And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? – Matthew 7:3
Just over a year ago (September 4th, 2010) Craigslist surrendered to political pressure from busybody attorneys general out to make a name for themselves by taking pot-shots at a straw man. Founder Craig Newmark is a shy, timid fellow who may have Asperger’s Syndrome and was unable to cope with tyrannical demands and false accusations from people who relish upsetting others. So he simply shut down his “adult services” section, thus granting the witch hunters their empty symbolic victory and allowing the whores who advertise on Craigslist to return to the personals and therapeutic services sections where they posted their ads 
before the government demanded the creation of an “adult services” section in the first place. Deafened by plaudits from trafficking fetishists, the attorneys general were apparently unable to hear either the yawns with which the majority of Americans greeted their “victory” or the denunciations from civil libertarians and other rational folk, so now they’re at it again, issuing empty threats against Backpage:
Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley joined with 44 attorneys general nationwide demanding Backpage.com crack down on prostitution ads, saying the site is the new online mecca for the sex trade. “Children are being forced into prostitution in Massachusetts and across the country, and those traffickers are being given a tool to make this even easier,” Coakley said in a statement. “We urge Backpage.com to stop child-sex trafficking on the site by completely removing all adult service advertisements.” Backpage, owned by Village Voice Media, charges a dollar for each ad. While the site states it does not tolerate ads promoting illegal services, the National Association of Attorneys General, citing industry analysts, said the company earns about $22.7 million in annual revenue from adult services ad sales. The prosecutors’ group claims the site does minimal vetting of ads. “The stated representations about the site are in direct conflict with the reality of Backpage’s business model: making money from a service illegal in every state, but for a few counties in Nevada,” the group said. A Backpage spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment. The prosecutors’ association is the same group that pressured Craigslist.org into abandoning its “adult” category in 2010.
As I was told by Pete Kotz back in January, Village Voice Media is not run by gentle, socially-awkward souls who shrink from confrontation, and its owners have no intention of running from this fight; some commentators have observed that they actually seem to relish it, and why shouldn’t they? The attorneys general don’t have a legal leg to stand on, and they know it; they’re just trying to blow down paper targets with hot air.
But there’s another aspect to the story which was called to my attention by veteran activist Norma Jean Almodovar; in a comment on the Kansas iteration of the same news story she pointed out that the politicians are making a big deal about imaginary “children forced into prostitution” in order to call attention away from their own disorderly house:
“More than 50 cases of trafficking or attempted trafficking of minors on Backpage.com have been filed in 22 states in the past three years, the letter says…” And in 2011 alone, more than 100 cases of pedophile and child porn possessing police/district attorneys/judges were brought to court…NONE of those cases involved backpage.com or craigslist or any other classified website offering adult ads – just a bunch of perverted cops, judges, FBI agents etc. who had access to these young people because they are persons in authority whom no one suspects of diddling their children. These numbers do not include the teachers, preachers, priests, boy scout leaders and other persons who are trusted by the community and who do not find their victims on backpage.com. The US Government reports that 90% of the cases of child sexual exploitation are at the hands of someone the child knows, like the above cops, teachers, etc. and 68% of the cases of child sexual abuse are at the hands of a family member. Why don’t the states attorneys general deal with those issues instead of conflating all commercial sex with underage sex trafficking?
And in a comment on the Massachusetts story linked above, she went one better by actually publishing a list of 102 cops who have been accused of child molestation or possession of child porn THIS YEAR ALONE.
It seems to me that Martha Coakley and her partners in crime need to heed the advice of scripture, specifically Matthew 7:5: “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”
One Year Ago Today
“The Doors of Perception” discusses people who have no trouble recognizing whores as whores, no matter how completely we blend with our surroundings.
The thing that is really disturbing me about this is that they are going to continue to exaggerate and inflate numbers of actual cases of “sex trafficking” of minors as a means to get more money and public support to shut down not only BP adult services section or other type sites but may also use this as an excuse to go after adult escort boards. They don’t care if they are making up all this so long as they get the public to have the intended “knee jerk” reaction to it, and some type of outcry over something that really isn’t happening. I have been in this business for 10 years now and have never once come across an underage girl being forced or trafficked. I have even worked at some spas in Houston and have never seen it. What is even more interesting is that none of these people will even talk to any real escort such as myself or even consider talking to sex work advocates about any of this. They simply aren’t interested in opening dialogue with adult sex workers, they will only talk to women who are already facing charges and or who are looking to get out of charges in exchange for saying “what they want to hear” not what reality is or what the truth really is concerning sex work. It is easy to get a 17 year old girl who just got caught prostituting an out by “giving testimony that somehow she was coerced or trafficked underage by a pimp” thereby foregoing charges and send her home packing to her family. The fear tactics and strong arming some of the police use is overkill in some of these situations just to get something on record in line what they think is happening as opposed to the real truth of the matter concerning legitimate sexwork.
