One day in and the new year is already starting off with a bang. Here at the blog we’ve long been sounding the alarm bells over the conduct of sex trafficking apologists like Tony Ortega. One of the major concerns we had about the way Tony conducted himself with such brazen hypocrisy during his tenure at the Village Voice was the degree to which he was actively working to destroy the lives of the countless children being exploited by his Backpage owners.
In terms of bad press for Backpage, it has been nothing short of a disaster. In addition to the two separate child sex trafficking rape cases, this past week, a third case made the news.
On Wednesday, 26yr old Trevien Thomas of Fresno, California pleaded guilty to driving a 14-year-old girl from Dallas and forcing her to into prostitution for days in Houston.
The accused pimp entered his plea by video conference because of the COVID-19 pandemic, telling Senior U.
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.
Hot on the heels of a former trafficked child sold and raped by Backpage and its accomplices, we have news of yet another still darker account of a new underage victim which further erodes Tony Ortega’s fraudulent Backpage defense.
As we have seen, the gist of Tony Ortega’s faulty argument that ‘Backpage and companies like it have guaranteed First Amendment protection to traffic individuals for sex’ falls apart when it is set against real world examples of exactly the sort of horrors that went on within the sordid pages of Backpage’s highly lucrative ‘personals ad section’.
If it comes as a shock to you to learn that human trafficking wasn’t a federal crime in the United States until the year 2000, you are not alone. It is a fact many have asked us to confirm this year — and one which, frankly, still amazes even us.
As we look back over the year that was, the one question we were asked by readers more than another was some version of: ‘How is what Tony Ortega did during his tenure as Backpage’s officially/unofficial spokesman considered any way close to legal?
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’.
We wrote about the bombshell conclusion reached by a recent in-depth investigation conducted by the blog into the curious matter of mysterious money packets suspiciously arriving at an alarming number of tabloid alt weekly papers connected to the shameful empire of smut built and sustained by Tony Ortega’s bosses, James Larkin and Michael Lacey.
Indeed, as a former editor with the Broward New Times who had received one of these Backpage hush money payouts told us:
At the end of last year we began digging still further into Tony Ortega’s dirty history, shilling for Backpage and disparaging anyone with the courage to speak up against the vile criminality of selling underage girls to internet perverts. We noted how through all the public backlash Tony Ortega continued spreading his lies unchecked, allowing Backpage to do even more damage.
Today we’d like to explore some of the reasons Tony Ortega made such devious to help keep this digital pimp syndicate afloat.
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.
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.
We first made our readers aware earlier this week about the disturbing connection between the sex trafficking website Backpage and the notorious smutty video site Pornhub. As we explained, the story written by Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times is currently making something a seismic impact across the internet, making many supporters of the rights for corporations to make money from the exploitation of young women and underage girls very nervous.
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.
Tony Ortega
Over the past few posts we’ve been considering the consequences for victims of human sex trafficking, particularly as it impacts its younger victims. The callousness of Backpage execs and its depraved cheerleader, Tony Ortega, in the face of the vast amount of human suffering they are personally responsible cannot be overstated.
As we explained, while Backpage may be dismantled the harmful, long-lasting effects of the sort of human trafficking Tony Ortega tried to convince was nothing more than a ‘radical expression of First Amendment rights’, continue to do harm.
Cyntoia Brown
The scourge of human sex trafficking Backpage unleashed on an unsuspecting world has yet to be resolved.
Though Tony Ortega’s child sex selling pals may have been apprehended and forced to await judgement for the part they played in the largest illegal prostitution racket this country has ever seen, the lasting impact of the full extent of their crimes – the ones Tony Ortega worked so hard to help them sanitize in the press – still continue to cause incalculable human suffering.
Aaron Drumheller
Fresh developments on the story we first reported to you in our last post in which we laid out the damning ways in which the rising Backpage body count draws a straight line to the criminal bosses who ran the show and the sycophantic lap Tony Ortega who helped them.
Previously we reported to you about a Virginia man who had been sentenced last week to 40 years in federal prison for robbing and killing people he’d connected with using the ‘escort’ section of Backpage – the very section which Tony Ortega insisted you’d be crazy to believe was anything less than impeccably legitimate.
Aaron Drumheller
Ortega continues his petulant silence on the subject as further evidence of Backpage’s bloody history continues to surface.
We’ve been saying this for so long now it’s starting to sound like a broken record. But then, Tony Ortega is not an individual known for having a varied history of creativity. He is, as the saying goes, a one track pony. And, disturbingly, much of his track seems to revolve around the ‘sex-for-cash with at-risk women and underage girls’ portal known as Backpage.
Tony Ortega Backpage Apologist
Yesterday we suggested that Tony Ortega, and his fellow band of henchmen, are long overdue to receive comeuppance for their misdeeds for aiding and abetting Backpage during the horrific run of its illicit human sex trafficking crime spree.
We reported to you how a federal grand jury issued yet another judgement against one of the same pimps Tony Ortega told us we were all “hysterically worrying’ worrying over.
Tony Ortega Backpage Apologist
The more we read about Tony Ortega, the more urgent we feel about authorities stepping in to do something. We felt this way when we first learned about the crackpot theories he was peddling to trashy alt publications.
And while we don’t wish to underplay the seriousness of Tony Ortega’s famously toxic relationship with telling the truth – as we’ve been seeing over the years – it’s the company Ortega keeps that has us wondering if it isn’t time for law enforcement to do something about it.
