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101
ONLINE PROSTITUTION AND TRAFFICKING
Melissa Farley,* Kenneth Franzblau,** and M. Alexis Kennedy***
You are not safer because you work indoors. Craigslist is just
the “internet streets,” where the same predators and hustlers
are meeting you with the same intentions except they look like
straight people who go to medical school and have
Blackberrys.
I consider myself in the same risk and danger zones as a
street worker. I am an upper working class anonymous client
worker.
1
I. INTRODUCTION
The use of Internet technologies to traffic women and children to
prostitution will be described in this article. We will summarize the
history of online trafficking and the remarkably effective use of the
Internet for advertising prostitution locally, regionally, and
internationally beginning with the development of social
networking sites, discussion forums, message boards and online
chats. Examples of sex buyers’, pimps’, and traffickers’ use of the
Internet and online classified advertising sites will be provided.
We will also summarize the empirical evidence for the
psychological and physical harms of trafficking for prostitution and
will discuss the risks of compartmentalizing arms of the sex
trafficking industry that are in fact elements of multinational,
constantly expanding, businesses. False distinctions have been
* Melissa Farley Ph.D., Executive Director, Prostitution Research & Education, San
Francisco, CA.
** Kenneth Franzblau, J.D., Anti-Trafficking Consultant, Coalition Against Trafficking in
Women, NY.
*** M. Alexis Kennedy, Ph.D./J.D., Associate Professor, Department of Criminal Justice,
University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Emily Inouye Butler J.D. made helpful contributions to research and writing of this paper.
Michal Dolce, Esq. contributed ideas for legal challenges to websites’ invocations of immunity
under the Communications Decency Act. Aashika Damodar, MPhil, provided helpful edits on
crowdsourcing.
1
Marikopassion, An Outlaw’s Insurance Policy, BOUND, NOT GAGGED (Mar. 7, 2010),
http://deepthroated.wordpress.com/2010/03/07/an-outlaws-insurance-policy/.
102 Albany Law Review [Vol. 77.3
erected between online and offline prostitution, child and adult
prostitution, indoor and outdoor prostitution, pornography and
prostitution, legal and illegal prostitution, and prostitution and
trafficking.
We will discuss what is known about the involvement of
organized crime in online trafficking, and summarize several
successful cases brought against online traffickers. We describe
public campaigns and educational boycotts against online
traffickers and the development of online alternatives to the sex
trafficking industry. There has been a range of legal responses to
the crimes of prostitution and trafficking. Prosecutorial challenges
in this newly developing field include the anonymity of the Internet,
blurred jurisdictional boundaries, reluctance to prosecute
prostitution cases where there is no evidence of physical coercion,
and a very slowly increasing number of cases brought using existing
legislation, in part because of the need for special training of
criminal justice personnel. Nonetheless, there are tools available
that provide both criminal and civil remedies.
Compartmentalization of the various arms of the sex industry,
regardless of their location or legal status, has confused and
sometimes derailed policymakers, the public, and law enforcement
and has resulted in a failure to understand prostitution and
trafficking as crimes against vulnerable women and children.
Prostitution is the sale of a sex act.
2
Payment for sexual use is
usually made in cash but can also be made in housing, food, drugs,
clothes, gas, or other basic needs.
3
For young women with few
alternatives, Internet prostitution is a portal into the sex trafficking
industry.
4
Prostitution is glamorized and mainstreamed for women
who believe the recruitment messaging, “prostitution is fun!” “sexy!”
and “you make tons of money!”
5
Online classified websites
2
Slight variations on that definition occur by state. For example, Nevada defines
prostitution as follows: “‘Prostitution’ means engaging in sexual conduct with another person
in return for a fee, monetary consideration or other thing of value.” NEV. REV. STAT. ANN. §
201.295(5) (Lexis-Nexis 2014).
3
See, e.g., Stephanie Mencimer, Brave New Welfare, MOTHER JONES, Jan.–Feb. 2009, at
40, 45, available at http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/01/brave-new-welfare; Nathan
Hardin, Woman Charged with Prostituting for Gas, SALISBURY POST, (Jan. 15, 2012, 12:20
AM), http://www.salisburypost.com/Crime/072111-WEBcouplechargedwithprostitution-qcd.
4
See Bill McAllister, From Streetwalking to the Information Superhighway: The New
Method in Prostitution, POLICE PROSTITUTION & POL. (July 30, 2011, 2:17 PM),
http://goo.gl/KoussU.
5
See, e.g., Phoebe Kay, On the Wrong Side of a Craigslist Ad, SALON (Sept. 8, 2010, 9:01
PM), http://www.salon.com/life/sex_work/?story=/mwt/feature/2010/09/08/i_was_craigslist_
2013/2014] Online Prostitution and Trafficking 103
Backpage, myredbook, escortpost, theeroticreview and others have
sections advertising prostitution—thus functioning as online
brothels. Craigslist was described as “training wheels” for selling
sex.
6
In third world or recessionary economies, prostitution is a
last-ditch survival option for poor young women or for women who
are marginalized because of racism.
7
Korean women, for example,
are recruited by traffickers for prostitution in the United Sates via
Internet advertising.
8
An advertisement aimed at financially
vulnerable women on the cafedaum.net website read: “We know
that in Korea these days, unemployment, the recession and the
Special Law on Prostitution make it hard to earn even half of what
you made before.”
9
Enticing the women into prostitution, the
traffickers then specify how much money can be made in a bar or
massage parlor, declaring: “Advances possible. We take care of
visas and bad credit.”
10
Most contemporary legal definitions of trafficking do not require
physical movement, but rather coercion, force, fraud, or abuse of
power to trap a victim in an exploitive situation. In some
international legal definitions, consent is irrelevant.
11
For the
purposes of this article, we will use a definition of trafficking like
that used in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act: “[T]he
recruitment, [enticement,] harboring, transportation, provision, or
obtaining of a person for the purposes of a commercial sex act.”
12
Prostitution often meets the legal definition of human trafficking
in that pimping or third-party control of a prostituted person cannot
be distinguished from the identical crimes perpetrated in
trafficking.
13
According to estimates from eighteen sources
escort.
6
Nick Lucchesi, Cops Pimp Slap Craigslist on ‘Erotic Services’ Listings, RFT BLOGS, (Nov.
7, 2008, 3:18 PM), http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/stlog/2008/11/cops_pimp_slap_craigslist_
on_erotic_services_listings_prostitution_rings_internet_prostitutes.php.
7
TIMOTHY C. LIM, THE DYNAMICS OF TRAFFICKING, SMUGGLING AND PROSTITUTION: AN
ANALYSIS OF KOREAN WOMEN IN THE U.S. COMMERCIAL SEX INDUSTRY 1 (2008), available at
http://instructional1.calstatela.edu/tclim/articles/Final_report_Lim2.pdf.
8
Id. at 21.
9
Id.
10
Id.
11
See, e.g., Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially
Women and Children, Annex 2, art. 3(b), Nov. 15, 2000, 2237 U.N.T.S. 319 (“The consent of a
victim of trafficking in persons . . . shall be irrelevant . . . .”).
12
22 U.S.C. § 7102(9) (2012).
13
Noting the impossibility of separating prostitution from trafficking in the real world, a
2006 report by Sigma Huda, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights
Aspects of the Victims of Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children noted that
104 Albany Law Review [Vol. 77.3
including research studies, government reports, and
nongovernmental agencies, on average 84% of women in
prostitution are under third-party control or pimped or trafficked.
14
prostitution as it is practiced “usually does satisfy the elements of trafficking.” U.N. Econ. &
Soc. Council, Comm. on Human Rights, Integration of the Human Rights of Women and a
Gender Perspective: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Aspects of the
Victims of Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, ¶42, U.N. Doc.
E/CN.4/2006/62 (Feb. 20, 2006).
14
To calculate the number 84% as an estimate of those who were under third-party
control, pimped, or trafficked we used either whole number estimates or whole numbers
based on the midpoint of a given estimated range. In the United States, 80–90% of those in
prostitution had pimps. See JACQUELINE B. HELFGOTT, CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR: THEORIES,
TYPOLOGIES, AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE 301 (2008); Jean Faugier and Mary Sargeant,
Boyfriends, ‘Pimps’ and Clients, in RETHINKING PROSTITUTION: PURCHASING SEX IN THE 1990S
119–34 (Graham Scambler & Annette Scambler eds., 1997). In New York City, a pimp
estimated that “70% of women working in New York City as prostitutes are being compelled
to do so by pimps who use beatings and drugs, and most importantly the threat of jail, to keep
their girls in line.” Prostitution—Legalize or Decriminalize?, DAVIS2013.COM (July 30, 2012),
http://davis2013.com/prostitution-legalize-or-decriminalize/. In Italy, the European Union
estimated that 80 % of those in prostitution were trafficked. SCELLES FOUNDATION, SEXUAL
EXPLOITATION: PROSTITUTION AND ORGANIZED CRIME 173 (2012),
http://www.fondationscelles.org/pdf/rapport_mondial/
sexual_exploitation_prostitution_Fondation_Scelles.pdf. In Poland, 90% of prostitution along
the roads was assumed to be controlled by organized criminal groups. Id. at 233. In
Amsterdam 50 to 90% of women in prostitution in the red-light district were considered likely
victims of Turkish, Hungarian, Romanian, and Bulgarian human trafficking networks,
including those working in legal clubs and brothels, according to the Dutch national police
Korps Landelijke Politiediensten (KLPD). Id. at 211. In Spain, more than 90% of women in
prostitution were victims of human trafficking. Id. at 268. In Bulgaria, RiskMonitor
Foundation estimated that more than 95% of those in prostitution have pimps linked to
organized crime. Id. at 64. In Germany SOLWODI estimated that 80% of women in
prostitution are placed “under strong pressure and have no alternatives. This pressure may
come from a partner or even their family, who send them abroad to work and send money
back.” Eur. Consult. Ass., Prostitution, Trafficking and Modern Slavery in Europe, Doc. No.
13446, at 12 (2014). In Germany, policy analyst Barbara Yondorf estimated that 80–95% of
women in prostitution have pimps. KATHLEEN BARRY, FEMALE SEXUAL SLAVERY 130 (1979).
In San Francisco, 80% of women in prostitution interviewed by Marilyn Neckes and Theresa
Lynch had pimps. Id. at 119. In Oregon, 84% of women who had escaped prostitution had
previously been controlled by pimps. Susan Kay Hunter, Prostitution is Cruelty and Abuse to
Women and Children, 1 MICH. J. GENDER & L. 91, 101 (1993). In Ireland, Ruhama estimated
that 80% of women in prostitution were under third-party control. E-mail from Sarah
Benson, CEO of Ruhama, to Melissa Farley (April 10, 2014) (on file with the Albany Law
Review). In the United States, a study of women prostituted in hotels estimated that more
than 80% were controlled by pimps. ROBERT PRUS & STYLLIANOSS IRINI, HOOKERS,
ROUNDERS, AND DESK CLERKS 11 (1980). Kathleen Barry noted that 80 to 95 % of all
prostitution is pimp-controlled. KATHLEEN BARRY, THE PROSTITUTION OF SEXUALITY 198
(1995). Ninety-five to 99% of women in German prostitution were under the control of others.
Manfred Paulus, Out of Control: On Liberties and Criminal Developments in the Redlight
Districts of the Federal Republic of Germany, PROSTITUTION RESOURCES (May 6, 2014),
http://ressourcesprostitution.wordpress.com/2014/05/06/m-paulus-out-of-control-on-liberties-
and-criminal-developments-in-the-redlight-districts-of-the-federal-republic-of-germany/.
Eighty-six percent of Nepali women delivered to brothels in India did not know they were
going to be prostituted when they left home. LOUISE BROWN, SEX SLAVES: THE TRAFFICKING
2013/2014] Online Prostitution and Trafficking 105
Fifty years ago pimps coerced women to solicit on the street
where they were advertised to the relatively limited marketplace of
sex buyers who evaluated the women’s physical appearances and
made selections on the street corner. Prostitution is now a business
that is advertised on the Internet, expanding the reach of pimps to a
wider market of potential sex buyers. Women can be sold for 15
minutes or for a week for johns’ sexual use, selected and purchased
online like a rental car. As the following evidence shows, the vast
majority of prostitution today takes place online. Police in
Syracuse, New York estimated that 90% of that city’s prostitution
trade had gone online between 2009 and 2011.
15
Eighty-eight
percent of sex buyers in a 2011 research study had bought women
and children for sexual use indoors via Internet-advertised escort
agencies, strip clubs, gentlemen’s clubs, brothels, and massage
parlors.
16
In the early 2000s, about half of all searches on the
Internet search engine AltaVista were related to the business of
sexual exploitation.
17
The Internet and computer technology have been developed and
exploited by sex businesses to offer prostitution to men across the
globe.
18
Internet websites provide contact information, specifics on
sexual acts that will be performed, pornography of the woman to be
sold for sex, coded prices, and reviews by sex buyers.
19
Technology,
smartphones and other digital devices make it possible to conduct
business, advertise, and increase earnings from women who have
for the most part been trafficked or coerced by a combination of
OF WOMEN IN ASIA 66 (2000). Cambodian Women’s Crisis Centre found that 86% of women
rescued from Phnom Penh brothels by police had been tricked or sold into prostitution. Id. at
89.
15
Douglas Dowty, Syracuse Police Charge 36 in Prostitution Sting Originating on Internet,
SYRACUSE.COM (Dec. 7, 2012, 12:18 PM), http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2011/04/
syracuse_police_charge_36_in_p.html.
16
See MELISSA FARLEY ET AL., COMPARING SEX BUYERS WITH MEN WHO DON’T BUY SEX 15
(2011), http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/pdfs/Farleyetal2011ComparingSexBuyers.pdf.
17
See LEWIS PERDUE, EROTICABIZ: HOW SEX SHAPED THE INTERNET 57 (2002).
18
See Kristie R. Blevins & Thomas J. Holt, Examining the Virtual Subculture of Johns, 38
J. CONTEMP. ETHNOGRAPHY 619, 620 (2009).
19
See Tammy Castle & Jennifer Lee, Ordering Sex in Cyberspace: A Content Analysis of
Escort Websites, 11 INT’L J. CULTURAL STUD. 107, 118 (2008); Thomas J. Holt & Kristie R.
Blevins, Examining Sex Work from the Client’s Perspective: Assessing Johns Using On-Line
Data, 28 DEVIANT BEHAV. 333, 342, 345–47 (2007); see also Matthew V. Pruitt, Online Boys:
Male-For-Male Internet Escorts, 38 SOC. FOCUS 189, 193 (2005) (describing how sex is sold
online by prostituted men). Of course sex buyers don’t call themselves sex buyers. They refer
to themselves as “johns,” “hobbyists,” “mongers” (abbreviated from “whoremonger”),
“punters,” “clients,” or “customers.”
106 Albany Law Review [Vol. 77.3
joblessness, poverty, racism, and sexism into sex businesses.
20
Bitcoin,
21
an unregulated online currency that unlike credit cards
provides the anonymity of cash, is being used to pay for web access
to sites containing extremely violent or illegal images of real women
and children, including online auctions of them.
22
Adapted by
traffickers, pimps, and pornographers, the global reach of the
Internet has facilitated sex buyers’ access to prostituted women and
children, thereby increasing sex trafficking.
23
The Internet has
facilitated prostitution’s shift from the street to indoor locations: to
massage parlors, residential brothels, hotels,
24
call girl or escort
prostitution (more accurately described as cell phone prostitution),
and strip club or gentlemen’s club prostitution.
25
Although there is
a myth that indoor prostitution is safer than street prostitution,
little evidence for this exists. Instead, the evidence of physical and
emotional harm caused by prostitution holds constant wherever it
happens.
26
The development of the Internet requires new prosecutorial
strategies for arresting pimps, traffickers, and sex buyers—a
challenge that requires law enforcement officials and prosecutors to
keep up with traffickers’ familiarity with, and skills in, web
technologies. Online prostitution provides greater anonymity for
20
See DANAH BOYD ET AL., HUMAN TRAFFICKING AND TECHNOLOGY: A FRAMEWORK FOR
UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN THE COMMERCIAL SEXUAL EXPLORATION OF
CHILDREN IN THE U.S., 1 (2011), http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/collaboration/focus/education/htframework-2011.pdf.
21
See generally BITCOIN, https://bitcoin.org/en/ (last visited June 14, 2014) (explaining the
Bitcoin payment system).
22
See BOYD ET AL., supra note 20, at 6.
23
See Brief of Coalition Against Trafficking in Women as Amicus Curiae Supporting
Plaintiff at 4–5, Dart v. Craigslist, Inc., 665 F. Supp. 2d 961 (N.D. Ill. 2009) (No. 09 CV 1385).
A study conducted by the Sex Trafficking Intervention Research Office of Arizona State
University’s School of Social Work estimated that an average of 5% of men in fifteen cities
used online prostitution ads, ranging from 0.6% in San Francisco to 21.4% in Houston.
DOMINIQUE ROE-SEPOWITZ ET AL., ARIZ. STATE UNIV. SCH. OF SOC. WORK, INVISIBLE
OFFENDERS: A STUDY ESTIMATING ONLINE SEX CUSTOMERS 8–9 (2013).
24
In April 2011, a Travelodge motel was seized as part of an indictment against a
prostitution ring in California. Press Release, Fed. Bureau of Investigation, Members and
Associates of Oceanside Crip Street Gangs and One Hotel Charged with Racketeering
Conspiracy Relating to Prostitution of Minors and Adults and Other Crimes and Criminal
Forfeiture (Apr. 18, 2011), available at http://www.fbi.gov/sandiego/press-
releases/2011/sd041811.htm.
25
See Melissa Farley, Prostitution Harms Women Even if Indoors, 11 VIOLENCE AGAINST
WOMEN 950, 952 (2005).
26
See id. at 955–62; Melissa Farley, “Bad for the Body, Bad for the Heart”: Prostitution
Harms Women Even if Legalized or Decriminalized, 10 VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN 1087,
1099–1117 (2004).
2013/2014] Online Prostitution and Trafficking 107
johns and pimps and it blurs jurisdictional boundaries since
Internet content can be accessed and published anywhere. Social
networking media such as Facebook, classified advertising websites
such as Backpage, message boards, and dating sites all provide
platforms for prostitution marketing with relative anonymity and
impunity. Sex buyers and traffickers benefit from the relative lack
of accountability of Internet service providers for their websites’
content, despite token gestures described below. At the same time,
online prostitution results in an online record that can be used as
evidence in prosecutions.
II. MARKETING PROSTITUTION: ORGANIZED CRIMINALS’ USE OF WEB
TECHNOLOGY FOR THE PURPOSE OF TRAFFICKING WOMEN
Advertising women for johns’ sexual use is essential to pimps and
traffickers.
The truth is that a lot of deep marketing-thought goes into
the sex industry, whether the entity being sold is an
independent escort’s companionship or couples’ porn. . . .
Mainstream ad agencies deal with versions of this problem
all the time as they market brands and lifestyles, but sex
workers tangle with it in a different way, because the thing
on the market block is them.
27
[I]nternet access has proved to be far more about men’s
access to the bodies of women and girls, than about women’s
and girls’ access to resources, education, employment,
empowerment. . . . The vulgarisation of privilege that Engels
foresaw has taken strange new directions; every man
wealthy enough to own a computer and pay an ISP can enjoy
an infinite virtual harem in the seclusion of his home.
28
“Advertisement is the most important part of the business,” said a
member of the Mafia crime family, referring to Internet advertising
in a case involving organized criminals’ use of the Internet to traffic
women.
29
Escort agencies, brothels, and strip clubs are advertised
27
AUDACIA RAY, NAKED ON THE INTERNET: HOOKUPS, DOWNLOADS, AND CASHING IN ON
INTERNET SEXPLORATION 178 (2007).
