by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, October 8, 2018

A sex-trafficking victim has sued Facebook, Backpage and other companies for allegedly facilitating her abuse as a teenager.

“Facebook and the Backpage defendants knowingly benefitted from ... illegal and immoral activity,” the woman alleges in a complaint filed last week in Harris County District Court in Houston.

The woman says she was forced into prostitution in 2012, at the age of 15, after meeting someone through Facebook. The victim, who is proceeding anonymously as “Jane Doe,” says she was promised modeling work by the Facebook contact. Instead, she says, she was sexually and physically abused, and then forced into sex trafficking.

“Within hours of meeting the Facebook friend, photos were taken of Jane Doe and were posted on Backpage,” she alleges. “To date, Facebook has taken no reasonable steps to mitigate the use of Facebook by sex traffickers or exploiters.”

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She also named Backpage executives and two hotels as defendants.

A Facebook spokesperson says trafficking “is abhorrent and is not allowed” on the service. “We use technology to thwart this kind of abuse and we encourage people to use the reporting links found across our site so that our team of experts can review the content swiftly,” the spokesperson said.

Congress recently passed the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, which allows victims in some circumstances to sue websites that knowingly promote or facilitate prostitution. The new measure also allows state prosecutors to bring criminal charges against the operators of websites that facilitate prostitution.

That law carved out a new exception to the Communications Decency Act, which generally provides that web platforms aren't responsible for crimes committed by users. Before the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act was passed, Backpage faced numerous lawsuits brought by sex trafficking victims who said they were advertised on the service.

Backpage argued in many of those cases that it was protected from liability by the Communications Decency Act. Most of the time -- but not always -- Backpage prevailed with that argument. In April, the federal government shut down Backpage and CEO Carl Ferrer pleaded guilty to money laundering and conspiracy to facilitate prostitution. That plea deal included a promise to pay up to $500 million in restitution to victims.

The lawsuit against Facebook appears to mark the first time a social media service has been sued for sex trafficking since passage of FOSTA. It's not yet clear whether the allegations will fit into the framework of that law, which only allows victims to sue they can meet a relatively high bar.

But the fact that Facebook was named as a defendant is itself notable, according to Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman.

“Plaintiffs now think they can sue Facebook for sex trafficking,” says Goldman, who opposed the law at a Senate hearing last year. “It's ironic, given that Sheryl Sandberg supported FOSTA.”

Earlier this year, Sandberg endorsed the controversial bill. “We at Facebook support efforts to pass amended legislation in the House that would allow responsible companies to continue fighting sex trafficking while giving victims the chance to seek justice against companies that knowingly facilitate such abhorrent acts,” she wrote in a post on the social networking service.