Precisely; I couldn’t have said any of that better myself.
Martha Coakley has chrome balls and has to be nastier than the guys.. She’s also an imperialist for the Catholic Church/
Maggie,
This is reminiscent of the daycare child sexual-abuse witch hunts that started in Bakersfield in the 1980’s and spread across the nation. Innocent people were destroyed and the prosecutors couldn’t care less. They’re just “doing their jobs.”
In some future fantasy world, I’d like to see judges, prosecutors and police in front of a Nuremberg-equivalent tribunal. And see their “just doing my job” defense get the short shrift it deserves.
Yes, I’ve compared the “sex trafficking” hysteria to the Satanic Panic before; they share the same lurid masturbatory obsession with teenage sex slaves, the same myth of a gigantic invisible conspiracy, the same ludicrously huge numbers and the same total lack of evidence.
REAL child/teen sex abuse almost always involves a perpetrator the victim knows and the family trusts, but politicians won’t tell the truth that the real danger is in your own house/family/neighborhood because people don’t want to hear that.
Dear Marla, there’s many websites about REAL sex abuse that point out how most of the perpetrators know their victims. It’s very needed to point this out. The websites I’ve found that point this out vary from giving basic statistics/information to 1’s that provide support usually from those who have already done at least some recovery work. I don’t remember any politician ever talking about this issue which is very upsetting.
Laura, no politician wants to talk about the fact that most child sex abusers know their victims because the public does not want to hear it and will probably punish any politician who tells the truth about this by voting him out of office. It’s the people’s own folly, which can’t be blamed entirely on the politicians.
Dear Marla, the people who have set up and run the websites that I’ve found are doing a lot of good. “Many hands make light work” is very true when it comes to this type of thing. I know it 1st hand. To me a big part of too many peoples’ folly is this pure evil mentality of: 1 person doesn’t count. 1 person can’t change the world for the better. The same goes for small groups. Small groups can’t change anything. Small groups don’t count. Why bother? You can’t fight city hall, etc., etc. Another part of it is many don’t want to hear about TRUE child molestation PERIOD. I know 1st hand many don’t want to hear about murder and also see murder cases as ghoulish entertainment. BUT, we have to still NEVER GIVE UP SPEAKING OUT. EVER! The truth is there’s always going to be some that will never be reached because they willfully choose to NOT be reached. But, there’s also some that WILL, thank God! I’ve learned this 1st hand also with the causes I work for. When you look at the “small picture” you’ll see the individuals that ARE reached. I’ve experienced this 1st hand. We also need MORE politicians like the 1’s in the wonderful book “Profiles in Courage”. They didn’t care if they were voted out of office, lost their jobs, got made fun of, etc. They never wavered on what they were convinced was the truth. I say thank God for ANY who are like this and the fact that a whole book was about a group of them is amazing and inspirational. I’m with you that it can’t be blamed completely on the politicians. I’m convinced, though, that they do have a part of it. The truth is if it weren’t for those who ARE exposing how much true child molestation is from people the kid’s know things would be even worse. There’s also many in person support groups that expose this and truly help the victims of it. Thank God for those who are already doing this work. Thanks for listening.
andrew, you’re more accurate than you know. Read up on Coakley’s shameful behavior in the Fells Acre child abuse case. This was a McMartin case all over again — absurd claims by children who had been brainwashed by therapists into believing they were raped and assaulted, sometimes on public streets with no one noticing. There was zero evidence to support the allegations. When Coakley became DA, she tried to keep the innocent people in prison and over-ride the clear intentions of the judge. It is no surprise at all that this opportunistic scum is jumping into the trafficking hysteria.
Thanks Mike,
It doesn’t surprise me. My niece was indicted for child murder when her first daughter died of SIDS at 3 weeks of age. They alleged “shaken baby syndrome.” The county coroner had a grudge against the family because my brother, a college professor, had dismissed the coroner from a university job since he never showed up to teach his classes.
