Andrea Powell is founder & executive director of FAIR Girls, a D.C. based organization providing safe housing and emergency and long- term services to survivors of human trafficking. The opinions expressed in this commentary are hers.

(CNN) On January 9, after an investigation lasting over 21 months, a Senate subcommittee published a scathing report, finding that classified ads website Backpage.com knowingly facilitated online child sex trafficking on the "adult" section of its website.

According to the report, Backpage did so by, among other things, filtering the text of advertisements to screen out words like "rape," "schoolgirl" and "lolita" before posting them, to conceal the intent of the ads. Backpage also did not remove these advertisements or report them to law enforcement.

These findings are no surprise to FAIR Girls, where approximately 90% of the young women and girls we serve -- some as young as 14 -- were sold by their traffickers on Backpage.

Andrea Powell

It also is consistent with first-hand accounts. For example, the mother of a 14-year-old girl sold on Backpage reported to the Senate subcommittee that her daughter had been trafficked through the website, and that even after she was recovered, ads containing explicit photographs of the girl were still being shown on the website.

She said she requested numerous times that the ads be taken down, and although Backpage eventually removed the photos, it did not do so immediately.

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