28
D. A. Clarke, Prostitution for Everyone: Feminism, Globalization, and the ‘Sex’ Industry,
in NOT FOR SALE: FEMINISTS RESISTING PROSTITUTION AND PORNOGRAPHY 149, 176
(Rebecca Whisnant & Christine Stark eds., 2004).
29
See Press Release, Fed. Bureau of Investigation, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Charges 14
Gambino Crime Family Associates with Racketeering, Murder, Sex Trafficking, and Other
Crimes (Apr. 20, 2010), available at http://www.fbi.gov/newyork/press-
108 Albany Law Review [Vol. 77.3
on websites and chat rooms, enabling pimps and traffickers to sell
women for sex. Furthermore, the Mafia understood that pimps
need a flexible business model and that advertising online attracts
sex buyers who may be seeking one type of sex business but who
can be enticed via the web into buying prostitution in some other
form. For example, a sex buyer may first look at free pornography
downloads, then be offered hardcore pornography for sale, and then
he might see a pop-up advertisement for prostitution in his zip code.
Web-based advertising happens daily in all areas of business
enterprise on the World Wide Web. While traffickers use the same
online sales model as other businesses, they also use Internet
technologies usually not accessed by other businesses such as online
forums, Skype, and gaming technology such as “Xbox Live, Sony
Online Entertainment, or [real-time games such as] World of
Warcraft.”
30
Gaming technologies are used to facilitate trafficking
since they permit midgame user-to-user communication.
31
Organized crime is an essential element in the sex trafficking
industry.
32
Profits from the business of selling sex “contribute to
the expansion of organized crime in the United States and
worldwide.”
33
“Trafficking in persons is often [facilitated] by official
corruption in countries of origin, transit, and destination, thereby
threatening the rule of law.”
34
Russian and Balkan organized
criminals’ trafficking of women on the Internet was noted in 2000
when gangs placed ads in an Internet magazine Streetwalking the
World which was aimed at sex buyer markets in Europe, the United
States, and Australia.
35
“The fact that they can put these human
beings out for viewing not only shows how they regard the women,
but also underlines how strong the market is,” said a UK police
releases/2010/nyfo042010.htm. The indictment included the crimes of murder, assault,
witness tampering, extortion, narcotics, mail fraud, loan sharking, and gambling in addition
to sex trafficking. Sealed Indictment at 1–49, United States v. Marino, S1 09 Cr. 1243 (LAK)
(S.D.N.Y. June 20, 2010).
30
BOYD ET AL., supra note 21, at 7.
31
Id.
32
See, e.g., Gillian Caldwell et al., Capitalizing on Transition Economies: The Role of the
Russian Mafiya in Trafficking Women for Forced Prostitution, in ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION AND
COMMERCIAL SEX: THE NEW SLAVE TRADE 42, 42–43 (Phil Williams ed., 1999); cf. 22 U.S.C. §
7101(b)(8) (2012) (“Trafficking in persons is increasingly perpetrated by organized,
sophisticated criminal enterprises.”).
33
22 U.S.C. § 7101(b)(8).
34
Id.
35
Stuart Millar, Sex Gangs Sell Prostitutes over the Internet, OBSERVER (July 15, 2000),
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2000/jul/16/internetnews.theobserver1.
2013/2014] Online Prostitution and Trafficking 109
officer.
36
The trade is fuelled by the insatiable appetite of punters for
“new” girls and by the need for pimps to cater for more
extreme sexual demands, such as torture, as well as
unprotected sex. The trade in imported women is slowly
spreading across the UK, centering on cities where there is a
major off-street sex industry, such as Glasgow. According to
sources in the trade, one flat in the city connected to a sauna
offers eastern European women for clients with “exotic”
tastes.
In Edinburgh, three Lithuanian women were deported
after police discovered they had been put to work in the city’s
sex trade by a Russian gang. Two worked in a sauna and the
other in a lap-dancing bar, but information that they were
working against their will soon went round the city’s small
but highly competitive industry and police were called in.
37
Organized crime operates in similar ways regardless of the
criminals’ national or ethnic origins. Criminal gangs in Taipei used
hundreds of websites to advertise the sale of young women to sex
buyers and used online chat rooms to lure teenagers into
prostitution with bribes of money and free drugs.
38
Four United
States criminal cases from 2011 illustrate organized criminals’
commitment to the use of online technologies for trafficking. Nine
men from the Gambino organized crime family in New York were
convicted and sentenced for sex trafficking, murder, racketeering,
extortion, and wire fraud.
39
The men trafficked young women for
sexual use by advertising their prostitution on Craigslist.
40
The
trafficked women were offered to gamblers in the Mafia’s high-
stakes poker businesses.
41
A second case from Atlanta included
indictments for kidnapping, sex trafficking, and transporting
women across state lines for prostitution.
42
The male and female
36
Id.
37
Id.
38
See Joseph Yeh, Groups Highlight Risks of Online Sex Trade, CHINA POST (Aug. 3, 2011,
11:50 PM), http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/2011/08/03/312070/
Groups-highlight.htm.
39
Press Release, U.S. Attorney, S. Dist. of N.Y., Nine Gambino Crime Family Members
Sentenced in Manhattan Federal Court for Racketeering, Murder Conspiracy, Extortion, Sex
Trafficking, and Other Crimes (May 12, 2011), available at
http://www.justice.gov/usao/nys/pressreleases/May11/marinodanieletalsentencingspr.pdf.
40
Id.
41
Id.
42
Press Release, U.S. Attorney, N. Dist. of Ga., Pair Charged in Sex Trafficking Ring (May
110 Albany Law Review [Vol. 77.3
defendants recruited young women into prostitution on Internet
sites Craigslist and Backpage, then terrorized them (for example
binding them with duct tape and imprisoning them in a closet;
forcibly addicting them to cocaine, and handcuffing them to beds)
and sold them in various cities to sex buyers.
43
A multistate sex
trafficking gang’s use of the Internet triggered a third 2011
organized crime case.
44
The Internet was the prostitution ring’s
primary marketing tool with online ads for prostitution in
Tennessee, North Carolina, New Mexico, and Ohio.
45
One of the
traffickers took photos of the women and posted them to Backpage,
USAsexguide, Preferred 411, Date Check and other websites
offering “adult services” or “escort” services that included
pornography of the prostituting women.
46
In a fourth case, police
discovered an online prostitution ring, Escorts.com, in
Pennsylvania.
47
Evidence used against the companies was based on
fees and payments from website users including money orders,
checks and credit cards, and numerous accounts at various financial
institutions, funds, and financial services.
48
In 2011, the companies
who controlled the prostitution ring pled guilty to money laundering
and agreed to pay $6.4 million for developing and operating
Escorts.com, which was subsequently shut down.
49
The organized
crime groups kept numerous accounts at various financial
institutions, funds, and financial services.
50
After the link to the
online prostitution ring was uncovered, the FBI, State Police, IRS
and city police raided the corporate offices and found eighty boxes of
evidence.
51
18, 2011), available at http://www.justice.gov/usao/gan/press/2011/05-18-11.html.
43
Id.
44
Press Release, U.S. Attorney, W. Dist. of N.C., California Man Sentenced to 18 Months
in Prison for Prostitution-Related Charges (July 25, 2012), available at
http://www.justice.gov/usao/ncw/pressreleases/Charlotte-2012-07-25-rodgers.html.
45
FBI’s Charlotte Division Arrests Multi-State ‘Online’ Prostitution Ring,
CRIMEINCHARLOTTE.COM (May 18, 2011), http://www.crimeincharlotte.com/fbis-charlotte-
division-arrests-multi-state-online-prostitution-ring/#.UvlSmCiJV0x.
46
Cleve R. Wootson Jr., Man Accused of Running Online Prostitution Ring, WOPULAR
(May, 17, 2011), http://www.wopular.com/man-accused-running-online-prostitution-ring-0.
47
Wendy Ruderman & Barbara Laker, Porn King’s Empire Pays Feds $6.4M Penalty,
PHILLY.COM (Nov. 2, 2011), http://www.philly.com/philly/news/133042343.html?cmpid=
1558579.
48
Id.
49
Id.
50
Id.
51
Id. According to The Vienna Forum to Fight Human Trafficking, E-business including
electronic banking, benefits organized criminals: it provides “virtual identities” on the
internet, disguises financial activities and allows the exchange of money and services with
2013/2014] Online Prostitution and Trafficking 111
Alternatives to classified advertising sites such as Craigslist and
Backpage have begun to appear. Geebo.com is a website aimed at
providing safe and socially responsible classified advertising.
52
During the period of time that consciousness about online
trafficking was increasing, from January 2009 to June 2010,
Geebo’s revenue increased 300%.
53
Despite this innovative trend,
sex industry businessmen continue to use online technologies for
the purpose of paid sexual exploitation and abuse.
III. THE HARMS OF PROSTITUTION AND TRAFFICKING
For most of the world’s prostituted women, prostitution is the
experience of being hunted, dominated, harassed, assaulted, and
battered. Prostitution is a gendered survival strategy that requires
the person in it to assume unreasonable risks.
54
Most people would
not be willing to assume these risks. Prostitution formalizes
women’s subordination by sex, race, and class and thus poverty,
racism, and sexism are inextricably connected in prostitution.
55
Women are prostituted because they are vulnerable as a result of
poverty, a lack of educational options, lack of employment
opportunities, and as a result of previous physical and emotional
harm. They are purchased on the basis of race as well as sex
stereotypes.
Childhood abuse is such a common precursor to prostitution that
it is nearly universal among those in prostitution. Survivors link
anonymity. The Internet permits rapid global movement of money. Some internet payment
options allow the payer the same anonymity as with cash, but with the ability to conduct
global transfers of funds. See U.N. GLOBAL INITIATIVE TO FIGHT HUMAN TRAFFICKING, THE
VIENNA FORUM TO FIGHT HUMAN TRAFFICKING 13–15 FEBRUARY 2008, at 5 (Austria Ctr.
Vienna Background Paper, 2008), http://www.unodc.org/documents/human-
trafficking/2008/BP017TechnologyandHumanTrafficking.pdf.
52
Our Commitment to Social Responsibility, GEEBO, http://geebo.com/pages/view/id/5-
social_responsibility/ (last visited June 8, 2014).
53
E-mail from Greg Collier, Chief Executive Officer, Geebo, to Melissa Farley (Aug. 13,
2011) (on file with author).
Geebo was started with the commitment to provide safe and socially responsible
classified advertising. As a result, the website never had an “adult services” or “erotica”
section, and has both automated and manual screening of all ads before they are posted.
In addition, Geebo does not allow users to change ads once they are posted to the site in
order to prevent criminals from circumventing their screening process. Geebo.com has
become a model for online classifieds who want to avoid trafficking and sexual
exploitation.
Telephone Interview with Greg Collier, Chief Executive Officer, Geebo (Aug. 13, 2011).
54
ANDREA DWORKIN, Prostitution and Male Supremacy, in LIFE AND DEATH 139, 139, 141
(1997).
55
Id. at 141.
112 Albany Law Review [Vol. 77.3
physical, sexual, and emotional abuse as children to later
prostitution.
56
Seventy percent of the adult women in prostitution
in one study stated that childhood sexual assault was responsible
for their entry into prostitution.
57
Family abuse and neglect not
only caused direct physical and emotional harm, but also created a
cycle of victimization that affected their futures.
58
Familial sexual
abuse functions as a training ground for prostitution.
59
One young
woman said, “I started turning tricks to show my father what he
made me.”
60
Dworkin described sexual abuse of children as “boot
camp” for prostitution.
61
These histories make girls and young
women particularly susceptible to the manipulations of traffickers
who often lure their victims by initially providing a supportive
family-like environment, housing and food, protection from others
who have exploited them and special gifts like clothing and jewelry.
Adolescence is the most frequently reported age of entry into any
type of prostitution. Boyer and colleagues interviewed sixty women
prostituting in escort, street, strip club, phone sex, and massage
parlors (brothels) in Seattle, Washington.
62
All of them began
prostituting between the ages of twelve and fourteen.
63
Childhood abuse has been shown to increase the likelihood of
online sexual victimization.
64
Adolescents who have been victims of
childhood physical or sexual abuse and/or neglect are at risk
because they are more likely to visit chat rooms,
65
be solicited
sexually online and offline,
66
and receive aggressive sexual
solicitations
67
than their nonabused peers. Moreover, childhood
56
Mimi H. Silbert & Ayala M. Pines, Sexual Child Abuse as an Antecedent to Prostitution,
5 CHILD ABUSE & NEGLECT 407, 410 (1981).
57
Id.
58
Id.
59
DWORKIN, supra note 54, at 143
60
Mimi H. Silbert & Ayala M. Pines, Entrance into Prostitution, 13 YOUTH & SOCIETY 471,
488 (1982).
61
DWORKIN, supra note 54, at 143.
62
DEBRA BOYER, ET AL., SURVIVAL SEX IN KING COUNTY: HELPING WOMEN OUT (1993).
63
Id.
64
Jennie G. Noll, et al., Childhood Abuse, Avatar Choices, and Other Risk Factors
Associated with Internet-Initiated Victimization of Adolescent Girls, 123 PEDIATRICS 1078,
1078 (2009), available at http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/123/6/
e1078.full.pdf+html.
65
Timothy J. Beebe et al., Heightened Vulnerability and Increased Risk-Taking Among
Adolescent Chat Room Users: Results from a Statewide School Survey, 35 J. ADOLESCENT
HEALTH 116, 119 (2004).
66
Kimberly J. Mitchell et al., Youth Internet Users at Risk for the Most Serious Online
Sexual Solicitations, 32 AM. J. PREVENTIVE MED. 532, 535 (2007).
67
Melissa Wells & Kimberly J. Mitchell, How Do High-Risk Youth Use the Internet?
2013/2014] Online Prostitution and Trafficking 113
abuse victims are likely to experience physical and sexual
revictimization and exploitation.
68
A number of authors have described and summarized the sexual
and physical violence that is the norm for women in prostitution.
69
Characteristics and Implications for Prevention, 13 CHILD MALTREATMENT 227, 231–32
(2008).
68
David Finkelhor et al., Re-Victimization Patterns in a National Longitudinal Sample of
Children and Youth, 31 CHILD ABUSE & NEGLECT 479, 492 (2007); Terri L. Messman-Moore &
Patricia J. Long, The Role of Childhood Sexual Abuse Sequelae in the Sexual Revictimization
of Women: An Empirical Review and Theoretical Reformulation, 23 CLINICAL PSYCHOL. REV.
537, 538 (2003).
69
For some authors providing authoritative data on the violence of prostitution see
KATHLEEN BARRY, FEMALE SEXUAL SLAVERY 40 (1979); KATHLEEN BARRY, THE PROSTITUTION
OF SEXUALITY 36 (1995); BOYER ET AL., supra note 62; ANDREA DWORKIN, LIFE AND DEATH 141
(1997) [hereinafter DWORKIN, LIFE AND DEATH]; ANDREA DWORKIN, PORNOGRAPHY: MEN
POSSESSING WOMEN 203–04 (1981) [hereinafter DWORKIN, PORNOGRAPHY]; ANDREA
DWORKIN, SCAPEGOAT: THE JEWS, ISRAEL, AND WOMEN’S LIBERATION 330–31 (2000)
[hereinafter DWORKIN, SCAPEGOAT]; CECILIE HØIGÅRD & LIV FINSTAD, BACKSTREETS:
PROSTITUTION, MONEY AND LOVE 115 (1996); SHEILA JEFFREYS, THE IDEA OF PROSTITUTION
254–55, 259 (1997); CATHARINE A. MACKINNON & ANDREA DWORKIN, IN HARM’S WAY: THE
PORNOGRAPHY CIVIL RIGHTS HEARINGS 333–34 (1997); MIMI H. SILBERT ET AL., SEXUAL
ASSAULT OF PROSTITUTES: PHASE ONE 119 (1980); INE VANWESENBEECK, PROSTITUTES WELL-
BEING AND RISK 108 (1994); D. KELLY WEISBERG, CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT: A STUDY OF
ADOLESCENT PROSTITUTION 108–10 (1985); Margaret A. Baldwin, “A Million Dollars and an
Apology”: Prostitution and Public Benefits Claims, 10 HASTINGS WOMEN’S L.J. 189, 192–93
(1999); Margaret A. Baldwin, Strategies of Connection: Prostitution and Feminist Politics, 1
MICH. J. GENDER & L. 65, 71–72 (1993); Devon D. Brewer et al., Extent, Trends, and
Perpetrators of Prostitution-Related Homicide in the United States, 51 J. FORENSIC SCI. 1101,
1107 (2006) (estimating that 2.7% of female homicide victims in the United States were
prostituted women—the highest rate of victimization for any group of women previously
studied); Phyllis Chesler, A Woman’s Right to Self-Defense: The Case of Aileen Carol Wuornos,
66 ST. JOHN’S L. REV. 933, 948–53 (1993); Melissa Farley et al., Prostitution and Trafficking
in Nine Countries: An Update on Violence and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, in
PROSTITUTION, TRAFFICKING, AND TRAUMATIC STRESS 60 (Melissa Farley ed., 2003)
[hereinafter, Farley et al., Nine Countries]; Melissa Farley et al., Prostitution in Five
Countries: Violence and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, 8 FEMINISM & PSYCHOL. 405, 406
(1998); Melissa Farley et al., Prostitution in Vancouver: Violence and the Colonization of First
Nations Women, 42 TRANSCULTURAL PSYCHIATRY 242, 243 (2005); Evelina Giobbe, An
Analysis of Individual, Institutional, and Cultural Pimping, 1 MICH. J. GEND. & L. 33, 49–50
(1993); Evelina Giobbe, Prostitution: Buying the Right to Rape, in RAPE AND SEXUAL ASSAULT
III: A RESEARCH HANDBOOK 147–48 (Ann Wolbert Burgess ed., 1991); Susan Kay Hunter,
Prostitution is Cruelty and Abuse to Women and Children, 1 MICH. J. GEND. & L. 91, 92–94
(1994); Quarraisha Abdool Karim et al., Reducing the Risk of HIV Infection among South
African Sex Workers: Socioeconomic and Gender Barriers, 85 AM. J. PUB. HEALTH 1521, 1523
(1995); Dorchen Leidholdt, Prostitution: A Violation of Women’s Human Rights, 1 CARDOZO
WOMEN’S L.J. 133, 138 (1993); Catharine A. MacKinnon, Prostitution and Civil Rights, 1
MICH. J. GEND. & L. 13, 13 (1993); Jody Miller & Martin D. Schwartz, Rape Myths and
Violence Against Street Prostitutes, 16 DEVIANT BEHAV. 1, 7–8 (1995); John J. Potterat et al.,
Mortality in a Long-term Open Cohort of Prostitute Women, 159 AM. J. EPIDEMIOLOGY 778,
782–84 (2004) (concluding, based on a study of prostituted women in Colorado Springs, Colo.,
that no population of women studied previously has had a crude mortality rate, standardized
mortality ratio, or percentage of deaths due to murder even approximating those observed in
the study cohort); Janice G. Raymond, Prostitution as Violence Against Women: NGO
114 Albany Law Review [Vol. 77.3
Silbert and Pines reported that 70% of women suffered rape in
prostitution with 65% having been physically assaulted by
customers and 66% assaulted by pimps.
70
The Council for
Prostitution Alternatives in Portland reported that prostituted
women were raped an average of once a week.
71
In the
Netherlands, 60% of prostituted women suffered physical assaults;
70% experienced verbal threats of physical assault; 40%
experienced sexual violence; and 40% had been forced into
prostitution and/or sexual abuse by acquaintances.
72
Most young
women in prostitution were abused or beaten by pimps as well as
johns.
73
Eighty-five percent of prostituting women in Minnesota
had been raped in prostitution.
