our readers on the absolutely nightmarish saga of a Backpage pimp from Houston Texas named David Mearis who received the largest sentence we’ve yet seen in connection with the human sex trafficking scam Tony Ortega advocated on behalf of for years.
We noted at the time just how many similarities there were between the low level pimps like Mearis and the predatory pimps higher up the corporate chain and wondered aloud if these same judgements might also be applied to the pimps running the show.
In what many are calling the biggest judgement against a Backpage pimp to date, this Monday brought news that East Texas man who trafficked children and adults during an “eight-year reign of terror” in North Houston was ordered to serve a life sentence in federal prison and pay nearly $1 million in restitution to multiple victims.
Read that again — a lifetime sentence and one million dollars in restitutions.
David Mearis, 45, was convicted by a federal jury in October 2019 of forcing several girls into prostitution and grooming teen victims into adulthood so he could peddle them online for profit using Backpage.
Back at the end of October we raised the then controversial proposition that landlords should begin using their positions to deny rental privileges to those who engage in or promote human trafficking .
At that time we even, somewhat jokingly, suggested in our piece that this might be a compelling argument for Tony’s wife to consider, seeing as her deadbeat husband Tony Ortega was guilty of being a unrepentant spokesman for the underage sex trafficking factory — Backpage.
Last year we’ve shared with our readers a truly staggering amount of evidence, much of which directly exposes who Tony Ortega is and the kind of propagandistic work he has dedicated his life to.
From engaging in deceitful online ad hominem attacks against religious people from all walks of life, to his disgusting support for the pimps and human sex traffickers over at the Backpage, there is no mistaking the fact that Tony Ortega is about as low as it gets when it comes self-described ‘opinion writers’.
Tony Ortega was once a hack tabloid writer trying pass himself off as a hot shot professional in New York. That, however, was a lie that couldn’t last long.
Ortega’s bizarre masquerade was soon exposed and Ortega was unmasked, revealing him to be the ridiculous little ‘emperor with no clothes’ we always knew he was.
These days Tony Ortega fills his days by pretending to be busy, living out his sad days as unemployed blogger in Scarsdale, New York.
If you buy the lies Tony Ortega has advanced during his stint as the mouth piece for the human sex trafficking website Backpage, odds are you are under the delusion that prostitution is merely an economic choice or a victimless crime.
To listen to Tony Ortega you’d think being trafficked for the sex trade was an exercise of your constitutionally protected rights as an American. In reality, however, it’s all a glossy cover for something far deeper and darker.
The clock is counting down to what some are calling the trial of the century, namely the federal case against Backpage pimp kingpins Michael Lacey and James Larkin, et al.
Slated to begin in the summer of 2021, speculation is running rampant as to just how much jail time these kingpins will find themselves facing when all is said and done.
One question we have been wondering here at the blog is, in addition to substantial jail time whether or not the judge will also mete out meaningful financial recompense for the many victims harmed by the actions and attitudes of the Backpage sex trafficking empire.
In an interview with a popular women’s magazine, an actress explained how she has been working as an undercover FBI agent fighting against child sex trafficking on sites like Backpage.
During her time undercover the star participated in half a dozen child-sex stings around the world as an unpaid volunteer.
She explained her involvement to help the FBI fight child sex traffickers like Backpage by saying that good people are the only ones who will do anything about it.
Barry Schiff
If it’s one thing we believe in here at the blog, it’s that tougher sentencing for those who coerced, threatened or tricked young women and underage girls into participating in the Backpage sex trafficking ring should be the rule, rather than the exception.
Maybe that’s why this story we read over the weekend restored a measure of hope to us that Backpage pimps, and their editorializing apologists like Tony Ortega, are increasingly finding judges taking a zero tolerance approach when it comes to Backpage’s illegal sex trade.