Once you get into the meat grinder that is the criminal justice system, there is no respite. The public “defender” told them to take a plea deal which they (my nephew and niece) would not do. My brother spent his life savings hiring a competent attorney and the State did their level best to bankrupt him with 5 continuances made on behalf of the prosecution. Only when the defendant was declared indigent by a separate judge and the State had to pick up the bill for their current attorney did the delays stop.
Since my niece’s attorney was beating the crap out of the local DA, the state sent in one of their Assistant State Attorneys to help the locals. They also had been using a “professional witness” from another University who was hoping to use this case to get funding from the State to form a pediatric forensics unit at her university.
Fortunately my sister, who is a medical professional, was overheard talking about the case by the head of pediatrics at her hospital. He asked some questions and then said he’d like to see the autopsy report, if that were possible. My sister got the report from the attorney and handed it over.
He destroyed the prosecution’s witnesses. He pointed out that any reasonably competent coroner would have realized that the broken bones were clearly post-mortem – (my niece had attempted CPR when she realized her baby wasn’t breathing) and that the expert witness from the University – who had attempted to bolster the shaken baby syndrome charge by noting that there was a blood pool in the brain – had apparently missed the fact that there were no red blood cells in that inclusion of blood but there WAS dissociated hemoglobin which indicated that the injury was not directly pre-mortem and was, in fact, consistent with the brain trauma associated with vaginal birth that occurred 3 weeks earlier. He further noted that the SIDS was consistent with a flu-type virus that suppressed the breathing centers of the brain and that during the same time period he had lost 3 infants to that same virus in his hospital.
When the Assistant State Attorney saw how badly his case was going, he tried to get the testimony stricken on the basis of discovery; that he hadn’t
had a chance to review the testimony. The defense then pointed out that the prosecution had had 3 chances to interview the doctor, which they had declined, and besides the defense had sent the prosecution a precis’ of his findings.
The judge was fairly decent but I think he did two things wrong. First, he acquiesced to the continuances the prosecution was using to extend the time and expense involved. Second, when the prosecution tried to get the testimony stricken, while he didn’t accept the argument, he told the prosecution and defense to “work it out.” I think he should have dismissed the case with prejudice.
They offered my niece a misdemeanor charge of endangerment which they would “purge” if she “stayed out of trouble” for a year. (This to a woman who had never even had a traffic ticket!) In addition, she and her husband were not allowed to make statements to the press for that year and had to agree not to sue the State.
They agreed to these terms. The prosecutor then made some self-serving statement to the press (which, by terms of the plea deal they couldn’t refute) about how she had “gotten off on a technicality.” And of course the media didn’t do their due diligence and actually find out the real reason was that the prosecution should never have brought the case in the first place.
I was furious. And I was a little pissed that they took the plea deal. I certainly understood why they took it; this had taken 3 1/2 years of their lives and had bankrupted them and cost my brother his life savings but I
ferociously wanted justice to be done to the prosecutor and all his cronies so they wouldn’t do this all over again to some other innocent person.
But I’ve since found out that even having a prosecutor withhold exculpatory evidence in a death penalty case doesn’t cross the threshold of immunity set by the SCOTUS (thank you “Justice” Scalia) to allow one civil recourse for damages. So my niece and her husband did make the right decision.
Although I grew up with greater than usual exposure to police and prosecutors; one of our lay clergy was the State Police Colonel and another youth leader was the State Prosecutor, I’ve come to the conclusion that a large percentage of people holding those positions to day are utterly corrupt and concerned, not with justice, but with power. And I despise them for it.
How utterly horrible; I honestly have to wonder if the state realizes that these sorts of actions (and Spanish Inquisition-like “Child Protective Services” actions) are discouraging cautious people from having children?
Unfortunately, it’s not just officials today that are like this; they’ve always been. The only difference now is that the structure which once prevented this sort of abuse has been slowly eroded away since the late 19th century and more quickly since the 1980s.
Dear c andrew, I’m very sorry for the HELL your family has been through. If you don’t mind my asking, has your family thought of trying to go to some media again? There’s some in the alternative news field that have exposed this type of thing with success. Is there any way that in the future they can pursue this in civil court? I’m hoping so. Again, I’m very sorry for what they’ve been though.