74
Of 854 people in prostitution in
nine countries (Canada, Colombia, Germany, Mexico, South Africa,
Thailand, Turkey, United States, and Zambia), 71% had
experienced physical assaults in prostitution and 62% had been
raped in prostitution.
75
Eighty-nine percent of those people stated
that they wished to leave prostitution but did not have other
options.
76
In another study 94% of those in street prostitution had
experienced sexual assault and 75% had been raped by one or more
johns.
77
Prostitution can be lethal.
78
A Canadian commission found that
Stonewalling in Beijing and Elsewhere, 21 WOMEN’S STUD. INT’L F. 1, 1 (1998); Silbert &
Pines, Entrance into Prostitution, supra note 60, at 490; Mimi H. Silbert & Ayala M. Pines,
Victimization of Street Prostitutes, 7 VICTIMOLOGY 122, 127–28, 130 (1982); DEBRA BOYER,
SEATTLE HUMAN SERVS. DEP’T, WHO PAYS THE PRICE? ASSESSMENT OF YOUTH INVOLVEMENT
IN PROSTITUTION IN SEATTLE 27, 37 (2008), http://www.seattle.gov/
humanservices/domesticviolence/report_youthinprostitution.pdf; Donna M. Hughes, Pimps
and Predators on the Internet: Globalizing the Sexual Exploitation of Women and Children, U.
OF R.I. (1999), http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/pprep.htm.
70
See Silbert & Pines, Victimization of Street Prostitutes, supra note 69, at 127–28; see
generally Mimi H. Silbert & Ayala M. Pines, Sexual Child Abuse as an Antecedent to
Prostitution, 5 CHILD ABUSE & NEGLECT 407, 409 (1981) (identifying high levels of childhood
sexual abuse among women in street prostitution).
71
See Hunter, supra note 69, at 92–93.
72
See VANWESENBEECK, supra note 69, at 91.
73
See BARRY, THE PROSTITUTION OF SEXUALITY, supra note 69, at 36; HOIGARD & FINSTAD,
supra note 69, at 115; JEFFFREYS, supra note 69, at 254–55, 259; MACKINNON & DWORKIN,
supra note 69, at 333–34.
74
Ruth Parriott, Health Experiences of Twin Cities Women Used in Prostitution (1994)
(unpublished manuscript) (commissioned by Women Hurt in Systems of Prostitution Engaged
in Revolt (WHISPER)).
75
See Farley, supra note 26, at 1095.
76
Id.
77
See Miller & Schwartz, supra note 69, at 7–8.
78
See Potterat et al., supra note 69, at 782; see also Nancy Erbe, Prostitutes: Victims of
Men’s Exploitation and Abuse, 2 LAW & INEQ. 609, 618–19 (1984) (recounting a number of
horrendous murders of women in prostitution).
2013/2014] Online Prostitution and Trafficking 115
the death rate of women in prostitution was forty times higher than
that of the general population.
79
A study of Vancouver prostitution
reported a 36% incidence of attempted murder.
80
An occupational
survey noted that 99% of women in prostitution were victims of
violence, with more frequent injuries “than workers in [those]
occupations considered . . . most dangerous, like mining, forestry
and fire fighting.”
81
Two factors are associated with greater violence in prostitution.
The greater the poverty, the greater the violence, and the longer one
is in prostitution, the more likely one is to experience violence.
82
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) commonly occurs among
prostituted women and is indicative of their extreme emotional
distress. PTSD is characterized by anxiety, anhedonia, depression,
insomnia, irritability, flashbacks, emotional numbing, and
hypervigilance.
83
In nine countries researchers found that 68% of
those in prostitution met criteria for a diagnosis of PTSD,
84
a
prevalence that was comparable to battered women seeking
shelter,
85
rape survivors seeking treatment,
86
and survivors of state-
sponsored torture.
87
Across widely varying cultures on five
79
SPECIAL COMM. ON PORNOGRAPHY AND PROSTITUTION, PORNOGRAPHY AND PROSTITUTION
IN CANADA 350 (1985).
80
Leonard Cler-Cunningham & Christine Christenson, Studying Violence to Stop It:
Canadian Research on Violence Against Women in Vancouver’s Street Level Sex Trade, 4 RES.
FOR SEX WORK 25, 26 (2001).
81
Erin Gibbs Van Brunschot et al., Images of Prostitution: The Prostitute and Print Media,
10 WOMEN & CRIM. JUST. 47, 61–62 (1999).
82
See VANWESENBEECK, supra note 69, at 95. A helpful paradigm for understanding the
harm of prostitution is that of domestic violence. Prostitution is domestic violence. Giobbe
compared pimps and batterers and found similarities in the ways they used extreme physical
violence to control women, the ways they forced women into social isolation, used
minimization and denial, threats, intimidation, verbal and sexual abuse, and had an attitude
of ownership. Giobbe, Prostitution: Buying the Right to Rape, supra note 69, at 151. The
techniques of physical violence used by pimps are often the same as those used by torturers.
Harvey Schwartz et al., Pimp Subjugation of Women by Mind Control, in PROSTITUTION AND
TRAFFICKING IN NEVADA: MAKING THE CONNECTIONS 51–52 (Melissa Farley ed., 2007).
83
AM. PSYCHIATRIC ASS’N, DIAGNOSTIC AND STATISTICAL MANUAL OF MENTAL DISORDERS §
309.81 (5th ed. 2013)
84
See Farley et al., Nine Countries, supra note 69, at 44.
85
See Beth M. Houskamp & David W. Foy, The Assessment of Posttraumatic Stress
Disorder in Battered Women, 6 J. INTERPERSONAL VIOLENCE 367, 371 (1991) (citing 45%);
Anita Kemp et al., Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in Battered Women: A Shelter
Sample, 4 J. TRAUMATIC STRESS 137, 143 (1991) (citing 84%).
86
See I.T. Bownes et al., Assault Characteristics and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in
Rape Victims, 83 ACTA PSYCHIATRICA SCANDINAVICA 27, 28 (1991) (citing 70%).
87
See Rosalind Ramsay et al., Psychiatric Morbidity in Survivors of Organised State
Violence Including Torture: A Retrospective Series, 162 BRIT. J. PSYCHIATRY 55, 56 (1993)
(citing 51%).
116 Albany Law Review [Vol. 77.3
continents, the traumatic consequences of prostitution were
similar.
88
Vanwesenbeeck found anxiety and hypervigilance among
90% of a sample of women in legal Dutch prostitution (brothels,
windows, and clubs).
89
Two studies of prostituted Korean women
reflect the women’s intense psychological distress with PTSD
prevalence rates of 78% and 80%.
90
Web-based pornography of
women trafficked in prostitution increases their vulnerability and
increases their emotional distress and traumatic stress.
91
The assault on women’s sexuality in prostitution is
overwhelming, yet invisible to most people. Survivors describe
prostitution as a process whereby they are turned into objects into
which men masturbate causing great psychological harm to the
woman acting as receptacle.
92
Dissociation is a response to
overwhelming and uncontrollable traumatic events in which the
mind detaches from one’s current emotional or physical state.
93
Dissociation occurs during extreme stress among prisoners of war
who are tortured, among children who are being sexually assaulted,
and among women being battered, raped, or prostituted.
94
Dissociative disorders, depression and other mood disorders are
common among prostituted women in street, escort, and strip club
prostitution.
95
Dissociation in prostitution results from both
childhood sexual violence and sexual violence in adult prostitution.
The dissociation necessary to survive rape in prostitution is much
like the dissociation that enables a victim to endure familial sexual
assault.
96
Vanwesenbeeck noted that a ‘“dissociative proficiency’
88
See Farley et al., Nine Countries, supra note 69, at 55–56.
89
Vanwesenbeeck found that 90% of women who were prostituted primarily in clubs,
brothels, and windows reported “extreme nervousness.” VANWESENBEECK, supra note 69, at
82.
90
Melissa Farley & Sungjean Seo, Prostitution and Trafficking in Asia, 8 HARV. ASIA PAC.
REV. 9, 10 (2006).
91
Melissa Farley, “Renting an Organ for 10 Minutes:” What Tricks Tell Us About
Prostitution, Pornography, and Trafficking, in PORNOGRAPHY: DRIVING THE DEMAND FOR
INTERNATIONAL SEX TRAFFICKING 148 (David E. Guinn & Julie DiCaro eds., 2007).
92
HØIGÅRD & FINSTAD, supra note 69, at 95–96.
93
JUDITH LEWIS HERMAN, TRAUMA AND RECOVERY 1–2 (1992).
94
Id. at 2–3; HARVEY L. SCHWARTZ, DIALOGUES WITH FORGOTTEN VOICES: RELATIONAL
PERSPECTIVES ON CHILD ABUSE TRAUMA AND TREATMENT OF DISSOCIATIVE DISORDERS 5–6
(2000).
95
Melissa Farley, Prostitution and the Invisibility of Harm, in WOMEN WITH VISIBLE AND
INVISIBLE DISABILITIES: MULTIPLE INTERSECTIONS, MULTIPLE ISSUES, MULTIPLE THERAPIES
265 (Martha E. Banks & Ellyn Kaschak eds., 2003); Colin A. Ross et al., Dissociation and
Abuse Among Multiple-Personality Patients, Prostitutes, and Exotic Dancers, 41 HOSP. &
COMMUNITY PSYCHIATRY 382, 328–330 (1990).
96
ELEANOR M. MILLER, STREET WOMAN 114–15 (1986); Giobbe, Prostitution: Buying the
2013/2014] Online Prostitution and Trafficking 117
contributed to the professional attitudes among women in
prostitution in the Netherlands.”
97
A Thai woman said, “You make
yourself empty inside.”
98
IV. COMPARTMENTALIZATION AND FALSE DISTINCTIONS
While theory about prostitution as a “choice” abounds,
99
it is
impossible to distinguish prostitution from trafficking in most
cases.
100
Thus conceptual walls between prostitution and
trafficking limit enforcement and prosecutorial options that are
available. Noting the impossibility of separating prostitution from
trafficking in the real world, a 2006 report by Sigma Huda, United
Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Aspects of the
Victims of Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children
noted that prostitution as it is practiced “usually does satisfy the
elements of trafficking”
101
and therefore, legalization of prostitution
is “to be discouraged.”
102
The Special Rapporteur observed that
“[t]he issue of demand is of crucial importance in addressing
trafficking,”
103
noting that, “[b]y engaging in the act of commercial
sex, the prostitute-user is . . . directly inflicting an additional and
substantial harm upon the trafficking victim, tantamount to rape,
above and beyond the harmful means used by others to achieve her
entry or maintenance in prostitution.”
104
Pimp-controlled
Right to Rape, supra note 69, at 151–58.
97
VANWESENBEECK, supra note 69, at 107.
98
RYAN BISHOP & LILLIAN S. ROBINSON, NIGHT MARKET: SEXUAL CULTURES AND THE THAI
ECONOMIC MIRACLE 47 (1998).
99
SHANNON BELL, READING, WRITING, AND REWRITING THE PROSTITUTE BODY 1–4 (1994);
see, e.g., Celine Parrenas Shimizu, Master-Slave Sex Acts: Mandingo and the Race/Sex
Paradox, 21 WIDE ANGLE 42, 43 (1999) (noting the “paradox of pleasure and violence in racial
subjection,” Shimizu explores the rapes of slaves by their masters and recommends that we
not prematurely dismiss “a telling of slavery from the point of view of slave sexual
contentment”); Celine Parrenas Shimizu, Sex for Sale: Queens of Anal, Double, Triple, and the
Gang Bang: Producing Asian/American Feminism in Pornography, 18 YALE J.L. & FEMINISM
235, 235–36 (2006) (discussing some Asian American women’s pornography that expresses
racialized and sexual degradation); Audrey Extavasia & Tessa Dora Addison, Fucking (with
Theory) for Money: Toward an Interrogation of Escort Prostitution, 2 POSTMODERN CULTURE
(1992), available at http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.592/add-ext.592.
100
Catherine A. MacKinnon, Trafficking, Prostitution, and Inequality, 46 HARV. C.R.-C.L.
L. REV. 271, 299–300 (2011); see supra note 13.
101
Id. at 300; see Comm’n on Human Rights, Rep. on its 62nd Sess., Feb. 20, 2006, U.N.
Doc. E/CN.4/2006/62, at 9 (2006) (by Sigma Huda).
102
Comm’n on Human Rights, supra note 101, at 17.
103
Id. at 7.
104
Id. at 12. The Special Rapporteur noted that “[t]he terms ‘sex work’, ‘sex worker’ and
‘client’ wrongly suggest that prostitution, as currently practised, does not typically fall within
118 Albany Law Review [Vol. 77.3
prostitution is indistinguishable from trafficking. Seeking to be
qualified as an expert witness, a New York pimp argued that
beatings of prostituted women are simply “part of the pimp-
prostitute relationship.”
105
Compartmentalization of what is actually a global trafficking
industry is both a factual and a strategic error that functions as a
barrier to the prosecution of pimps, traffickers, and sex buyers.
There are no boundaries in the sex trafficking industry that
distinguish physically coerced from psychologically coerced victims.
Confusion reigns regarding techniques of mental control used by
pimps and traffickers whereby victims appear to collude happily in
their own victimization.
106
There is also a failure by many—the
public, law enforcement, NGOs, health care personnel—to recognize
the coercive force of a history of abuse, neglect, racism, sexism, and
poverty in channeling women into prostitution. False distinctions
create legal and conceptual confusion about the nature of the sex
trafficking industry. The following conceptual distinctions are
based on myths rather than empirical data: trafficking versus
prostitution, adult versus child prostitution, domestic versus
international prostitution, legal versus illegal prostitution, indoor
versus outdoor prostitution, street versus escort prostitution, and
voluntary versus involuntary prostitution.
107
The United States
Department of Health and Human Services acknowledged that
trafficking victims are located not only in street and brothel
prostitution but also in pornography, strip clubs, massage parlors,
spas, live video-cam sex shows, mail-order bride or servile marriage
services, military prostitution, and sex tourism or prostitution
tourism.
108
Compartmentalization of the sex industry into illegal versus
the category of trafficking.” Id. at 10.
105
Pimp Denied “Expert” Status at Trial, MYFOXNY.COM (Nov. 22, 2011, 6:06 AM),
http://www.myfoxny.com/story/17442950/pimp-denied-expert-status-at-trial.
106
Schwartz et al., supra note 82, at 51–59 (describing brainwashing and other techniques
used by pimps and torturers to control and manipulate their victims).
107
See MacKinnon, supra note 100, at 272, Melissa Farley, Prostitution, Trafficking, and
Cultural Amnesia: What We Must Not Know in Order To Keep the Business of Sexual
Exploitation Running Smoothly, 18 YALE J.L. & FEMINISM 109, 111 (2006) [hereinafter
Farley, What We Must Not Know], Melissa Farley, Theory Versus Reality: Commentary on
Four Articles About Trafficking for Prostitution, 32 WOMEN’S STUD. INT’L FORUM, 311, 311
(2009), and Schwartz et al., supra note 106, at 52–59, for further discussions of conceptual
confusions regarding trafficking.
108
Sex Trafficking Fact Sheet, U.S. DEP’T OF HEALTH & HUM. SERVS.,
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/orr/fact_sheet_sex_trafficking.pdf (last visited June
9, 2014).
2013/2014] Online Prostitution and Trafficking 119
quasi-legal prostitution benefits pimps and traffickers in that it
frequently avoids accountability for criminal acts. The goal of
pimps’ lawyers appears to be to legally blur any distinction between
prostitution and not-prostitution. For example, an attorney for
seekingarrangement.com argued that prostitution is simply the sale
of sex with no emotional relationship.
109
The lawyer failed to note
that in today’s prostitution market GFE (girlfriend experience),
which his client’s website advertised, is precisely that: purchased
sex with the veneer of a “girlfriend experience.”
110
His strategy was
to carve out an area of the sex industry that would be difficult to
prosecute as prostitution. The seekingarrangement website’s goal is
to create what the site’s pimps describe as mutually beneficial
relationships between two people, usually a man willing to pay for
sex with a woman.
111
The same strategy is used in online
advertisements for escort prostitution. Payment is alleged to be for
companionship.
112
If sex occurs, it is alleged to be outside the scope
of the financial agreement. Similarly, in strip clubs, pimps allege
that the $500 payment for private time in a back room is for the
bottle of champagne not for the woman’s performance of a sex act on
a john.
Some assume that men in strip clubs watch women dance on a
stage and chat with them afterward. Today, strip clubs are where
prostitution happens.
113
As a Gambino organized crime family
member said, “If I’m gonna build a fucking hooker business, I’m
gonna hang out in strip clubs.”
114
Today “sex shows” and “strip
shows” are forms of online pornography (private strip prostitution)
as well as a means of trafficking women.
115
Strip clubs are
advertised online.
116
A lap dance, available in all strip clubs, is a
109
Is It Prostitution? Website Helps Female Students Pay Off Debts By Dating ‘Sugar
Daddies’, MAILONLINE (Aug 1, 2011, 7:00 AM), http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-
2021003/Is-prostitution-Sugar-daddy-dating-site-accused-targeting-debt-laden-college-
students.html.
110
See id.
111
What’s an Arrangement?, SEEKINGARRANGEMENT,
https://www.seekingarrangement.com/arrangement.php (last visited June 9, 2014).
112
Id.
113
See Dana DiFilippo & Phillip Lucas, Dirty Dancing: Strippers Bring Prostitution,
Violence, Cops Say (Mar. 28, 2012), PHILLY.COM, http://www.philly.com/philly/news/
20120328_Dirty_Dancing__Strippers_bring_prostitution__violence__cops_say.html.
114
See Sealed Indictment, United States v. Marino, No. 1:09-cr-01243-LAK (S.D.N.Y. Apr.
19, 2010).
115
DiFilippo & Lucas, supra note 113.
116
For example, Sapphire’s in Las Vegas offers free transportation if payment is made in
advance online. See SAPPHIRE, http://www.sapphirelasvegas.com (last visited June 9, 2014).
120 Albany Law Review [Vol. 77.3
form of prostitution in which a man is masturbated by a woman’s
body to ejaculation even though it may not be named as prostitution
by men who purchase those sex acts or by the club’s attorneys. A
recent case against a pimp demonstrates the lack of difference
between prostitution in strip clubs and prostitution elsewhere.
Corey Davis was “charged in a fifteen-count Superseding
Indictment with charges including sex trafficking, forced labor,
kidnapping, and violations of the Mann Act,” to which he later “pled
guilty to a single count of sex trafficking.”
117
The Grand Jury
Superseding Indictment detailed how he pimped minor girls and
adult women between a Queens, NY home (where he kept them
locked up) and Connecticut strip clubs.
118
Davis used physical
violence and psychological coercion to force his victims to engage in
prostitution at the strip clubs and collected their earnings.
119
A
2011 police undercover operation in North Carolina investigated
prostitution on backpage.com,
120
which published a job
advertisement that was a virtual shout-out to Eastern European
and United States pimps.
121
The South 13 Gentlemen’s Club posted
“Currently hiring entertainers. . . . Must . . . have . . . a willing and
motivated work ethic. . . . [S]eeking select Eastern European ladies
and Southern Cuties that may be willing to relocate . . . .”
122
Like other multinational businesses, the sex trafficking industry
has many interconnections. Local businesses are connected with
national and international distributors of women and children in
prostitution. One arm of the sex trafficking business fosters and
expands another and can eventually morph into a new enterprise.
Online pornography encourages viewers to take the additional step
of searching for women in prostitution after seeing their photos.
For example, a sex buyer who was arrested for attempting to buy a
117
See United States v. Davis, No. 3:07-cr-11 (JCH), 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 99802, at *1–2
(D. Conn. Nov. 26, 2008).
