Backpage.com

Backpage.com, a classified ad website, is deeply complicit in child sex trafficking, according to a U.S. Senate investigations subcommittee.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Despite its denials, the advertising website Backpage.com knew full well that sex traffickers and pimps used its services to promote child prostitution, according to a new investigative report from the U.S. Senate Monday.

In fact, based on more than 1 million internal Backpage documents, the website was a hub for that very criminality but tried to hide it, the report says. It's claim that it was a mere web host for ads "is a fiction," the report says.

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman, is expected to demand answers from Backpage founders and executives at a hearing Tuesday. Parents of sex-trafficking victims will also be there. But Backpage executives, including CEO Carl Ferrer, could plead their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Ferrer failed to appear at a hearing when subpoenaed in late 2015, leading to a rare contempt-of-Congress vote in the Senate and a 2016 court order to provide records.

The subcommittee, which over the years has investigated organized crime as well as federal corruption, has no direct law enforcement authority. But it expects the evidence it uncovered through reviewing 1.1 million Backpage documents could aid prosecution in courts across the country.

That's because Backpage until now has successfully asserted that it is shielded from prosecution by laws protecting publishers and Internet communicators. But the Senate subcommittee, co-chaired by Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, asserts that the evidence shows Backpage is no ordinary publisher.

Exploited runaways:

Backpage knowingly accepted ads promoting child prostitution, then systematically removed words and images that were indicative of the ads' true intent, the report said. Therefore, the subcommittee says, Backpage played a direct role in the criminal activity.

Liz McDougall, a Backpage attorney, has not yet responded to the report. She is on the list of Backpage executives called to testify Tuesday.

"As early as 2006, Backpage executives began instructing staff responsible for screening ads (known as 'moderators') to edit the text of adult ads to conceal the true nature of the underlying transaction," the Senate investigators said in their 50-page report.

By October 2010, Backpage executives formalized the process with both manual and automated deletion, they said.

If an ad purchaser tried to post an ad with the word "teen," for example, he would get an error message that said, "Sorry, 'teen' is a banned term." But by "simply redrafting the ad, the same user would be permitted to post a sanitized version," the report said.

Backpage executives and employees knew clearly what they were doing, the investigators said. Moderators for the website told the subcommittee "that everyone at the company knew the adult-section ads were for prostitution and that their job was to 'put lipstick on a pig' by sanitizing them," according to the report.

"Backpage also knows that advertisers use its site extensively for child sex trafficking, but the company has often refused to act swiftly in response to complaints about particular underage users -- preferring in some cases to interpret these complaints as the tactics of a competing escort."

Repeated local police investigations and arrests across the United States have shown that many of the girls prostituted through Backpage were runaways and were exploited or forced into prostitution by pimps. Backpage "is involved in 73 percent of all child trafficking reports that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children receives from the general public," according to the Senate report.

Backpage's ownership:

The subcommittee report is the result of more than 20 months of work, and followed court battles to get Backpage to turn over documents. The subcommittee ultimately obtained about 1.1 million documents, many pertaining to Backpage's screening procedures.

Others documents pertain to Backpage's ownership, which despite its founding by Americans has been veiled since 2014 behind a Dutch limited liability corporation. But the company is still owned or controlled by the Americans who started it, the Senate report said, and has operated mainly from Dallas.

Backpage has said repeatedly that it cannot take responsibility for the content of all its ads. It also has said that it tries to screen ads for underage activity and alert authorities when it finds it.

But the Senate investigators said Backpage "may have tried to manipulate" the number of those reports it sends to the center.

Beating the competition:

The company runs city-specific websites, including 16 in Ohio, in which people can place ads offering escorts, massages and other so-called adult services. Backpage also runs ads for jobs, apartments, cars, appliances and other products and services.

It is different from its better-known competitor, Craigslist, in that Craigslist has refused to advertise adult services since 2009.

That decision by Craigslist helped Backpage grow into a $150 million-a-year business, Portman's subcommittee has said in the past. In the report, investigators put the company's 2014 revenue at $135 million.

"Backpage is a market leader: In 2013, it reportedly net more than 80% of all revenue from online commercial sex advertising in the United States," the Senate report said.