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Internet fuels underage sex trafficking
Data show 800% increase over five years
By Timothy Williams
New York Times

OAKLAND, Calif. — Since she was 14, Tiffany says, she has been sold for sex, offered via hundreds of advertisements on Backpage.com, a website that grew rich on classified ads for services like escorts, body rubs and exotic dancers.

Far from being a marketplace for consensual exchanges, Backpage, authorities said, often used teasers like “Amber Alert’’ and “Lolita’’ to signal that children were for sale.

In the midst of a Senate investigation, a federal grand jury inquiry in Arizona, two federal lawsuits, and criminal charges in California accusing Backpage’s operators of pimping children, the website abruptly bowed to pressure in January and replaced its sex ads with the word “Censored’’ in red.

Even so, Tiffany — a street name — did not stop using the site, she said. Instead, her ads moved to Backpage’s dating section. “New in town,’’ read a recent one, using words that have become code for selling sex. “Looking for someone to hang out with.’’ Other recent dating ads listed one female as “100% young’’ and suggested that “oh daddy can i be your candy.’’

In the fight against child sex trafficking, shutting down an epicenter like Backpage was a major victory, but one against a relentless foe that quickly unfurled new tentacles.

The demise of Backpage’s adult ads undermined the trade, but it also illustrated how difficult it is to stamp out the practice of selling children for sex. The crime is rarely punished with the full force of the law — charges like rape or statutory rape — officials say; in many places it leads to just a citation instead of an arrest.

For Tiffany, who is 18, the demise of Backpage’s adult listings has made things far more unpredictable — and dangerous, she said. The old ads allowed her to try to vet customers by contacting them before meetings, via phone or text message. With far fewer inquiries from the dating ads, she said, her first encounters with men now take place more often on the street as she gets into cars in red light districts around the Bay Area.

“It’s harder to catch a date now,’’ she said. “Now everybody’s daddy puts them on the street.’’

Eric Quan, a sergeant in the human-trafficking unit with the San Jose Police Department, said there had been a conspicuous rise in street prostitution in that city, where Tiffany is often forced to work.

“When Backpage was running adult ads, we used to get tips, but that has dropped off,’’ Quan said. “It makes it a lot more complicated for us to figure out what’s going on.’’

“I do see more girls on the street, but we’re not sure why,’’ he said, referring to all females, not specifically minors. “There’s more guys out there, too, because there’s more girls to choose from.’’

Advocates said that while the elimination of the listings was a step forward, by itself it was more an inconvenience than a crippling blow.

“It was such a huge marketplace that any way to eliminate the widespread distribution of ads is progress,’’ said Yasmin Vafa, executive director of Rights4Girls, a humanrights organization focused on gender-based violence. “But until we see a more comprehensive solution, it is going to pop up elsewhere.’’

The fight against the sex trafficking of children is an old and often doomed one, in part because the crime is typically tied to poverty and dysfunctional families. Many of the girls and boys are runaways or foster children whose disappearances rarely set off a real Amber Alert.

Nationally, about 35 percent of minors charged with prostitution are, like Tiffany, African-American, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

In Alameda County, Calif., where pimps have sold Tiffany most often, more than 60 percent of children who are trafficked or at risk of being trafficked are African-American, according to the Alameda County district attorney. The county’s African-American population is about 12 percent.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children said reports of online child sex trafficking had increased by more than 800 percent from 2010 to 2015. The organization said this was “directly correlated to the increased use of the Internet to sell children for sex.’’