118
United States v. Davis, Case No. 3:07cr11, Grand Jury B-06-1, at 1–23 (D. CT),
available at http://www.scribd.com/doc/48989066/Corey-Davis-Indictment (last visited June
14, 2014) [hereinafter Davis Indictment]. The strip clubs were named Pleasant Moments and
Bishop’s Corner Cafe. Id. at 5, 7.
119
See id. at 4.
120
Undercover Operation at Gentleman’s Clubs Yields 9 Arrests, WMBF NEWS (Oct. 15,
2012), http://www.wmbfnews.com/story/15132069/undercover-operation-at-gentlemans-clubs-
yields-9-arrests.
121
South 13 Gentlemans Club of Greenville NC—34, BACKPAGE.COM (Apr. 28, 2011),
http://myrtlebeach.backpage.com/Strippers/south-13-gentlemans-club-of-greenville-nc-
34/3997007.
122
Id.
2013/2014] Online Prostitution and Trafficking 121
woman in prostitution said, “‘I’m watching a little porn at home, so I
get a little horny and decide I want a blow job’ . . . . ‘I head to the
Tenderloin [district] . . . and bang! The bitch is a cop.’”
123
Prostitution is advertised online, where it is indistinguishable from
pornography. Pornography is one specific means of trafficking
women for the purpose of selling women into prostitution.
124
On
pornography/prostitution websites, women are for rent and sale.
One of the world’s largest pornography sites with 10 million users
worldwide, located in China and the United States, was busted in
2011.
125
The site used a typical online sex trafficking business
model: in addition to selling pornography, the site also advertised
prostitution.
126
Visual pornography is a record of prostitution or
trafficking. Pornography is a document of what men’s domination
of women in prostitution looks like in all its sexist, racist, and
classist specificity. Pornography is a documentary of specific
women’s abuses in prostitution, and its consumers obtain
pornography as a filmed document of a woman’s sexual
humiliation.
127
A Danish website advertised “real life amateur
slaves,” encouraging men to “submit a slave to the picture farm.”
128
Sex buyers use pornography to solicit children for prostitution.
129
Both prostitution survivors and the men who buy them understand
that pornography is prostitution with a camera.
130
“Yes, the woman
in pornography is a prostitute,” said a sex buyer, “They’re
prostituting before the cameras.”
131
A number of courts have
understood that making pornography is an act of prostitution.
132
Pimps make more money from sex buyers when they advertise
women in prostitution as “adult film stars” who are available as
123
VICTOR MALAREK, THE JOHNS: SEX FOR SALE AND THE MEN WHO BUY IT 253 (2009).
124
Catharine A. MacKinnon, Pornography as Trafficking, 26 MICH. J. INT’L L. 993, 993
(2005).
125
Wang Qingchu, Biggest Chinese Porn Site Busted by Police in China and US,
SHANGHAIDAILY.COM (Aug. 25, 2011), http://www.shanghaidaily.com/national/Biggest-
Chinese-porn-site-busted-by-police-in-China-and-US/shdaily.shtml.
126
Id.
127
CLARKE, supra note 28, at 151–54.
128
Maggie Easter, Sex Trafficking and the Internet, URBANETTE MAGAZINE,
http://www.urbanette.com/sex-trafficking-and-the-internet/ (last visited June 14, 2014).
129
See, e.g., Tom Haydon, Old Bridge Man Charged with Showing Porn to 14-Year-Old
Boy, Offering to Pay for Sex, NJ.COM (Feb. 10, 2011, 5:01 PM), http://www.nj.com/
news/index.ssf/2011/02/old_bridge_man_charged_with_sh.html.
130
Farley, What We Must Not Know, supra note 106, at 127.
131
Id. at 127–28 (quoting Farley, supra note 91, at 147).
132
CATHARINE A. MACKINNON, SEX EQUALITY 1524 (2001).
122 Albany Law Review [Vol. 77.3
“escorts.”
133
Exploiting women’s poverty, pornographers use
prostituted women from Eastern Europe, where “[t]hey cost less and
do more,” said one German producer.
134
Pornographers are indistinguishable from other pimps.
135
Both
exploit women’s and girls’ economic and psychological
vulnerabilities or coerce them to get into and stay in the sex
industry. Pornographers and pimps both take pictures to advertise
their “products,” suggest specific abuses for johns to perpetrate
against women and minimize the resulting harms. Eliminating the
imagined boundary between pornography and prostitution, a
pornographer advertised that he was “in the business of degrading
whores for your viewing pleasure.”
136
Web-based, video, and print pornography are inseparable from
the rest of the sex industry, with crossovers from prostitution to
pornography to sex trafficking. Nevada pimps declared their
interest in “cross-fertiliz[ing]” legal brothels with other arms of the
sex trafficking industry—strip clubs, escort prostitution, websites,
and pornography.
137
A strip club website telegraphed the intimate
connection between stripping and pornography by advertising,
“Breeding pornstars one showgirl at a time!!!”
138
New York Elites,
an escort prostitution agency, was busted for numerous offenses
including promoting prostitution by flying pornography stars to
many locations in the United States for “dates.”
139
Police in Las Vegas located a multi-use sex industry operation
that included online prostitution, illustrating the
interconnectedness of different arms of the sex trafficking
133
Thomas Zambito, 2 Plead Guilty in 13M Prosty Ring, N.Y. DAILY NEWS (Jan. 7, 2006,
12:00 AM), http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/2-plead-guilty-13m-prosty-ring-
article-1.627326.
134
Giving the Customer What He Wants, ECONOMIST (Feb. 12, 1998),
http://www.economist.com/node/113208 (reporting that pornographers and pimps pay women
much less for excruciating and/or humiliating sex acts when economies are in dire straits).
135
See, e.g., AKIYUKI NOZAKA, THE PORNOGRAPHERS (Michael Gallagher trans., Alfred A.
Knopf, Inc., 1968) (telling the story of threats against a pornographer by thieves, the
government, and his family).
136
Robert Jensen, The Paradox of Pornography, OPEDNEWS (Feb. 1, 2006, 7:55 AM),
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_robert_j_060201_the_paradox_of_porno.htm
(internal quotation marks omitted).
137
Kathryn Hausbeck & Barbara G. Brents, Inside Nevada’s Brothel Industry, in SEX FOR
SALE: PROSTITUTION, PORNOGRAPHY, AND THE SEX INDUSTRY 217, 237 (Ronald Weitzer ed.,
2000).
138
STRIPCLUBNETWORK.COM, http://tour.stripclubnetwork.com/ (last visited Feb. 22, 2014).
139
Mark Jacobson, The $2,000 an-Hour Woman, N.Y. MAG., http://nymag.com/nymetro/
nightlife/sex/features/12193/ (last visited June 14, 2014).
2013/2014] Online Prostitution and Trafficking 123
industry.
140
Looking like a small office complex from the street, the
business functioned simultaneously as Internet pornography
production, cyber-peepshow or webcam prostitution, and a location
out of which women in escort prostitution were pimped to Las Vegas
hotels and to an illegal brothel.
141
Live video technology enables johns to obtain prostitution online
that is indistinguishable from filmed sexual assaults of children and
trafficking. Writing in 2004, Peter Landesman described the
evolving sameness of Internet pornography, prostitution,
trafficking, and slavery:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the
Cyber Crimes Center in Fairfax, Va., are . . . . tracking a
clear spike in the demand for harder-core pornography on
the Internet. . . . Cybernetworks like KaZaA and Morpheus
through which you can download and trade images and
videos—have become the Mexican border of virtual sexual
exploitation. . . . [A website selling sex slaves showed]
thumbnail images of young women of every ethnicity in
obvious distress, bound, gagged, contorted. The agents in
the room pointed out probable injuries from torture.
Cyberauctions for some of the women were in progress; one
had exceeded $300,000. “With new Internet technology,”
[ICE Special Agent Perry] Woo said, “pornography is
becoming more pervasive. With Web cams we’re seeing more
live molestation of children.”
142
V. ORIGINS OF ONLINE PROSTITUTION
Beginning with websites
143
and email, online technologies have
enabled pimps to sell women in prostitution by using new forms of
sexual exploitation. Bulletin boards were used to download
pornography in the 1970s before the advent of the Internet. The
use of credit card payments was pioneered by bulletin board
140
Conversation with Ttwo Las Vegas Police Department Vice Detectives, (June 29, 2005)
(on file with the author).
141
Id.
142
Peter Landesman, The Girls Next Door, N.Y. TIMES (Jan. 25, 2004),
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/magazine/25SEXTRAFFIC.html.
143
“.xxx” domains went on sale in 2011, however, there were already numerous platforms
where pimps could sell women in prostitution. See Website Names Ending in .xxx Go on Sale,
CBCNEWS (Dec. 6, 2011, 12:55 PM), http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/
ottawa/story/2011/12/06/technology-xxx-domain-names.html?cmp=rss.
124 Albany Law Review [Vol. 77.3
pornographers.
144
Since 1990 pagers and cell phones have been
used as the principal technology for escort or call girl prostitution.
145
A pimp who advertised men and women for sale for sex explained
that the online sex trafficking industry was constantly evolving and
regrouping, “[b]efore Craigslist, there was Yahoo Groups; before
Yahoo there was AOL.”
146
Next came live video chat, web cam
prostitution, and message boards.
With the development of Netscape’s Web browser in 1994,
transmission of Web pages with text, images, sounds, and video
made it possible to traffic women on the World Wide Web. “The
first web-based prostitution business, A Personal Touch Services,
from Seattle, WA, U.S.A., appeared in late September, 1994” and
was described as the year’s “most significant Internet marketing
innovation.”
147
The Internet Business Journal’s endorsement of the
sex industry’s marketing approach “was an early indication of the
mutually beneficial relationship between” web technology
businesses and sex trafficking industries.
148
Sex industry entrepreneurs developed the ability to “pagejack”
web urls by 1999.
149
In this process, when a web user enters a web
address, a criminal has rewritten the html code (usually by one
character) and inserted it into, for example, a skateboard video
website. When the user attempts to go to the website a hardcore
pornography site pops up instead. Often, it is impossible to
backtrack and the browser must be shut down to exit the
pornography site. While incurring the wrath of some, this method
generates enough new customers that sex industry web developers
continue to use it.
150
Today, cell phones permit web browsing of prostitution websites
and applications bring the sex buyer in more contact with the pimp
144
PERDUE, supra note 17, at 117–20.
145
James F. Quinn & Craig J. Forsyth, Describing Sexual Behavior in the Era of the
Internet: A Typology for Empirical Research, 26 DEVIANT BEHAV. 191, 197 (2005).
146
Jessie Pounds, Craigslist Is Hotbed of Online Prostitution: Crackdown in Progress;
Sellers, Clients Trying to Stay a Step Ahead, KNOXNEWS.COM (Oct. 5, 2008, 12:00 AM),
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/oct/05/craigslist-is-hotbed-of-online-prostitution/
(internal quotation marks omitted).
147
Donna M. Hughes, The Internet and Sex Industries: Partners in Global Sexual
Exploitation, TECH & SOC’Y MAG. (2000), available at http://www.uri.edu/artsci/
wms/hughes/siii.htm.
148
Donna M. Hughes, Prostitution Online, in PROSTITUTION, TRAFFICKING, AND
TRAUMATIC STRESS, supra note 69, at 115, 117.
149
PERDUE, supra note 17, at 97.
150
See id. at 99.
2013/2014] Online Prostitution and Trafficking 125
and the woman being sold. A 2011 iPhone application advertised
“SugarSugar.com is for generous men looking to spoil, and dynamic
women looking for financial support with bills, or who just need
some excitement in life! . . . SugarSugar.com . . . provides a staff of
sugar dating experts to help you find the perfect mutually beneficial
arrangement.”
151
VI. SEX BUYERS’, TRAFFICKERS’, AND PIMPS’ USE OF THE INTERNET
A. Social Networking Sites
Social networking websites allow users to create a personal
profile that they share with friends, other users, or the public at
large. Social networking site users stay in touch with existing
friends but also bring online acquaintances into the real world for
in-person meetings,
152
thereby providing an opportunity for
traffickers to use the Internet for recruitment to prostitution.
Pimps brag about using these sites to traffic women and children.
“It’s Y2K pimpin,” wrote a pimp in an online chat log seized by
police.
153
A pimp sentenced in 2010 for trafficking children into
prostitution had initially contacted and then recruited them on
MySpace.
154
A U.K. pimp used MySpace to recruit women for an
escort prostitution agency and created new profiles if the more
blatant advertisements for prostitution were deleted.
155
Pimps
easily recruit via Facebook as well. For example, a woman was
arrested in Jakarta on suspicion of running a prostitution business
involving seven junior high school girls, who had been recruited and
then sold on Facebook.
156
Such comments serve as a document of
151
SUGARSUGAR, http://www.sugarsugar.com; see also Stephen J. Vaughan-Nichols, Hire a
Hooker? There’s an App for That, ZDNET (May 11, 2011, 11:00 AM)
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/networking/hire-a-hooker-theres-an-app-for-that/1040.
152
Danah M. Boyd & Nicole B. Ellison, Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and
Scholarship, 13 J. COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMM. 210, 221 (2008); M. Alexis Kennedy &
Melanie A. Taylor, Online Harassment and Victimization of College Students, 7 JUST. POL’Y
J., Spring 2010, at 1, 9.
153
Kevin Poulsen, Pimps Go Online to Lure Kids into Prostitution, WIRED (Feb. 25, 2009,
8:30 PM), http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/02/pimping/ (internal quotation marks
omitted).
154
Press Release, FBI, L.A. Div., Man Pleads Guilty and Is Sentenced to 17 1/2 Years in
Fed. Prison for Sex Trafficking of Minors (June 10, 2010), available at
http://www.fbi.gov/losangeles/press-releases/2010/la061010.htm.
155
Helen Croydon, Undercover with the Escorts Trying to Recruit Through MySpace,
MIRROR (Mar. 25, 2009), http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/
technology/undercover-with-the-escorts-trying-to-recruit-through-384307.
156
Woman Arrested for Running Prostitution Ring Through Facebook, JAKARTA POST (Jan.
126 Albany Law Review [Vol. 77.3
illegal use of the Internet, enabling discovery of evidence for
prosecution.
About half of all Internet users are estimated to be using social
media sites.
157
MySpace and Facebook, the two largest social
networking Internet sites promote casual, anonymous social
interactions. Facebook was developed in 2004 for college students
but soon expanded to include high school students and the general
public.
158
In December 2010 MySpace had 50 million U.S. visitors
and Facebook had 153.9 million U.S. visitors.
159
Globally, Facebook
had 500 million users by mid-2010—if it were a country, Facebook
“would be the third most populous nation in the world after China
and India.”
160
Facebook easily accommodated advertisements for
prostitution. In a 2011 survey, 83% of prostituted women in New
York City had a Facebook page
161
despite the Facebook advertising
and safety policies prohibiting “[a]ds for adult friend finders or
dating sites with a sexual emphasis.”
162
When teen users of
Facebook began to exit for Twitter, Facebook loosened restrictions
to protect minors from advertiser—and pimp—manipulation,
granting thirteen to seventeen year olds the ability to post not just
to friends but to everyone, becoming “fresh meat for marketers” in
the words of one analyst.
163
In 2013, Twitter did not respond to
complaints about increased prostitution advertising.
164
The number of users of MySpace dramatically increased after
minors were permitted to join the site as members.
165
Public
concerns then grew about the site’s facilitation of adult/minor
19, 2011, 4:43 PM), http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2011/01/19/man-arrested-running-
prostitution-ring-through-facebook.html.
157
The Rise of Social Networking, ITU NEWS, July–Aug. 2010, available at
http://www.itu.int/net/itunews/issues/2010/06/35.aspx.
158
Boyd & Ellison, supra note 152, at 218.
159
COMSCORE, A RECAP OF THE YEAR IN DIGITAL MEDIA 11–12 (2011).
160
The Rise of Social Networking, supra note 157.
161
Sudhir Venkatesh, How Tech Tools Transformed New York’s Sex Trade, WIRED (Jan.
31, 2011, 12:00 PM), http://www.wired.com/2011/01/ff_sextrade/all/1.
162
Facebook Advertising Guidelines, FACEBOOK, http://www.facebook.com/ad_
guidelines.php (last updated June 4, 2014).
163
See Helen A.S. Popkin, Facebook Offers Public Posting for Teens . . . and Fresh Meat for
Marketers, NBCNEWS (Oct. 17, 2013, 6:48 PM), http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/facebook-
offers-public-posting-teens-fresh-meat-marketers-8C11414020.
164
See Facebook and Twitter Battle to Rid Themselves of Ads for Prostitutes, BUS. INSIDER
(Jan. 13, 2013, 8:39 AM), http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-and-twitter-battle-to-rid-
thenselves-of-ads-for-prostitutes-2013-1.
165
See Tamyra A. Pierce, Talking to Strangers on MySpace: Teens’ Use of Internet Social
Networking Sites, CALSTATELA.EDU (Nov. 7, 2006), http://web.calstatela.edu/
faculty/sfischo/myspace.htm.
2013/2014] Online Prostitution and Trafficking 127
sexual interactions, leading to legal complaints about potential
abuse.
166
There have been both successes and setbacks in
challenging trafficking of women and children via social networking
sites. A victim from Texas sued MySpace after she was raped by a
man she had met on the social networking site.
167
A group of child
victims who had been contacted by and engaged with predators
online sued MySpace for not protecting underage members.
168
Both
cases were dismissed based on the Communications Decency Act
(CDA) which protects Internet service providers from some forms of
liability for third party actions.
169
The CDA does not provide
immunity from prosecution in all cases, for example where the
website operator fails to act after being warned that illegal content
is present
170
or in cases where website operators contributed to the
creation or development of injurious or tortious content.
171
Pressure
166
See generally Joseph Menn & Jessica Guynn, Facebook Agrees to Shield Minors, L.A.
TIMES, Oct. 17, 2007, at C3 (describing an investigation conducted by New York Attorney
General Cuomo to capture Facebook’s response to online harassment and abuse of children);
Pierce, supra note 165 (suggesting that social networking sites facilitate adult/minor
sexualized interactions because they foster anonymity).
167
Eric Bangeman, MySpace Sued in Wake of Sexual Assault, ARS TECHNICA (June 20,
2006, 4:58 PM), http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2006/06/7096-2/.
168
Bobbie Johnson, Child Sex Victims Sue MySpace, GUARDIAN (Jan 19, 2007),
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/jan/20/news.usnews.
169
Communications Decency Act of 1996, 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1) (2012). The CDA has
sometimes functioned as an obstacle to effective prosecution of website operators such as
Craigslist, Backpage, and MySpace. First signed into law in 1996, the purpose of the CDA
was to incentivize the development of blocking and filtering technologies. 47 U.S.C. §
230(b)(4). Section 230(c)(1) of the CDA asserts that “[n]o provider or user of an interactive
computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by
another information content provider.” 47 U.S.C. § 230 (c)(1). The CDA has sometimes been
interpreted by the courts to provide broad immunity to website operators from defamation
arising from third party content. See, e.g., Dart v. Craigslist, Inc., 665 F. Supp. 2d 961, 965–
66 (N.D. Ill. 2009). Defining protected speech, as distinct from hate speech or speech
advocating criminal activity, is a discussion with critical implications for the safety of women,
generally. Websites and social media promoting prostitution are not the only source of likely
harms to women. The stalking and predation that occur on sites like Reddit and CreepShots
fetishize women’s inability to consent. Marinda Valenti, CreepShots: Are You Being Creeped
On?, MS. MAG. BLOG (June 12, 2013), http://msmagazine.com/blog/2013/06/12/creepshots-are-
you-being-creeped-on/. Surreptitious photos of women are taken by using what the site
advertises as “stealth, cunning and deviousness to capture the beauty of your unsuspecting,
chosen target.” Id. For another discussion of the tensions between men’s speech and
women’s safety, see Jenna Wortham, When the Web’s Chaos Takes an Ugly Turn, N.Y. TIMES,
Oct. 21, 2012, at BU3.
