Listings magazine Village Voice is under attack for running Backpage.com the on-line adult classified ads service. Advertising allows many sex workers to work in the relative safety of premises. The same people who witch-hunted Craigslist with a big bucks campaign, have now targeted the Village Voice. They blame adult ads for promoting trafficking and the exploitation of women and children, and use false statistics to exaggerate the numbers of victims trafficked into the sex industry. Politicians, celebrities, religious and feminist groups have all jumped on the band wagon. One sex worker commented: People -- not just prostitutes -- have sex for many reasons. Sometimes, for some of us, one reason is money. Craigslist provided a simple, familiar forum through which I could do my business with complete anonymity, from the safety and convenience of my own home. I kept every penny I earned, all without the interference of an agency or other ubiquitous middle man. In all the media hype, real victims of trafficking and others who are criminalized by poverty and immigration laws, are forced further underground and made even more vulnerable. Millions of dollars have gone to anti-trafficking groups while a Bill to fund shelters with beds, clothing, counseling, case work and legal services for underage prostitutes has stalled. [1] Trafficking laws have primarily been used to target immigrant sex workers for raids and deportation, particularly women of color. (SeeTrafficking -- A Justification for Increased Deportations and A Moralistic Crusade against Prostitution.) Village Voice's investigative series The Truth Behind Sex Trafficking questioned the research methods and the accuracy of the statistics. They showed that figures claiming a massive increase in online child trafficking had been gathered by researchers guessing the age of young women from their online photos. Figures of 100,000 to 300,000 US child sex slaves were found to have no scientific basis -- researchers admitted that it was a calculation of children at risk of sexual exploitation including runaways, transgender youth and female members of gangs. Despite this admission, the figures have been relentlessly promoted by celebrities such as Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher. Update: Pots and Kettles 31st October 2011. See article from business.avn.com 36 clergy have weighed into the campaign against the Village Voice adult services section. It goes with the territory that those who believe in religious nonsense, will also be a bit gullible about the propaganda hype surrounding sex trafficking. Anyway the clerics of the newly formed multifaith coalition of mainline Christians, Catholics, Jews, evangelical Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Humanists and other moral and religious leaders, wrote: An open letter to Village Voice Media



We agree with 51 Attorneys General. Girls and boys should not be sold for sex on Village Voice Medias Backpage.com.



It is a basic fact of the moral universe that girls and boys should not be sold for sex. So we were surprised and stunned to realize your company, Village Voice Media, continues to publish an Adult section on its classifieds Web siteBackpage.com that has been used as a platform for the trafficking of minors. Arrests of adults selling minors for sex via Backpage.com have been reported by the media in Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. And these are just some of the cases that have been documented. As moral and religious leaders of many creeds and backgrounds, we are united in calling on your publication to shut down the Adult section of Backpage.com. We appreciate your efforts to put in place new measures attempting to screen for ads featuring minors. However, we do not believe that these measures are doing enough to adequately solve the problem, and we share the opinion of the nations 51 Attorneys General that the best way to eradicate your companys connection with the sex trafficking of minors is to shut down the Adult section of your Web site, as Craigslist did. ... Please shut down the Adult section of Backpage.com immediately so that no minor is exploited through advertisements on your Web site. Village Voice Media replied by outlining the steps they are taking in response to the issues raised Here are just some of the things we are doing: The review of all ads and images in the personals and adult sections of the site.

The implementation of key word searches to quickly identify banned advertisements and inappropriate discussions.

The significant increase in staff to quickly identify illegal ads.

The implementation of roadblocks to prevent minors from accessing mature content.

The implementation of dedicated tools on the site to educate users regarding online safety and security.

The empowerment of users to report abuse and an expeditious process to handle user complaints. It must have been tempting to have replied instead: Please shut down your religions immediately so that no minor is exploited through the actions and deeds of your adherents. One can't help but think this would result in several orders of magnitude of more minors saved from exploitation.