Laura,
I did raise the possibility with them of doing some sort of expose’ or even a book. They said that they really didn’t want to revisit the experience and didn’t think that there was enough possible upside to justify the pain of going through it, even in recollection, again.
I’d like to add my voice in saying that I’m sorry you and you family had to go through that. I can’t really blame them for not wanting to revisit it.
“Stranger Danger” is a comforting illusion; the truth is that the vast majority of sexual/violent crimes are committed by a perpetrator who already knows the victim. Martha Coakley as an Attorney General definitely knows this, but she’s pretending the big threat to children’s safety is adult strangers who find the children through Internet escort ads because getting the public to believe that will make it easier for her to achieve her real goal: Government control of the Internet, one bit at a time.
Government control of the Internet is the real goal of the Attorneys General who use human trafficking as an excuse to demand the shutdown of website adult services sections. They have to start with an issue that will win the support of the majority of Americans, which is why saving children from forced prostitution is the official excuse for demanding the shutdown of website adult services shutdowns in which more than 99.9 percent of the ads are for adult sex workers.
It’s not only the “sex trafficking” angle, either; politicians are using every kind of child-oriented sex hysteria imaginable to get foolish people to allow them to censor or control the internet. There’s a bill in Congress right now which would allow the government to spy on literally all of every single American’s internet activity without a warrant, and what is it called? “The Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act“.
When you have these people screaming “won’t SOMEBODY PLEASE think of the CHILDREN!?!?” over and over again when the subject at hand has little or nothing to do with children, there is another danger. Some day, there really will be a threat to children, and when these people try to get us to think of the children, we’re liable to ignore those cries. Not because we hate children, but because we’ve seen this movie before, we know how it ends, and we honestly don’t realize that this remake, out of all the others, has a new plot twist: there really are children this time.
Non-Louisianans have often asked me why so many people stayed behind during Hurricane Katrina; apparently much of the national media tried to present them as stubborn, foolish, willful or stupid. But what outsiders fail to understand is that, since the mid-’90s, the “authorities” had been crying “evacuate, evacuate!” every time a category-two storm looked like it might make landfall within 200 kilometers of New Orleans. Tens of thousands were sick to death of dropping everything and then sitting in monumental traffic jams which, if there had been a hurricane which spawned tornadoes as they usually do, would’ve turned the interstates into massive graveyards. So many refused to go, and didn’t realize that this one really was dangerous.
As I’ve written before, we had no intention of leaving, but two days before landfall I started feeling an uneasiness I had never felt before a hurricane in my whole life, and by the next morning my intuition was telling me to get out. Fortunately, we were able to avoid most of the traffic except at three bottleneck points.
The advertising of commercial sex and commercial sex itself both strike me as like waterbeds: push them down in one place and they just spring up in another. But, hell, it keeps lots of cops, lawyers and social advocates in a job. Maybe we could give them a name? How about THE CANUTE FOUNDATION?!
Or was good ole’ King C purposely giving a lesson in arrogance and pointlessness?
I can see this hounding of one website after another rolling on for centuries…millennia…all good grist to the rescue industry.
I’ve forgotten what percentage of tricks the sex workers of Chicago had to perform for cops to keep them at bay in a survey a year or two back, but I remember it being impressive….
Your metaphor reminds me of a Japanese euphemism for harlotry, “The Water Trade”. Amanda Brooks had a lovely column on the phrase a while back.
This website talks about that problem. However, be warned. It’s a xtian website and you might find the comments a bit troubling.
[…] issues, but Maggie McNeill is outside Massachusetts (I think). The hooker-turned-blogger has a new post skewering Martha Coakley and other AGs for trying to intimidate backpage.com into giving up its […]
“We urge Backpage.com to stop child-sex trafficking on the site by completely removing all adult service advertisements.”
Again, I am disgusted at the fact that Les Protectors don’t care to draw a difference between adults and children. Wait. Who are the pervs, again?
Oh man I need to go write a nice long love-letter to BP’s owners and attorneys… But I’m afraid to, because the cops were busting BP girls in this hotel last week and DHS was involved (yes, really, they do that now. the majority of PATRIOT act warrantless-wiretap prosecutions are against low-level prostitutes and dopedealers, check ACLU website), so I’m afraid they may still be watching the wifi traffic. Hell, they could probably even bust me based on this comment. Gotta connect somewhere else to post my love-letter to them…That’s America, protecting freedom all over the place… Nowhere is safe from the Gestapo…