170
See 47 U.S.C. § 230 (2012); Chi. Lawyers’ Comm. for Civil Rights Under Law, Inc. v.
Craigslist, Inc., 519 F.3d 666 (7th Cir. 2008); Zeran v. Am. Online, Inc., 129 F.3d 327 (4th Cir.
1997).
171
Fair Hous. Council v. Roommates.com, LLC, 521 F.3d 1157, 1174 (9th Cir. 2008)
(holding that CDA immunity does not protect website operators who “directly participate[] in
developing” illegal content); Jones v. Dirty World Entm’t Recordings, LLC, 766 F. Supp. 2d
128 Albany Law Review [Vol. 77.3
from states’ Attorneys General led to the removal by MySpace of
90,000 sex offenders from its site in 2009.
172
MySpace pursued
various approaches in 2008 meant to protect children, including
enhanced parent controls, faster response time to complaints about
inappropriate content, and increased privacy settings for users
under age sixteen.
173
In 2009 Cooke County Sheriff Dart sued Craigslist alleging
liability for the costs of law enforcement, providing substantial
evidence that the site was being used to facilitate prostitution of
child and adult victims and that it was a public nuisance.
174
An
Illinois court dismissed the case.
175
Questions regarding website
operators’ invocations of CDA immunity nonetheless remain. At
what point does tolerance of criminally illegal activity, content or
misuse of a website constitute “encouraging” that illegal conduct, as
in the Jones
176
and Roommates
177
cases; and at what point do
website operators become liable for violating state criminal laws
that are not preempted by the CDA? While the prostitution and
public nuisance laws in Dart may not have been sufficient in
Illinois, other states’ laws may be broader and more effective. The
equitable defenses against the CDA also remain untested but are
applicable in cases of women trafficked for prostitution. The
doctrine of “unclean hands” for the bad faith conduct of certain
website operators would challenge CDA immunity from liability.
CDA immunity should not benefit those who participate in or
knowingly tolerate criminal attacks against persons trafficked for
prostitution.
178
When do online advertisers become virtual
828, 836 (E.D. Ky. 2011) (“The immunity afforded by the CDA is not absolute and may be
forfeited if the site owner invites the posting of illegal materials or makes actionable postings
itself.”).
172
Marlon A. Walker, MySpace Removes 90,000 Sex Offenders, NBCNEWS.COM (Feb. 3,
2009, 10:02 PM), http://www.nbcnews.com/id/28999365/ns/technology_and_science-
security/t/myspace-removes-sex-offenders/#.U5yOJXb-Ics.
173
See Emma Henry, MySpace Agrees Child Protection Measures, TELEGRAPH (Jan. 15,
2008, 10:45 AM), http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1575635/MySpace-agrees-child-
protection-measures.html.
174
Dart, 665 F. Supp. 2d at 961, 962–63.
175
Id. at 970.
176
See generally Jones, 766 F. Supp. 2d at 830–31 (describing the defamatory posts made
on the defendant’s website).
177
See generally Fair Hous. Council v. Roommates.com, LLC, 521 F.3d 1157, 1161–62 (9th
Cir. 2008) (describing the creation of subscriber profiles on a website allegedly used to match
compatible roommates).
178
Michael Dolce, Esq. who practices law in West Palm Beach, Florida provided this
discussion of possible challenges to CDA immunity.
2013/2014] Online Prostitution and Trafficking 129
traffickers?
In other attempts to block Internet crimes against teens, the
Japanese government experimented with blocking social
networking sites for users under eighteen, but the results of this
policy are unclear.
179
Public pressure has been aimed at online
classifieds, urging them to shut down their variously named
prostitution advertising.
180
B. Message Boards
There is seamless communication between pimps and sex buyers,
ensuring delivery of women to the men who want to buy them.
Increasing numbers of online sex buyer communities support
predatory behaviors and exchange information regarding where and
how women can be bought.
181
The Internet facilitates
communication between sellers (pimps and traffickers) and sex
buyers (johns), enabling pimps and traffickers to respond rapidly to
men’s demand for purchased sex. By enabling men to evade arrest
for soliciting prostitution since they can remain hidden, indoors,
and anonymous, the Internet is sex buyer-friendly.
182
Its anonymity
has created a private environment in which it is possible to engage
in prostitution with a lower risk of arrest, fewer legal penalties, and
less public exposure.
With private messaging, warnings about police undercover agents
and stings can be broadcast to brother johns.
183
Atlanta sex buyers
for example discussed their awareness of law enforcement’s
infiltration of online conversations in their forum:
GreekFan: We have always known LE looks at this Board
and others. But as indicated, talk is not illegal. Only
179
Nick Farrell, Japanese Teens Barred from Social Networking, ITEXAMINER.COM (Feb 2,
2009, 6:22 AM), http://www.itexaminer.com/japanese-teens-barred-from-social-
networking.aspx.
180
Press Release, Robert E. Cooper, Jr., Tennessee Attorney Gen., Attorneys General Urge
Backpage.com to Do More to Combat Sex Trafficking Through its Classified Ads (Aug. 31,
2011), available at http://www.tn.gov/attorneygeneral/press/2011/pr11-26.pdf; Craigslist
Shuts Down Adult Services Section, FOX NEWS (Sept. 4, 2010),
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/09/04/craigslist-shuts-adult-services-section/.
181
Sven-Axel Mannson, Men’s Practices in Prostitution and Their Implications for Social
Work, PROCON.ORG, http://prostitution.procon.org/sourcefiles/mens-practices-in-prostitution-
and-their-implications-for-social-work.pdf (last visited June 14, 2014).
182
Angie Jackson, Prostitution: Internet Classifieds Create Element of Secrecy, Challenge
for Grand Rapids Police, MLIVE (Nov. 17, 2013, 11:28 AM),
http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/11/internet.html.
183
Blevins & Holt, supra note 18, at 627.
130 Albany Law Review [Vol. 77.3
trusted mongers and PM [private messaging] gets the job
done. Watch your back people, always. There is no
substitute for that.
Blazer: for all you newbies, elly
184
monitors and POSTS to
this board so watch yo’ six. They usually ask dumbass
questions that make it obvious that they are elly in the first
place, like, can you tell me where to go to monger in Cobb, I
mean names and numbers please, or **** like that. The
danger is ever present, however, and we must stay aware.
185
Sex trafficking industry businesses such as Room Service provide
background checks that help sex buyers avoid arrest for
prostitution.
186
A customer can pay a fee to have a background
check run.
187
Then when the sex buyer contacts a prostituting
woman, he can provide access to his background check that is now
anonymous. This arrangement allows women in prostitution to
screen out undercover police officers while enabling sex buyers to
avoid blackmail that might be possible if a woman had his personal
information.
188
Two cases illustrate sex buyers’ use of the Internet to locate
women and evade arrest. Southwest Companions, a members-only
website and chatboard, had 1400 members including many
professors and a former University of New Mexico president who
served as leader of the site’s “Hunt Club.”
189
His job, in effect online
pimping, was to recruit women in prostitution to travel to the
Albuquerque/Santa Fe area.
190
According to reports, the website
featured the ability to share information with other johns about
police stings, to provide “physical descriptions and cell phone
numbers of undercover police to help members avoid arrest.”
191
The
184
In this excerpt, “elly” refers to law enforcement.
185
Blevins & Holt, supra note 18, at 627 (alterations in original).
186
See ROOMSERVICE2000, http://www.roomservice2000.com/ (last visited June 14, 2014).
187
See id.
188
See id.
189
Jeri Clausing, F. Chris Garcia, Former University of New Mexico President, Arrested in
Connection with Prostitution Website, HUFFINGTON POST (June 23, 2011, 10:32 PM),
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/23/f-chris-garcia-former-uni_n_883238.html; Russell
Contreras, F. Chris Garcia, Former University of New Mexico President, Cleared of Criminal
Charges Concerning ‘Southwest Companions,’ HUFFINGTON POST (June 20, 2012, 7:41 PM),
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/20/f-chris-garcia-prostitution-ring_n_1613009.html.
190
Michel Santo, Professors Arrested for Running Escort Service for ‘Esteemed’ Men,
EXAMINER.COM (June 24, 2011), http://www.examiner.com/article/professors-arrested-for-
running-escort-service-for-esteemed-men.
191
Jeri Clausing, Police: Profs Ran Site for ‘Esteemed’ Men to Get Sex, NAPLESNEWS.COM
(June 24, 2011, 9:21 PM), http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2011/jun/24/albuquerque-
2013/2014] Online Prostitution and Trafficking 131
Southwest Companions website provided training videos on what to
do if arrested for prostitution and posted sex buyers’ evaluations of
women’s prostitution performances, including prices and rankings
of the women.
192
Several of the arrested men were charged with
promoting prostitution, conspiracy, and tampering with evidence.
193
Charges against the men running the Southwest Companions
online prostitution ring were dismissed by a judge who ruled that
the website was not physically a brothel,
194
illustrating the
challenge of applying laws that were written before the Internet
was invented. “‘Sometimes states’ laws are too specific and were
written years ago, long before the Internet,’ said Scott Cunningham,
a Baylor University economics professor who has written about
technology and prostitution. ‘That’s why we are seeing some
successful challenges to laws when websites are involved.’”
195
The Minnesota Nice Guys, a self-named sex buyer group, was
organized by a pimp who was a former assistant county attorney.
196
The pimp received high ratings on Theeroticreview (TER), a sex
buyers’ message board, for providing attractive and compliant
women to sex buyers, often trafficking undocumented
immigrants.
197
The attorney/pimp was charged with 6 felony counts
of promoting prostitution.
198
Although the pimp admitted weakness
of character, the judge seemed to empathize with his “medical
fragility” and sentenced him only to probation.
199
Global communications forums on the Internet provide an
william-roseman-police/.
192
Id.
193
Id.
194
Russell Contreras, F. Chris Garcia and David Flory Cleared in Online Prostitution
Case, Experts Say Laws Out of Date, HUFFINGTON POST (Aug. 19, 2012, 3:13 PM),
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/20/f-chris-garcia-david-flory-online-prostitution-
_n_1810147.html.
195
Id.
196
David Chanen, Cops Bust “Nice Guys” Sex Ring, STAR TRIB. (Minneapolis), June 7,
2009, at 1A.
197
Id.
198
David Chanen, Charges Filed in “Nice Guys” Sex Ring, STAR TRIB. (Minneapolis), July
30, 2010, at 1A.
199
Debra Cassens Weiss, Ex-County Attorney Gets Probation for Role in “Nice Guy”
Prostitution Ring, A.B.A. J. (Jan. 21, 2011, 10:23 AM), http://www.abajournal.com/news/
article/ex-county_attorney_gets_probation_for_role_in_nice_guy_prostitution_ring. The lead
pimp, John Paul St. Marie, who pled guilty to three felonies and was granted probation
appears to be a white man. See Emily Gurnon, Former Assistant Hennepin County Attorney
and “Nice-Guy” Prostitution Broker Re-Arrested, PIONEER PRESS (May 7, 2012, 11:01 PM),
http://www.twincities.com/ci_20566169/former-assistant-hennepin-county-attorney-arrested-
prostitution-charge. One wonders if a young black pimp who pled guilty to three felonies
would be granted probation due to his medical problems as was Mr. St. Marie.
132 Albany Law Review [Vol. 77.3
anonymous social support network for predatory men to share their
experiences, legitimize their behaviors, and mentor inexperienced
sex buyers. The Internet plays a crucial role in validating the
norms, cultures, and beliefs of the sex buyers’ subculture. A
language that normalizes sexual predation is developed in online
chat rooms and bulletin boards. Because of the stigma of the words
johns or tricks, online sex buyers refer to themselves as mongers,
trollers, or hobbyists.
200
While allegedly serving as community discussion forums, message
boards aimed at sex buyers (“hobbyists”) and women in prostitution
(“providers”) are in fact sites where reviews of women in
prostitution occur and where prostitution is facilitated.
201
Buyers
post judgmental, often nasty reviews of women that pressure the
women to act as if they enjoy the rape-like sex of prostitution.
202
Consequences from negative message board reviews are rapid and
usually result in decreased earnings.
203
The message board rating
system in effect coerces women to perform sex acts that they would
prefer not to so that they can obtain good ratings and thereby
maintain an income amount that is frequently set by pimps.
204
The
women who perform acts of prostitution in such a way that they
convince sex buyers they truly enjoy the sex of prostitution, or who
permit the buyer to rationalize his behavior, are praised as
providing a “Girlfriend Experience.”
205
Research findings suggest
that a surprisingly high number of sex buyers actually believe that
women enjoy the sex of prostitution.
206
In a study of 110 Scottish
200
See Blevins & Holt, supra note 18, at 626.
201
See id. at 627, 630.
202
See generally Melissa Farley et al., Attitudes and Social Characteristics of Men Who
Buy Sex in Scotland, 3 PSYCHOL. TRAUMA: THEORY, RES., PRAC., & POL’Y 369, 375 (2011)
(explaining that some men who use women in prostitution want to control and dominate
women, attitudes that are visible in reviews posted on many of the sites).
203
1 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PROSTITUTION AND SEX WORK 228 (Melissa Hope Ditmore ed.,
2006).
204
Telephone Interview with Lauren Hersh, New York Director of Equality Now (Dec. 10,
2013). Sex buyers posting ratings of women on punternet.com in UK and myredbook
comment, “Couldn’t take a light spanking and complained about me pulling her hair. Told
me I was rough. All I wanted to do was spread her legs in the missionary position and pound
away. Kept pushing me back. I’ve had better and wouldn’t return.” Noting physical injuries
as if he were grading meat, another noted, “Minor defects include: 5.0 cm. X 1 cm. horizontal
cafe au lait patch above the right buttock, two stellate scars left deltoid (smallpox
vaccinations), and a small nevus left medial breast.” A third john observed, “Hurt face, but
nice little body.” All examples from PUNTERNET, http://www.punternet.com/ (last visited
June 14, 2014); MYREDBOOK, http://www.myredbook.com/ (last visited June 14, 2014).
205
See Blevins & Holt, supra note 18, at 635.
206
See Farley, supra note 202, at 376.
2013/2014] Online Prostitution and Trafficking 133
sex buyers, 49% believed that women in prostitution were sexually
satisfied with sex with johns more than half of the time.
207
Discussion forums such as theeeroticreview (TER) and bigdoggie
groom men to buy sex.
208
These misogynist sites help sex buyers
locate women and teach them how to relentlessly bargain down
prices when they buy sex.
209
Reflecting a mistrust of women in
prostitution, the men who control TER describe its message board
system as
the section where the guys get to review providers who
advertise on the web. You can now know exactly what to
expect before you make the call and spend your hard earned
money. The bonus is that the opinions expressed are real
and not sent in by the adult entertainers themselves. It’s
about time!
210
In August 2008 there were more than 500,000 reviews of 94,000
women in prostitution on TER.
211
Among other topics, TER offers
discussion forums on how to buy sex from pornography actresses,
legal concerns, and a special forum for sex buyers over age sixty.
212
The message boards facilitate the racist and sexist objectification
of women in prostitution. Women are referred to as SWs [sex
workers] and are almost always defined by ethnicity.
213
For
example, “a week & 1/2 ago I was driving by 111th & saw 5 SW’s. 3
BSW’s & 1 WSW & 1 LSW.”
214
Men use the term “mileage” to refer
to women whose appearances reflect the damage inflicted on them
by men who use them for sex.
215
“High mileage” means that women
are older or unattractive.
216
A woman spoke about sex buyers who
207
Id. at 371, 376.
208
See THE EROTIC REVIEW, http://www.theeroticreview.com/main.asp (last visited June
14, 2014).
209
One john’s need to subordinate women was reflected in his proud purchase of an airfare
for $1,000 to fly to Mexico or the Dominican Republic from the United States so that he could
buy $15 sex acts “at bargain rates” from desperately poor women.
210
Reviews, THE EROTIC REVIEW, http://classic.theeroticreview.com/reviews/index.asp (last
visited June 14, 2014).
211
Scott Cunningham & Todd D. Kendall, Prostitution 2.0: The Changing Face of Sex
Work, 69 J. URB. ECON. 273, 278 (2011).
212
See TER General Boards, THE EROTIC REVIEW, http://www.theeroticreview.com/
discussion_boards/viewmsg.asp?MessageID=358534&boardID=12&page (last visited June 14,
2014).
213
Scott Cunningham & Todd Kendall, Men in Transit and Prostitution: Using Political
Conventions as a Natural Experiment, 11 B.E. J. ECON. ANALYSIS & POL’Y 1 (2011), available
at http://business.baylor.edu/scott_cunningham/cunningham-and-kendall-2011.pdf.
214
Id.
215
Id.
216
Id.
134 Albany Law Review [Vol. 77.3
obsessively evaluate the sexual performance of every woman used
in prostitution in special anticipation of writing about her for other
men: “He’s the type of john I religiously steer away from, and that’s
largely due to his immersion in review board ‘culture.’”
217
What is it
about “message board culture” that women in prostitution dislike?
TER reviews are primarily based on [sexual] performance
. . . and appearance . . . . You, as a provider, are
dehumanized. TER hobbyists, feeding on these reviews, see
you as less than human. They are looking for 5-star blowjobs
and model looks, rather than a human being with a
personality. Instead of respecting your limits and
preferences, they expect you to give them what it says you
provided someone else in your last review.
218
Described by another pimp as “the most influential man in the
prostitution business in America,”
219
CEO of TER Dave Elms and
other sex buyers have been accused of using the threat of poor
ratings to extort sex acts, perform unsafe sex, or decrease prices.
220
Elms, who founded TER in 1999 with the goal of empowering sex
buyers, has been accused of bribery and rape.
221
TER was acquired
in 2004 by Treehouse Park, a company that currently operates out
of the Netherlands—reflecting the global nature of the sex
trafficking industry.
222
217
James Gartler, Chester Brown “Pays for It”, COMIC BOOK RESOURCES (Aug. 8, 2011,
9:58 AM), http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=33769 (last updated Aug. 15,
2011, 11:12 AM).
218
TER Hobbyist = Bad Customer, TER SUCKS BLOG (Nov. 15, 2006),
http://tersucks.blogspot.com.
219
Matt Richtel, Sex Trade Monitors a Key Figure’s Woes, N.Y. TIMES, June 17, 2008, at
A12.
220
See Melissa Gira Grant, Online Critics Accuse TheEroticReview.com CEO Dave Elms of
Rape, GAWKER (May 12, 2008, 3:00 PM), http://gawker.com/389612/online-critics-accuse-
theeroticreviewcom-ceo-dave-elms-of-rape?tag=valleywag.
221
Id.
222
The Erotic Review and David Elms Part Ways, EIN PRESSWIRE (Mar. 3, 2009)
http://www.einpresswire.com/article/56530882/the-erotic-review-and-david-elms-part-ways.
Elms has an extensive criminal history which is described here because he’s not unique
among online pimps. In 2006 Elms raped a woman at gunpoint. Richtel, supra note 219. He
was arrested in 2008 on weapons and narcotics violations. Id. The police investigation of
Elms evidenced that he had extorted sex from women reviewed on TER website in exchange
for removing damaging reviews about them. Id. In 2009, Elms missed a court date, with
charges pending for “conspiracy to commit aggravated assault, [and] various [felony] drugs
and weapons charges.” Ray Stern, “TheEroticReview.com” Founder, David Elms, on the Lam,
PHOENIX NEW TIMES (Mar. 18, 2009, 12:01 PM), http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/
valleyfever/2009/03/theeroticreviewcom_founder_dav_1.php. The charges for conspiracy to
commit aggravated assault stemmed from February 15, 2009 when Elms met with
undercover officers to contract for murdering two people. Rhett Pardon, TheEroticReview
2013/2014] Online Prostitution and Trafficking 135
Sex buyers’ posts promote the prostitution of the women as they
lobby for their favorites.
223
Yet there has been resistance to the
selling of women on message boards.
224
A British member of
Parliament asked California’s Governor in 2009 to shut down the
US-owned punternet website that permits men to rate British
women in prostitution.
225
While message boards are used to thwart
law enforcement efforts with posts about where police stings are
occurring and suggestions about how to avoid law enforcement
actions,
226
at the same time, message boards can be used to monitor
and prosecute criminal activity. The information on these sites can
provide intelligence for police officers investigating prostitution and
trafficking.
227
Message boards and online classifieds have provided
an opportunity for sting operations.
228
Online john community sites
such as TER can deter prostitution and trafficking when police
monitoring of the site is publicized with posted messages such as
Founder Ordered to Pay $20,000, XBIZ NEWSWIRE (July 19, 2011, 4:30 PM),
http://newswire.xbiz.com/view.php?id=136443. One person he wanted to have killed was the
owner of a competing escort review website SexWork.com. Id. Elms fled the country after
posting $150,000 bond. Id. According to border patrol agents who arrested him when he
tried to re-enter the United States, “Elms told them that after skipping bail, he fled to
Toronto, then Dubai, Armenia, Iran and Mexico.” Matt Richtel, Founder of Prostitution Site
is Arrested at Border, N.Y. TIMES, June 4, 2009, available at
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/prostitution-site-founder-david-elms-arrested-at-
border; see also Ray Stern, “TheEroticReview.com” Founder David Elms Arrested in
California; Was On Run from Maricopa Charges, PHOENIX NEW TIMES (Jun. 4, 2009, 2:11
PM), http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2009/06/theeroticreviewcom_founder_
dav_2.php.
223
See BESTGFE, http://www.bestgfe.com (last visited June 14, 2014) (promoting users’
reviews of women in prostitution).
224
See Stefano Ambrogi, Britain Asks Schwarzenegger to Close Prostitute Web Site,
REUTERS (Sept. 30, 2009, 4:25 PM) http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/09/30/us-britain-
prostitutes-idUSTRE58T69420090930?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews.
225
Id. Minister for women and equality Harriet Harman called the website a “sinister
development” that promoted men’s demand for prostitution thereby fuelling trafficking. Id.
MP Harman said: “[s]urely it can’t be too difficult for ‘The Terminator’ to terminate Punternet
and that’s what I am demanding that he does.” Id. (first internal quotation marks omitted).
226
See BESTGFE, supra note 223 (discussing ways to evade law enforcement).
227
See Ken Franzblau, Sex Trafficking: Looking at Demand, in LAWYER’S MANUAL ON
HUMAN TRAFFICKING: PURSUING JUSTICE FOR VICTIMS 291, 295 (Jill Laurie Goodman &
Dorchen A. Leidholt eds., 2011) (discussing the prostitution-related internet posts of an
individual using the name SlamasterJay and law enforcement use of those posts).
“SlamasterJay, later identified as Jeffrey Whyte, was subsequently arrested and charged
with promoting prostitution in New York County.” Id. at 300 n.23 (citing Jamie Schram,
NYPD Daily Blotter, N.Y. POST (Dec. 10, 2009, 5:00 AM), http://nypost.com/2009/12/10/nypd-
daily-blotter-2705/).
228
See, e.g., Gary Taylor, Child-Sex Sting: Men Tote Candy, Condoms, ORLANDO SENTINEL,
Aug. 17, 2010, at B1 (describing sting operation using Craigslist conducted by Florida
sheriff’s department).
136 Albany Law Review [Vol. 77.3
“Police are present.” This would likely create fear among sex buyers
and pimps who would flee the site. Public exposure has been
documented as a deterrent to prostitution.
229
The Chicago Police
Department website posts photos, names, addresses, and other
information about those arrested for soliciting prostitution.
230
A
similar website in Ohio which posted the photographs of men
charged with soliciting prostitution was viewed more than 100,000
times in its first year.
231
C. Online Classified Advertising for Prostitution
Originally presenting itself as a community-oriented garage sale,
Craigslist is an Internet site where people can post at no cost what
they want to buy and sell.
232
Because posting a personal ad was
free and because posts can be anonymous, the website developed
into a primary site for prostitution advertising. With no questions
asked, Craigslist set aside a significant portion of its website for sex
buyers’ and sex sellers’ advertising.
233
This provided “an
extraordinary opportunity for coordinating domestic and
transnational sex trafficking.”
234
The process of trafficking via
online classifieds is stunningly simple: a cell phone and an ad on
Craigslist (or other online prostitution sites) enables a pimp to set
up a woman for sexual exploitation in exchange for cash.
After 2000, Craigslist and other online classifieds became virtual
prostitution zones. In March 2005, Craigslist averaged 25,000 new
ads in the United States every 10 days for “casual sex” and “erotic
services” that were prostitution.
235
A 2007 study of 12,444 Las
Vegas online classified advertisements found that 90% advertised
escort prostitution.
236
Ethnicity was specified 92% of the time,
237
229
See FARLEY ET AL., supra note 16, at 5, 33, 37.
230
See Gretchen Ruethling, Chicago Police Put Arrest Photos of Prostitution Suspects
Online, N.Y. TIMES, June 23, 2005, at A16.
231
U.S. Government Efforts to Fight Demand Fueling Human Trafficking, U.S. DEP’T
STATE (Jan. 7, 2008), http://2001-2009.state.gov/g/tip/rls/fs/08/100208.htm; see also Shaming,
DEMANDFORUM.NET, http://www.demandforum.net/shaming/ (last visited June 14, 2014).
232
About, CRAIGSLIST, http://www.craigslist.org/about/ (last visited June 14, 2014).
233
See Brief for Coalition Against Trafficking in Women as Amicus Curiae Supporting
Plaintiffs at 8, Dart v. Craigslist, Inc., 665 F. Supp. 2d 961 (N.D. Ill. 2009) (No. 09 CV 1385),
2009 WL 2446750.
234
Id.
235
See Farley, What We Must Not Know, supra note 107.
236
M. Alexis Kennedy & Melanie A. Taylor, Prostitution on Craigslist 7–8 (2010)
(unpublished manuscript) (on file with author). A random number generator was used to
select 180 one-hour time frames from the “Women for Men” section of Craigslist. Id. at 7.
2013/2014] Online Prostitution and Trafficking 137
reflecting the importance to johns of choosing the race/ethnicity of
the women to be used for sex. Photos were included in 96% of the
posts.
238
A phone number was included in the ad 83% of the time.
239
Prostitution advertising on Craigslist included code words that
imply domestic trafficking (“here for a short stay,” “looking for an
inexperienced girl”), or international trafficking (both Mexican and
U.S. phone numbers given).
240
Other classified advertising websites
promoting prostitution include Backpage, Eros, CityVibe,
MyRedbook, and AdultSearch.
241
Spikes in online demand for
purchased sex generally occur near or on military bases and at
political conventions, electronics conventions, and sporting
events.
242
During the 2008 United States political conventions
online advertisements for prostitution peaked in the host cities.
243
While Craigslist claimed to be a non-commercial site with a non-
Data from each post during that hour was collected. Id. A total of 12,444 advertisements
were coded by research assistants in a university forensic psychology lab. Id.
237
Id. at 9.
238
See id.
239
See id. at 10.
240
Three ads from Craigslist (on file with author) that suggest trafficking include:
1) SF bay area craigslist > north bay > services offered > adult services
Sweet Asian **********Apple ******- w4m (mill valley)
Date: 2010-06-29, 9:00AM PDT
Reply to: Sweet Asian ******* Apple ********* Here for short stay.
Please Call: (415) 000-0000
2) sacramento craigslist > gigs > adult gigs
Looking for an inexperienced girl (Sacramento)
Date: 2010-06-21, 12:56PM PDT Reply to:
Looking for a fun and friendly non pro girl for an adult gig in return for some $$$
compensation. Would love to hear from any of you that may have an interest. Please
send me a message, some pics, phone and lets have some fun. ***Please Be Serious***
No phone means you’re not serious. You must be at least 18 years old !!!
3) puerto vallarta craigslist > personals > erotic services
12 hours for only $250 – THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE!
w4m - 18 (13 Girls to choose from!)
Date: 2010-06-29, 1:38PM PDT
Take as much time as you want—up to 12 hours with the girl of your choice! There
are 13 of us. All of us will give you an unforgettable girlfriend experience! For only
3100 pesos [$250] we’ll come stay with you for 12 hours! This includes our undivided
attention, cuddling and 2 complete services! For more information, see our web site at
www.escort.com. Email us or call us now! From Mexico Cell 322-000-0000 From US
011-521-322-000-0000
241
See Mark Whittaker, Backpage Continues to Gain from Prostitution Advertising, AIM
GROUP (Feb. 25, 2011), http://aimgroup.com/blog/2011/02/25/backpage-continues-to-gain-from-
prostitution-advertising/. The AIM Group also summarizes prostitution advertising on three
additional sites—NaughtyReviews.com, Eccie.com, and A1List.net. Id.
242
See Farley, What We Must Not Know, supra note 107, at 121.
243
Craigslist prostitution postings increased 41% during the Minneapolis convention and
74% in the during the Denver convention. Cunningham & Kendall, supra note 213, at 9.
138 Albany Law Review [Vol. 77.3
corporate culture of public service, in fact, the business was
extremely lucrative for its owners.
244
In 2003, the site’s earnings
were estimated at $7 million.
245
By 2010, Craigslist’s earnings were
estimated at $122 million with approximately one-third of its
revenue coming from prostitution advertising.
246
Backpage.com and
five similar websites were estimated in February 2011 to generate
annual revenue of $37.3 million from the sale of ads for
prostitution.
247
Village Voice Media, publisher of Backpage.com and
13 alternative weeklies in the United States, generated an
estimated $17.5 million in ads for escorts and adult services in
2010.
248
While smaller than Craigslist, Backpage has become the
primary Internet prostitution advertiser since the closure of much
of Craigslist’s prostitution advertising.
249
A Seattle police officer
estimated in 2011 that 80% of the young women his department
investigated for prostitution were advertised on Backpage.
250
In
2013, 82% of the nearly $45 million generated annually by online
classifieds for prostitution (usually escort and bodyrub ads) was
obtained by Backpage, the leading publisher of such ads.
251
Backpage averaged $4.5 million a month in online classifieds, up
78% from the previous year, and 200% from two years previously.
252
Several other websites tracked by AIM Group (Eros.com,
CityVibe.com, MyRedbook.com and AdultSearch.com) “generated
$5.3 million in May [2013], . . . up 67% from $3.2 million the same
month in 2012.”
253
244
Peter M. Zollman, Craigslist Revenue, Profits Soar, AIM GROUP (Apr. 30, 2010)
http://aimgroup.com/2010/04/30/craigslist-revenue-profits-soar/.
245
Id.
246
Id; Online Prostitution Ads Generated at Least $37.3 Million in Last Year, AIM GROUP
(Oct. 25, 2012), http://aimgroup.com/2012/10/25/online-prostitution-ads-generated-at-least-37-
3-million-in-last-year/.
247
Whittaker, supra note 241.
248
Women’s Funding Network Continues to Pressure Outlets Facilitating Demand for
Domestic Child Sex Trafficking, WOMEN’S FUNDING NETWORK (Sept. 30, 2010, 6:00 AM),
http://www.womensfundingnetwork.org/about/news/press-releases/womens-funding-network-
continues-to-pressure-outlets-facilitating-demand-f.
249
Whittaker, supra note 241.
250
Sara Jean Green, The Weekly, Its Parent Company Face Backlash Over Online Sex Ads
That Exploit Teens, SEATTLE TIMES (July 23, 2011, 9:50 PM), http://seattletimes.com/
html/localnews/2015710216_prostitution24m.html.
251
Online Prostitution-Ad Revenue Crosses Craigslist Benchmark, AIM GROUP (July 10,
2013), http://aimgroup.com/2013/07/10/online-prostitution-ad-revenue-crosses-craigslist-
benchmark/.
252
Id.
253
Id. For documentation of the trajectory of backpage.com since Craigslist shuttered its
prostitution advertising, see Kat Stoeffel, Village Voice Media Getting Down and Dirty with
Escort Ads, N.Y. OBSERVER (Apr. 26, 2011, 11:42 PM), http://observer.com/2011/04/village-
2013/2014] Online Prostitution and Trafficking 139
ErosGuide is a sex trafficking industry website offering a range of
products using multiple web technologies.
254
Women place
advertisements for prostitution describing themselves as escorts,
pimps place advertisements selling women for sex, pornography can
be downloaded or videos purchased, sex and fetish toys are sold,
strip clubs and massage parlors can be located by zip code, and
webcam pimps offer “live girls on home webcams with amateurs and
housewives.”
255
ErosGuide provides a range of webcam
pornography and chat options for johns who can choose breast and
buttocks size, hair color, skin color, and other sexualized physical
features of women they use for sex. These can be seen clearly in
their website options.
256
ErosGuide, Backpage and other sites with
prostitution advertising usually offer forums where there is general
social commentary by posters about romance, sex, and dating. The
forums serve to legitimize both the website and the sex industry
much as an article by Margaret Atwood or Ray Bradbury in Playboy
legitimized the magazine pornography of the 1960-70’s era. Other
sex trafficking industry sites such as Bootytag present themselves
as adult community culture, and include pornography and
prostitution but also sell products such as crotchless panties and sex
toys.
257
Similar online sales are found at adultsearch, CityVibe,
eros.com, netchixx.com, titsandass.com, eros.com, and rentboy.com.
Arrests for online prostitution-related crimes and trafficking have
increased in the past decade.
258
Violent crimes have been associated
with Backpage just as they were with Craigslist. Using Backpage
to locate young women in prostitution, a Seattle sex buyer
impersonated a police officer and was subsequently charged with
multiple counts of rape, kidnapping, extortion and criminal
voice-media-getting-down-and-dirty-with-escort-ads/; Emma Bazilian, Backpage.com a Hit,
Filling Craigslist Sex Ad Void, ADWEEK.COM (Apr. 27, 2011, 8:25 AM),
http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/backpagecom-hit-filling-craigslist-sex-ad-
void-131043; and Escort-Ad Revenue Migration Continues, AIM GROUP (July 13, 2011),
http://aimgroup.com/blog/2011/07/13/escort-ad-revenue-migration-continues-2/#more-12002.
254
EROSGUIDE, http://www.eros-guide.com (last visited June 14, 2014).
255
See id. While Craigslist was originally a free site that evolved into a site requiring pay
for prostitution advertising, erosguide charged for listings on the site.
256
Eros Cams: The Ultimate Guide to Webcams, BR.NAKED.COM,
http://br.naked.com/ads/naked/pop/eroscams.php?cmp=popunder2&id=&ad_id= (last visited
June 14, 2014). Options for models to chat with or view include “live girls, 18+, small tits, big
tits, White, Latin, Asian, Ebony, Big Black Women, Foot Show, Big Ass, Moms I’d Like to
Fuck, and Squirters.” Id.
257
BOOTYTAG, http://www.sextoyfun.com/?a=bootytag (last visited June 14, 2014).
258
Green, supra note 250.
140 Albany Law Review [Vol. 77.3
impersonation.
259
Craigslist’s and other online traffickers’ assertions that their
advertising was for sex between consenting adults was countered by
a 2010 study in which researchers placed ads on Craigslist and
Backpage that were typical of prostitution advertising.
260
Two
hundred eighteen men telephoned in response to the ads.
261
When
the men inquired about details regarding the sale of sex,
researchers who posed as escort agency pimps gave each of the men
three escalating warnings that the girl they were about to buy was
probably younger than eighteen.
262
Researchers found that 47% of
sex buyers in the Atlanta area were willing to proceed to buy sex
even after being given three warnings that the girl they were about
to buy was probably a minor.
263
In response to community and government criticism of
prostitution posts that facilitated sex trafficking, Craigslist made
token changes such as announcing that minors should not use its
erotic services section, providing links to antitrafficking websites,
and charging ten dollars for posts.
264
Craigslist’s requirement that
posts be verified with a phone number was relatively meaningless
given pimps’ ability to purchase disposable cell phones.
265
The
requirement that implying an exchange of sex for money was not
259
Levi Pulkkinen, Charge: Fake Cop Raped Child Prostitutes Hired Off Backpage,
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER (Aug. 10, 2011, 12:36 PM), http://www.seattlepi.com/
local/article/Charge-Fake-cop-raped-child-prostitutes-hired-1802787.php.
260
SCHAPIRO GROUP, MEN WHO BUY SEX WITH ADOLESCENT GIRLS: A SCIENTIFIC
RESEARCH STUDY 12 (2010), available at http://prostitutionresearch.com/2014/04/29/men-who-
buy-sex-with-adolescent-girls-a-scientific-research-study/.
261
Id. at 6.
262
Id. at 11 (The three warnings issued by the "escort agency operator" who was actually
the researcher are as follows: “1. We’re talking about the really young girl, right? 2. She
doesn’t look like she’s 18. 3. I don’t believe this girl is actually 18, and I have no reason to
believe she is.”).
263
Id. at 12. In response, Craigslist attempted to suppress this independently conducted
research on use of minors in prostitution in the Atlanta area by sending a cease and desist
letter both to the funder of the research study (Women’s Funding Network, San Francisco)
and to the Governor of Georgia. See Press Release, Chris Grumm, Women’s Funding
Network, Women’s Funding Network Releases Georgia Demand Study to Craigslist (June 17,
2010), available at http://www.womensfundingnetwork.org/about/news/press-
releases/women%E2%80%99s-funding-network-releases-georgia-demand-study-to-craigslist.
264
David Sarno, Craigslist to Remove Erotic Services Section, Monitor Adult Services Posts,
L.A. TIMES (May 13, 2009, 8:40 AM), http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/
technology/2009/05/craigslist-attorneys-general-erotic-services-prostitution.html; Peter M.
Zollman, Craigslist Revenue: 100 Million Smackers, 10 CLASSIFIED INTELLIGENCE REP., June
10, 2009, at 2, 5.
265
Tracy Coenen, No More Free Advertising for Prostitutes on Craigslist, DAILYFINANCE
(Nov. 7, 2008, 8:00 AM), http://www.dailyfinance.com/2008/11/07/no-more-free-advertising-
for-prostitutes-on-craigslist/.
2013/2014] Online Prostitution and Trafficking 141
permitted was also easily circumvented by pimps’ code words well
known to sex buyers (according to chat board jargon) such as “roses”
or “hugs” for “dollars” and the phony disclaimer that all payment
was for escort companionship and not for sex acts which were
“voluntary” and “consenting.”
266
Craigslist agreed to report
suspected abuse or trafficking to the National Center for Missing
and Exploited Children (NCMEC), a quasi-law enforcement agency,
thereby manipulating public perception and avoiding direct contact
with appropriate law enforcement, such as local police departments
or federal agencies.
267
Like Craigslist, Backpage has been unwilling to screen
advertisers, a process that would entail reviewing posts for sex
solicitation or hate speech. If a screener were not employed, filters
could block certain keywords, jargon or images from the ad posting
process.
268
Backpage has offered children for sale through thinly
veiled prostitution advertising, with at least one lawsuit against
Village Voice Media/Backpage for posting pornography of a child
available for prostitution.
269
Pornography of either adults or
children used in this way functions as human trafficking.
D. Live and Streaming Video
As in any enterprise, novelty and spinoffs are typical of sex
trafficking businesses. Videoconferencing technology (live video and
audio connections between users) was immediately adapted for
prostitution by pimps and traffickers. By 1995, the web technology
of live video chat, such as Skype, AIM, and MSN Messenger,
266
Thomas J. Holt, Kristie R. Belvins & Joseph B. Kuhns, Examining the Displacement
Practices of Johns with On-Line Data, 36 J. CRIM. JUST. 522, 522, 523, 527 (2008).
267
Adam Thierer, State AGs + NCMEC = The Net’s New Regulators?, TECH. LIBERATION
FRONT (Nov. 24, 2008), http://techliberation.com/2008/11/24/state-ags-ncmec-the-nets-new-
regulators/; Steve Turnham & Amber Lyon, Online Sex Ads Complicate Crackdowns on Teen
Trafficking, CNN.COM (Sept. 15, 2010, 9:52 AM), http://articles.cnn.com/2010-09-
14/justice/us.craigslist.sex.ads_1_craigslist-ads-law-enforcement?_s=PM:CRIME; Domestic
Minor Sex Trafficking: Hearing on 110 H.R. 5575 Before the Subcomm. On Crime, Terrorism,
& Homeland Sec. of the H.R. Comm. On the Judiciary, 111th Cong. 3–4 (2010) (testimony of
Elizabeth L. McDougall, counsel to Craigslist, Inc.) (discussing Craigslist’s reporting
agreement with NCMEC which permits Craigslist to avoid reporting to local or federal
police).
268
E-mails from Greg Collier, CEO, Geebo, (Mar. 26, 2012, 7:47 AM, Mar. 29, 2012, 7:26
AM) (explaining screening and filtering of online classified ads) (on file with author).
269
M.A. ex rel P.K. v. Vill. Voice Media Holdings, 809 F. Supp. 2d 1041, 1043–44 (E.D. Mo.
2011).
142 Albany Law Review [Vol. 77.3
permitted johns to obtain prostitution online.
270
In addition to
viewing photos or films of prostitution, johns could comment by
voice or keyboard or they could direct the woman to perform specific
sex acts in real time.
271
Using live video chat a U.S. pimp offered johns the choice to pay
for and view women being tortured in Phnom Penh, Cambodia at
rapecamp.com.
272
Extreme violence and humiliation of
impoverished women has continued with LiveJasmin advertising
“sexy Eastern European girls” on one website, and iFriends, one of
the largest prostituting/dating websites in the world on another,
separately advertising Eastern European women and “some Asian
babes.”
273
Livestreamed pornography of the women’s prostitution is used by
pimps, traffickers, and sex buyers to control and humiliate
women.
274
The existence of a video or photograph that is on the web
for the world to see is profoundly disturbing to most women.
275
It
removes their ability to control the image, removes their dignity and
removes their ability to put prostitution out of their lives when they
escape it.
276
Pornographers produce films or streaming video for sex
trafficking industry websites. In this practice, a webcam company
advertises via a network of affiliates who post ads on their websites.
270
Hughes, supra note 148, at 118.
271
Id. at 118–19; MALAREK, supra note 123, at 202. In order to assure themselves that
they are really in direct contact, johns ask for the woman to make special signals or show
today’s newspaper to indicate that the prostitution is live. Hughes, supra note 148, at 119.
Multiple viewers can be linked at one time or johns can pay extra for a private performance of
prostitution. Id. On a web cam site the john pays to chat with live women who perform
prostitution on live streaming video, performing what the johns pay them to do. Melissa
Farley, Pornography, Prostitution, and Trafficking in Nevada, in PROSTITUTION AND
TRAFFICKING IN NEVADA: MAKING THE CONNECTIONS, supra note 82, at 153, 156. When johns
are bored with online pornography, they can create their own pornography with webcam
prostitution. See MALAREK, supra note 123, at 201–02.
272
Hughes, supra note 148, at 119.
273
MALAREK, supra note 123, at 203.
274
Melissa Farley, Pornography, Prostitution, and Trafficking in Nevada, in PROSTITUTION
AND TRAFFICKING IN NEVADA: MAKING THE CONNECTIONS, supra note 82, at 157 n.470
(explaining how one pimp/pornographer would withhold payment to prostituting women who
refused to be filmed).
275
Id. (“[Women in prostitution] resist being filmed because that would be a record of their
prostitution, and often a part of their lives that they prefer to leave behind them, rather than
have on view indefinitely into the future.”).
276
Telephone Interview, supra note 204; see also Farley, supra note 91, at 146 (discussing
how women in prostitution whose johns or pimps made pornography of them in prostitution
had significantly more severe symptoms of PTSD than did women who did not have
pornography made of their prostitution).
2013/2014] Online Prostitution and Trafficking 143
The affiliates earn a fee whenever someone signs up to purchase
webcam pornography.
277
San Francisco’s torture pornography site
Kink.com offered sex buyers in 2011 the opportunity to chat with,
interact with, and control Kink.com’s slaves and bondage porn stars
in live streamed interactive bondage pornography cam shows.
278
In
addition to Kink.com’s live cam shows, the site features live
streaming video, live bondage chats, live bondage sex parties, and
other live streamed BDSM reality shows.
279
E. Dating and Sugar Daddy Websites
Webcam video and escort prostitution sites have merged with
some adult dating sites. Since 2000 prostitution advertising has
increased on dating websites with many dating websites now
largely consisting of locations where johns seek women who they
presume are prostituting. Adultfriendfinder, for example, features
gonzo pornography
280
of women seeking dates for prostitution in
dozens of countries and every state in the United States. The site is
277
Melissa Farley, Pornography, Prostitution, and Trafficking in Nevada, in
PROSTITUTION AND TRAFFICKING IN NEVADA: MAKING THE CONNECTIONS, supra note 82, at
156, 157, 261–62. The connections between web cam pornography, prostitution and casual
sex/dating websites such as adultfriendfinder (“the largest sex and swingers personals site in
the world”) can be seen in the history of webcams.com. The parent company of webcams.com
is Streamray (http://www.streamray.com).In January 2006 Streamray announced the
broadcast of 400 pornographic videos simultaneously with the goal of becoming the world’s
largest webcam company. AVONLINE.COM,
http://www.avnonline.com/index.php?Primary_Navigation=Editorial&Action=View_Article&C
ontent_ID=255014. Streamray subsequently merged with Various, the parent company of
Adultfriendfinder.com, owned by Andrew Conru. Adultfriendfinder features gonzo
pornography. In August 2005, Adultfriendfinder claimed that 17 million people visit the site,
and that the company employs 200 people. See AVONLINE.COM,
http://www.avnonline.com/index.php?Primary_Navigation=Editorial&Action=View_Article&C
ontent_ID=235604. Other sites owned by Various are AdultFriendFinder.com,
FriendFinder.com, Alt.com, OutPersonals.com, Passion.com, GradFinder.com,
NiceCards.com, QuizHappy.com, BreakThru.com, Dine.com, BigChurch.com, ShareRent.com,
FriendPages.com, FilipinoFriendFinder.com AsiaFriendFinder.com, GUANXI.com,
IndianFriendFinder.com, SeniorFriendFinder.com JewishFriendFinder.com, Amigos.com,
GermanFriendFinder.com, FrenchFriendFinder.com, KoreanFriendFinder.com.
278
Warning: viewing the kink.com site is disturbing. KINK.COM, http://goo.gl/bVFEbL (last
visited June 15, 2014).
279
See id.; see also Melissa Farley, Kink.com in San Francisco: Women and Gay Men’s Abu
Ghraib, PROSTITUTION RES. & EDUC. (Oct. 22, 2007), http://prostitutionresearch.com/
pre_blog/2007/10/22/kinkcom_in_san_francisco_women/ (deconstructing torture pornography
and comments in response).
280
Gonzo pornography is extremely violent pornography where women are violently raped,
obviously injured, painfully tied up, often terrified and/or crying. See Martin Amis, A Rough
Trade, GUARDIAN (Mar. 16, 2001), http://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/mar/17/
society.martinamis1.
144 Albany Law Review [Vol. 77.3
available in German, Spanish, Japanese, French, Portuguese,
Italian, Dutch, and Swedish. Some dating websites ask users to bid
for a first date with a woman.
281
“[C]reat[ing] a financial market for
first dates,” women who are beautiful are asked to join the site and
get paid for dates.
282
Casual dating sites such as onlinebootycall are
dominated by prostitution advertising. The
seekingarrangement.com website’s goal is to create what the site’s
pimps describe as mutually beneficial relationships between two
people. “Such a relationship is usually between an older and
wealthy individual who gives a young person expensive gifts or
financial assistance in return for friendship, or intimacy.”
283
The
prostitution culture often seen in dating websites has expanded to
include children. A fourteen-year-old boy in Tokyo met a thirteen-
year-old girl through an online dating service and paid her for sex in
a public bathroom.
284
VII. PROSECUTORIAL STRATEGIES
The global nature of prostitution and trafficking has led to the
creation of federal anti-trafficking laws that include the Mann Act
and the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA).
285
Given the
range of felonies committed by pimps and traffickers, other laws are
applicable for prosecuting them such as Racketeer Influenced and
Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).
286
Whereas in the past, those
prostituting have been primary targets of arrest,
287
states are now
starting to enforce prostitution laws against sex buyers.
288
281
Conor Friedersdorf, Worse Than Prostitution?, ATLANTIC (Apr. 25, 2011, 10:30 AM),
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/04/worse-than-prostitution/237795/.
282
Id. Continuing to promote the interests of sex buyers, Brandon Wade developed Carrot
Dating, a 2013 mobile app where men “can use bribery to get first dates.”
CARROTDATING.COM, http://www.carrotdating.com/ (last visited June 15, 2014).
283
Mark Berman, College Girls and Sugar Daddies: Is SeekingArrangement.com Just
Prostitution?, OPPOSING VIEWS (Aug. 1, 2011), http://www.opposingviews.com/i/
society/crime/college-girls-and-sugar-daddies-seekingarrangementcom-just-prostitution.
284
Boy, 14, Buys Sex with Girl, 13, DESTROYER J. (Sep. 8, 2009),
http://destroyerjournal.com/2009/09/08/boy-14-buys-sex-from-girl-13/.
285
Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, Pub. L. No. 106-386, § 102,
114 Stat. 1464, 1466–469 (codified as amended at 22 U.S.C. § 7101 (2012)); White-Slave
Traffic (Mann) Act, ch. 395, 36 Stat. 825 (1910) (codified as amended at 18 U.S.C. §§ 2421–
2424 (2012)).
286
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1961–1968 (2012).
287
BOYER ET AL., supra note 62.
288
E.g., Kyle Nagel, Cops Focusing More on “Johns” in Prostitution Busts, DAYTON DAILY
NEWS (Aug. 21, 2012, 8:00 PM), http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/news/cops-focusing-
more-on-johns-in-prostitution-busts/nRGxG/.
2013/2014] Online Prostitution and Trafficking 145
The TVPA was signed into law in 2000 with reauthorizations that
expanded it passed in 2003, 2005 and 2008.
289
In addition to
defining the crimes and penalties for trafficking, the TVPA
established civil remedies, provides services for victims, and created
T-visas and U-visas for foreign victims of trafficking to obtain
immigration relief.
290
The T-visa is available to victims of
trafficking in the U.S. who are willing to assist in the prosecution of
traffickers and who can show that they would suffer extreme
hardship if removed from the U.S.
291
The U-visa is available to
victims of criminal activity in the U.S. who have “suffered
substantial physical or mental abuse,” who have information about
the criminal activity, and who are helpful to law enforcement in
prosecuting the crime.
292
The TVPA defines a perpetrator of sex trafficking as a person who
“knowingly . . . recruits, entices, harbors, transports, provides,
obtains, or maintains by any means a person; or benefits, financially
. . . knowing . . . that means of force, . . . fraud, [or] coercion . . . will
be used to cause the person to engage in a commercial sex act.”
293
No transportation is required in order to meet the legal requirement
of trafficking under the TVPA. Prostitution of minors under
TVPRA 2005 is presumed to be exploitive and any person who
causes another person under the age of 18 to engage in a
commercial sex act is guilty of sex trafficking.
294
Adult trafficking
victims must prove force, fraud, or coercion.
295
The Department of
Justice prosecuted 162 defendants for sex trafficking under the
TVPA in 2012,
296
with 366 T-visas issued to victims and 103 issued
289
Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, 114 Stat. at 1464–548;
Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2003, Pub. L. No. 108-193, 117 Stat.
2875; Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2005, Pub. L. No. 109-164, 119
Stat. 3558; William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008,
H.R. 7311, 110th Cong. (2008) (enacted).
290
Melynda H. Barnhart, Sex and Slavery: An Analysis of Three Models of State Human
Trafficking Legislation, 16 WM. & MARY J. WOMEN & L. 83, 97–101 (2009).
291
Victims of Human Trafficking: T Nonimmigrant Status, U.S. CITIZENSHIP & IMMIGR.
SERVICES, http://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/victims-human-trafficking-other-crimes/
victims-human-trafficking-t-nonimmigrant-status (last updated Oct. 3, 2011).
292
Victims of Criminal Activity: U Nonimmigrant Status, U.S. CITIZENSHIP & IMMIGR.
SERVICES, http://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/victims-human-trafficking-other-crimes/
victims-criminal-activity-u-nonimmigrant-status/victims-criminal-activity-u-nonimmigrant-
status#U%20Nonimmigrant%20Eligibility (last updated Jan. 9, 2014).
293
18 U.S.C. § 1591(a) (2012).
294
Id.
295
Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, H.R. 7311, 110th Cong. §
237(a)(2)(B) (2008).
296
U.S. DEP’T OF STATE, TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS REPORT 382 (2013),
146 Albany Law Review [Vol. 77.3
to foreign national children.
297
These numbers remain limited
because of the burdensome requirements for the visas. Created
primarily to prosecute traffickers rather than to assist victims, the
TVPA is onerous for trafficking victims. It is often too dangerous for
victims to testify since traffickers and organized crime groups
threaten not only their lives but the lives of family members,
sometimes holding them hostage.
298
Other forms of immigration
relief are less burdensome to victims, such as U-visas or self-
petitioning under VAWA remedies for domestic violence.
299
The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA)
of 2008 amended the TVPA to make civil remedies available for
victims.
300
Thus victims can sue traffickers as well as individuals or
corporations who are complicit with traffickers. No foreknowledge
is required—only that the third party “should have known.”
301
The
civil remedy under the TVPRA holds traffickers and those who are
complicit liable for damages arising out of her prostitution even
after the criminal case has terminated.
302
The TVPRA remedy has
some advantages: it would implicate individuals and corporations in
a pattern of detrimental practices that would serve as a deterrent
based on the financial and reputational risks involved.
303
Civil
remedies also hold third parties accountable and create
opportunities for survivors of trafficking to obtain necessary
services.
304
In a case in progress a survivor of trafficking used the
civil remedy section of the TVPRA to sue a sex buyer for facilitation
http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/210742.pdf.
297
Id. at 384.
298
U.S. DEP’T OF JUSTICE, ATTORNEY GENERAL’S ANNUAL REPORT TO CONGRESS AND
ASSESSMENT OF U.S. GOVERNMENT ACTIVITIES TO COMBAT TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS FISCAL
YEAR 2008 3, 40 (2009).
299
Telephone Interview with Margaret Baldwin, Executive Director of Refuge House,
Tallahassee, Fla. (Feb. 2012).
300
The Act provided that not only could victims of trafficking sue the immediate
perpetrator, but anyone who “knowingly benefits, financially or by receiving anything of value
from participation in a venture which that person knew or should have known has engaged in
an act in violation of this chapter.” H.R. 7311, § 221(2)(A)(ii).
301
Sallie Pullman, Exploring Civil Remedies for Child Trafficking Victims: Class Action
Litigation and Our Capacity to Reduce Demand, NDAA.ORG, 2 (2011),
http://www.ndaa.org/ncpca_update_newsletter.html. In other laws with similar language the
notion of benefit includes financial benefit as well as business opportunities, gaining access to
file-sharing websites that contain illicit images of children, and being provided pornography.
Id.
302
Id. at 3. The civil suit will be stayed until the criminal case has been terminated. Id.
at 4.
303
Id. at 3.
304
Max Waltman, Sweden’s Prohibition of Purchase of Sex: The Law’s Reasons, Impact,
and Potential, 34 WOMEN’S STUD. INT’L F. 449, 463 (2011), available at http://goo.gl/XdOyfr.
2013/2014] Online Prostitution and Trafficking 147
of trafficking when he bought her for sexual use.
305
In this case, the
sex buyer and the pimp pled guilty to criminal charges of trafficking
and sexual exploitation. The United States Attorney for the
Western District of Missouri has used the language from the TVPA
to prosecute buyers of sex under that statute.
306
This case marked
the first time that sex buyers were convicted under the TVPA in a
sex trafficking case in which the victim was an adult.
307
There have been a number of successful prosecutions of pimps
and traffickers who used online prostitution classifieds to advertise
and sell women and children for sexual use.
308
Many federal
antitrafficking cases against Craigslist have been based on its
advertising of children for sale in prostitution.
309
Pimps have been
charged with violating child pornography laws as a result of posting
online advertisements of children for use in prostitution.
310
305
Julia Dahl, Suing Lawrence Taylor “Next Frontier” in Fighting Sex Trafficking, Says
Expert, CBSNEWS.COM (Dec. 1, 2011, 2:34 PM), http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-
57334731-504083/suing-lawrence-taylor-next-frontier-in-fighting-sex-trafficking-says-expert/.
306
Press Release, U.S. Attorney’s Office for the W.D. of Mo., Lebanon Man Sentenced to 20
Years for Coercing a Minor to Become a Sex Slave; Two Customers also Sentenced for Sex
Trafficking (Sept. 11, 2013), available at
http://www.justice.gov/usao/mow/news2013/bagley.sen.html.
307
Id.
308
Press Release, U.S. Attorney’s Office for the W.D. of N.C., California Man Sentenced to
18 Months in Prison for Prostitution-Related Charges (July 25, 2012), available at
http://www.justice.gov/usao/ncw/pressreleases/Charlotte-2012-07-25-rodgers.html; see also
Chicago Man Found Guilty of Sex Trafficking of Minors, EXAMINER.COM (Nov. 21, 2011),
http://www.examiner.com/residential-in-chicago/chicago-man-found-guilty-of-sex-trafficking-
of-minors (arranging locations through Craigslist and other websites); Craigslist Named as
America’s Biggest Pimp, THEAGE.COM (Mar. 6, 2009, 11:01 AM),
http://www.theage.com.au/news/web/craigslist-named-as-americas-biggest-pimp/2009/03/
06/1235842625281.html (noting that a 2008 FBI investigation found that “more than 2800
child prostitution ads had been posted on Craigslist”); Prison, Indictment in NYC Sex
Trafficking Cases, WALL ST. J. (Nov. 23, 2011, 7:03 AM), http://online.wsj.com/article/
APf611332ac6944e65a760327f4d5c4d4b.html (reporting on a man indicted on sex trafficking
charges for forcing a woman to prostitute in Queens and coercing her to advertise on
Craigslist); Levi Pulkkinen, Charge: Pimp Promised Disabled Seattle Teen Thanksgiving
Dinner if She ‘Made Some Money,’ SEATTLEPI.COM (Dec. 1, 2011, 11:25 PM),
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Charge-Pimp-promised-disabled-Seattle-teen-
2338672.php (reporting that a 37-year-old many sold eighteen-year-old for sex on
backpage.com); Liz Robbins, 4 in Brooklyn Charged with Sex Trafficking, N.Y. TIMES (Nov.
21, 2011, 4:34 PM), http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/21/4-in-brooklyn-charged-with-
sex-trafficking/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0 (reporting that a man forced a thirteen-year-
old into prostitution and advertised her prostitution by posting photos of her on the internet).
309
Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2005, Pub. L. No. 109–164, 119
Stat. 3559, 3563 (2008); H.R. 7311, § 235.
310
Pimp Daniels was convicted on child pornography charges, Mann Act, and sex
trafficking charges. United States v. Daniels, 653 F.3d 399, 404 (6th Cir. 2011). He
unsuccessfully claimed that he didn’t know the girl he was advertising for sale for sexual use
on Craigslist was a minor. Id. at 410–11. It should be noted that jurisdictions that continue
148 Albany Law Review [Vol. 77.3
States’ rights to protect children from being pimped online have
been opposed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation using First
Amendment arguments.
311
Attorney General Rob McKenna and
prosecutors were restrained from enforcing a Washington state law
that would require online classified advertisers such as Backpage to
verify the ages of people advertised in “adult services.”
312
Similar
measures have been introduced in New York, New Jersey, and
Tennessee.
313
Attorneys from Backpage cited the Communications
Decency Act protecting them as website operators from liability over
the speech of “unaffiliated parties.” AG McKenna stated, “Backpage
is many things, but an ally in the fight against trafficking it’s not.
It’s a cash machine churning out tens of millions a year for its
owners by charging $1 and up for prostitution advertisements.”
314
The National Association of Attorneys General has begun to lobby
Congress to narrow section 230 of the CDA so that it will protect
against civil but not criminal liability.
315
Social networking sites and online classified advertising sites
maintain data servers in more than one state.
316
The interstate
commerce element of the TVPA allows prosecution of online
traffickers as illustrated in the Eleventh Circuit decision in United
States v. Myers.
317
The defendants placed pornography of their
victims on Craigslist and Backpage and were charged with
trafficking two girls for sex.
318
The court concluded that the
interstate commerce element of the statute was satisfied by the
movement of funds through accounts and servers in various
states.
319
to arrest and treat minors in prostitution as criminals are at odds with the federal law.
311
Sheri Qualters, EFF Challenges as Overbroad Washington State Law Targeting Child
Trafficking Ads, NAT’L L. J., June 18, 2012 (accessed using LexisAdvance).
312
Id.; see James R. Marsh, EFF Joins the Child Exploitation Bandwagon, CHILDLAW
BLOG (June 19, 2012), http://www.childlaw.us/eff_joins_the_child_exploitati/ (stating that in
its opposition to a Washington state law preventing child sex trafficking the EFF is
supporting freedom of speech on the internet).
313
Qualters, supra note 311.
314
Robert McKenna, Backpage: An “Ally” in the Fight Against Trafficking?, WA ST. OFF.
ATTORNEY GEN. (May 31, 2012, 3:56 PM), http://www.atg.wa.gov/
ingeneralpost.aspx?id=29800#.UvVhyYWPvW0.
315
Letter from the Nat’l Ass’n of Attorneys Gen. to Senator Rockefeller, Senator Thune,
Representative Upton & Representative Waxman (July 23, 2013), available at
http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1465&context=historical.
316
See United States v. Myers, 430 F. App’x 812, 815 (11th Cir. 2011).
317
Id. at 815–16.
318
Id. at 816.
319
Id. at 817; MARK LATONERO, HUMAN TRAFFICKING ONLINE: THE ROLE OF SOCIAL
NETWORKING SITES AND ONLINE CLASSIFIEDS 20–21 (2011),
2013/2014] Online Prostitution and Trafficking 149
The Mann Act criminalizes the act of transporting or enticing a
person—adult or child—to travel for the purpose of engaging in
prostitution.
320
Only the intent of the perpetrator is relevant;
whether or not the victim consented is irrelevant.
321
Unlike the
TVPRA, there is no need to prove force, fraud or coercion under the
Mann Act.
322
Providing transportation
323
with the intent of
prostituting the victim is sufficient for conviction under the Mann
Act.
324
The Act’s focus on the perpetrator’s behavior can spare the
victim from testifying—a major advantage over the TVPRA. When a
TVPRA prosecution appears difficult, the penalty, not
inconsequential, of a ten-year prison sentence calls for wider use of
the Mann Act.
325
Online prostitution has blurred jurisdictional boundaries. When
an online sex buyer in New Jersey solicits prostitution from a seller
(pimp or trafficker) normally located in New York, the Mann Act
can be applied. Transportation may be proved through travel
receipts, toll records or other documentary evidence that do not
require a victim’s testimony. Electronic conversations arranging
the meeting can be used as evidence that the sex buyer negotiated a
commercial sex act with the trafficker. Some courts have ruled that
warrantless cell phone searches are permissible when police are
searching for evidence of a specific crime such as selling drugs or
soliciting prostitution.
326
Emails, text messages, and other
http://technologyandtrafficking.usc.edu/files/2011/09/HumanTrafficking_FINAL.pdf.
320
The Mann Act provides that the knowing transport of “any individual in interstate or
foreign commerce . . . with intent that such individual engage in prostitution, or in any sexual
activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense, or attempts to do so,
shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.” 18 U.S.C. §
2421 (2012).
321
See id.
322
See id.
323
Transportation is not a requirement of TVPRA. See supra text accompanying notes
300–07.
324
18 U.S.C. § 2421.
325
After pleading guilty to pimping women between NY and CT for prostitution, Corey
Davis launched an appeal to overturn his guilty plea following his 293 month sentence under
the Mann Act. United States v. Davis, No. 3:07-cr-11 (JCH), 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 99802, at
*1, *6 (D. Conn. Nov. 26, 2008).
326
In United States v. Flores-Lopez, 670 F.3d 803 (7th Cir. 2012) a judge ruled that the
search of a cell phone was legal because the officer conducted a limited search and only looked
for phone numbers associated with the alleged drug deal. Id. at 810. The judge argued it was
similar to flipping through a diary to search for basic information such as addresses and
phone numbers. Id. at 807. Understanding that data from cell phones of men arrested for
buying sex are a potential source of information about organized criminals and traffickers,
the California Supreme Court in January 2011 ruled in People v. Diaz that it is legal in
California for detained arrestees’ cell phones to be searched by police without requiring a
150 Albany Law Review [Vol. 77.3
electronic communications are likely to be a rich source of evidence
for Mann Act prosecutions and possibly other crimes.
327
The “persuades, induces, entices” language in the Mann Act
means that it can be applied to sex buyers as well pimps.
328
A sex
buyer in New Jersey for example, who contacts a person in
prostitution that he discovered on Backpage under listings in New
York, could be held liable if he urges her to come to New Jersey to
perform an act of prostitution. If it can be proved that he knew the
woman was in New York, he will have violated the Mann Act.
Pimps have been prosecuted under RICO. In 2011, U.S.
Attorneys charged thirty-eight California gang members under
RICO for trafficking women and children via social networking
sites.
329
Gang members recruited vulnerable girls and women
through MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter and then held them in
captivity.
330
The women and children were then “sold, traded, or
‘gifted’ [by gang members] to other ‘pimps.’”
331
Gang members from
Texas and from United Arab Emirates continue this practice of
warrant, a decision the Supreme Court refused to overturn in October 2011. People v. Diaz,
244 P.3d 501, 502 (Cal. 2011). Several other appellate courts have ruled similarly to
California in this regard. See Timothy B. Lee, Obama Administration Asks Supreme Court to
Allow Warrantless Cellphone Searches, WASH. POST (Aug. 19, 2013, 2:24 PM),
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/19/obama-administration-asks-
supreme-court-to-allow-warrantless-cellphone-searches/.
327
For examples of such evidence, see the indictment of Corey Davis who transported
victims from Queens, NY to strip clubs in CT. See Grand Jury Indictment at 12, 5 B-06-1,
United States v. Davis, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 99802 (D. Conn. 2008), available at
http://www.scribd.com/doc/48989066/Corey-Davis-Indictment (providing evidence that victims
were transported across state lines and were given a cell phone to communicate with pimp
Davis and potential sex buyers). The Mann Act has been used successfully in other states.
See, e.g., Press Release, U.S. Attorney’s Office D. Minn., Federal Jury Convicts Woodbury
Man of Sex Trafficking a Minor (Aug. 18, 2011), available at
http://www.justice.gov/usao/mn/press/aug030.pdf; Press Release, U.S. Attorney’s Office S.D.
Fla., Two Martin County Women Plead Guilty to Interstate Prostitution Charges (Aug. 3,
2011), available at http://www.justice.gov/usao/fls/PressReleases/2011/110803-02.html; see
United States v. Daniels, 653 F.3d 333, 410 (6th Cir. 2011) (stating that the crime is
committed any time a person of any age is transported for the purpose of prostitution). A
former New York Sherriff was charged under the Mann Act for hiring a limousine to
transport several prostituted women to another state for a freemasons’ convention. Dan
Herbeck, Ex-Deputy Charged in Jesters Case, BUFFALONEWS.COM (June 9, 2010, 12:00 AM),
http://www.buffalonews.com/article/20100609/CITYANDREGION/306099974.
328
See United States v. Farner, 251 F.3d 510, 511 (5th Cir. 2001); see also Carrie Johnson,
Spitzer Won’t Face Charges for Scandal, WASH. POST, Nov. 7, 2008, at A2 (reporting that
“Justice Department guidelines disfavor indictments against clients of prostitution rings,”
such as Eliot Spitzer, even when it appears that the client violated the Mann Act).
329
Press Release, supra note 24.
330
Id.
331
Id.
2013/2014] Online Prostitution and Trafficking 151
MySpace recruitment, captivity, and sales of humans.
332
RICO
punishes any persons who have received any income derived either
directly or indirectly from any racketeering activity as well as
persons employed by or associated with any enterprise that
conducts its affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity.
333
According to Lieutenant Derek Marsh, Co-Director of the Orange
County, California Human Trafficking Task Force, charging sex
buyers with conspiracy to commit the crime of human trafficking
would subject them to liability for the same penalties as traffickers
and pimps.
334
Marsh argued that because “[t]he crime of conspiracy
is already familiar to investigators, prosecutors, and judges, and its
application has a long history of success,” the consistent use of
conspiracy charges would have “a real chance . . . of making these
demanders of inhumane services cease their demands.”
335
Racketeering activity includes any acts that are indictable under
numerous code sections, including the Trafficking Victims
Protection Act and the Mann Act.
336
Once evidence of a
conspiracy—for example a conspiracy to buy prostituted women—is
shown, the sex buyer’s “connection to the conspiracy, need only be
slight, and the government is only required to prove that the
defendant was a party to the general conspiratorial agreement.”
337
RICO could thus be used against sex buyers who did not admit to
conspiring to trafficking but who shared a common purpose and
were involved in some aspect of trafficking. Many of the more than
thirty “state RICO statutes have significantly broader civil and
criminal applications than the federal [RICO] statute,” providing for
civil liability, criminal liability, and forfeiture.
338
Some states’
332
‘Facebook’ Human Trade Ring Busted by Dubai, EMIRATES 24|7 (Feb. 4, 2012),
http://www.emirates247.com/crime/local/facebook-human-trade-ring-busted-in-dubai-2012-02-
04-1.441088; Tecca, Police Warn About Gangs Recruiting Prostitutes Via Facebook, YAHOO
TECH. NEWS BLOG (Sept. 26, 2012, 2:04 PM), http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-
blog/police-warn-gangs-recruiting-prostitutes-via-facebook-180449666.html.
333
18 U.S.C. § 1962 (2012).
334
Human Trafficking: Recent Trends: Hearing Before the Subcomm. on Border, Maritime
and Global Counterterrorism of the H. Comm. on Homeland Security, 111th Cong. 13 (2009)
(statement of Lieutenant Derek Marsh, Co-Director, Orange County, California Human
Trafficking Task Force).
335
Id.
336
18 U.S.C. § 1961 (2012); see 18 U.S.C. §§ 1582–1592; 18 U.S.C. §§ 2421–2424.
337
Kendal Nicole Smith, Human Trafficking and RICO: A New Prosecutorial Hammer in
the War on Modern Day Slavery, 18 GEO. MASON L. REV. 759, 781 (2011) (internal quotation
marks omitted); see United States v. Dietz, 577 F.3d 672, 677 (6th Cir. 2009).
338
ABA SECTION OF ANTITRUST LAW, RICO STATE BY STATE: A GUIDE TO LITIGATION
UNDER THE STATE RACKETEERING STATUTES 1 (2d ed. 2011).
152 Albany Law Review [Vol. 77.3
statutes have longer periods of limitations than the federal statute
and “[m]any state RICO statutes have fewer essential elements
than the federal statute.”
339
Prosecutors should use these laws
more aggressively against sex traffickers.
The Travel Act can be used to prosecute sex traffickers when
interstate or foreign travel is involved.
340
This law provides that
whoever travels in interstate and foreign commerce with intent to
“promote, manage, establish, carry on, or facilitate the promotion,
management, establishment, or carrying on, of any unlawful
activity,” is in violation of federal law.
341
The statutory definitions
of unlawful activity include “prostitution offenses in violation of the
laws of the State in which they are committed or of the laws of the
United States.”
342
Some states have laws that criminalize online traffickers or
pimps of children, if not traffickers or pimps of adults. In 2011,
Florida enacted an internet child solicitation statute that
criminalizes the use of the internet to solicit or seduce a minor for
sex, including prostitution, and criminalizes traveling to meet a
child for sex.
343
A section of the Florida law imposes criminal
penalties on the Internet owner/operator for knowing use of the
service for the prohibited purposes.
344
A 2011 Massachusetts anti-
trafficking law establishes the crime of enticing a child into
prostitution by electronic communication.
345
Statutory rape laws
should also be used against sex buyers when the victim is a minor.
For instance New York Penal Law section 130.30 penalizes rape in
the second degree.
346
The statute provides that a person over the
age of eighteen commits rape in the second degree when he or she
engages in sexual intercourse with a person less than 15 years of
age.
347
There is no requirement in this law that force, fraud or
coercion must have been used.
348
Like the TVPA, engaging in a
commercial sex act with an individual less than 18 years of age
339
Id. at 2.
340
18 U.S.C. § 1952 (2012).
341
Id. at § 1952 (a)(3).
342
Id. at § 1952 (b)(1).
343
FLA. STAT. ANN. § 847.0135 (West 2014).
344
Id. It would be preferable if the word “knowing” was removed from the law.
345
An Act Relative to the Commercial Exploitation of People, ch. 178, sec. 22, 2011 Mass.
Legis. Serv. 839, 846 (West).
346
N.Y. PENAL LAW §130.30 (McKinney 2014).
347
Id. §130.30(1); ASAPH GLOSSER ET AL., STATUTORY RAPE: A GUIDE TO STATE LAWS AND
REPORTING REQUIREMENTS 86 (2004), http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/08/sr/statelaws/report.pdf.
348
N.Y. PENAL LAW §130.30; GLOSSER ET AL., supra note 347, at 86.
2013/2014] Online Prostitution and Trafficking 153
requires no proof other than the commission of the act. States’
statutory rape laws should not be ignored.
349
A Florida civil law provides victims of prostitution and trafficking
with the right to sue pimps for damages they inflict and could be
used to prosecute online trafficking cases.
350
The Florida law
permits women who are coerced into prostitution via exploitation of
their social and legal vulnerability to sue, defining coercion as
restriction of communication with others, exploitation of a person's
developmental disability, cognitive limitation, affective disorder, or
addiction, exploitation of previous victimization by sexual abuse,
exploitation during the production of pornography, and exploitation
of the human needs for food, shelter, safety, or affection.
351
VIII. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
“For a Web site like Backpage to make $22 million off our backs,”
said a trafficking survivor, “it’s like going back to slave times.”
352
The transition of trafficking and prostitution to the Internet has
created unique challenges for law enforcement. “‘Technology
creates new ways for people to interact with each other,’ said Eric
Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University in California.
‘You have to figure out if old law maps to new interactions.’”
353
Today the prostitution transaction includes not only victim, buyer
and trafficker/pimp but the most invisible partner: the online
advertiser.
354
When prostitution happened on the street in
349
For an analysis of each state’s statutory rape laws, see GLOSSER ET AL., supra note 347.
350
FLA. STAT. ANN. § 796.09 (West 2014); see Margaret A. Baldwin, Strategies of
Connection: Prostitution and Feminist Politics, 1 MICH. J. GENDER & L. 65, 70–71 (1993).
351
FLA. STAT. ANN. § 796.09(3)(k)–(o); see also CAPTIVE DAUGHTERS AND INT’L HUMAN
RIGHTS LAW INST. OF DEPAUL UNIV. COLL. OF LAW, DEMAND DYNAMICS: THE FORCES OF
DEMAND IN GLOBAL SEX TRAFFICKING 88–89, 111 (Morrison Torrey & Sara Dubin eds., 2004),
available at
http://www.law.depaul.edu/centers_institutes/ihrli/downloads/demand_dynamics.pdf
(discussing claims brought and won under section 796.09). In 2006, the Florida Council
Against Sexual Violence, in collaboration with Florida Legal Services, the Jacksonville
Women’s Center, and Refuge House, sought federal funding to support civil legal claims that
may be brought by prostituted women under section 796.09 of the Florida Code. E-mail from
Margaret Baldwin (Mar. 17, 2006, 1:48 PST) (on file with author).
352
Nicholas D. Kristof, Where Pimps Peddle Their Goods, N.Y. TIMES SUNDAY REV., Mar.
18, 2012, at 1.
353
Somini Sengupta, Case of 8,000 Menacing Posts Tests Limits of Twitter Speech, N.Y.
TIMES, Aug. 27, 2011, at A1.
354
Andrea Powell, Sex Trafficking in America: The Role of Online Advertisers, FAIR
OBSERVER (Sept. 26, 2013), http://www.fairobserver.com/article/sex-trafficking-america-role-
online-advertisers.
154 Albany Law Review [Vol. 77.3
someone’s neighborhood, it was clear whose jurisdiction that was.
Enforcement of a range of laws against johns and pimps was
sometimes fueled by citizens’ concern about prostitution as a
neighborhood nuisance rather than concern about prostitution's
exploitation and violence. Communities wanted prostitution out of
sight and out of their neighborhoods. Because online sex businesses
are less visible to the public, victims of sexual exploitation in
prostitution are isolated and can be in greater danger from sex
buyers. A survivor of prostitution opined that street prostitution
was actually safer than online prostitution since friends watched
out for her on the street. “They don’t know what they are doing,”
she said about women who are sold via online websites, “they’re
alone.”
355
The United States has shown ambivalence regarding enforcement
of laws on prostitution and trafficking. This is highlighted in public
comments of U.S. Attorney Michael J. Garcia about a sex buyer’s
purchase and interstate transport of a prostituted woman that was
facilitated via an online escort advertisement, Emperor’s Club VIP.
Mr. Garcia indicated that the Department of Justice (DOJ) does not
typically prosecute sex buyers who buy women from pimps except in
cases of prostitution of children.
“In light of the policy of the Department of Justice with
respect to prostitution offenses and the longstanding practice
of this Office, as well as Mr. Spitzer’s acceptance of
responsibility for his conduct, we have concluded that the
public interest would not be further advanced by filing
criminal charges in this matter.”
356
This federal indifference to the prostitution and often co-occurring
trafficking of adult women has had an additional adverse impact on
the enforcement of state laws against prostitution. Because of a
lack of resources and also because of the need for special training, it
has been difficult to monitor online prostitution and trafficking.
357
Nonetheless, police in many states including Washington,
355
Jennifer Quinn & Robert Cribb, Inside the World of Human Trafficking, TORONTO
STAR, Oct. 5, 2013, at IN1, available at http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/10/05/
inside_the_world_of_human_sex_trafficking.html.
356
Melissa Farley & Norma Ramos, Opinion: Why Spitzer Should be Prosecuted,
NEWSWEEK (Mar. 13, 2010, 6:47 PM), http://www.newsweek.com/id/168395 (quoting Michael
J. Garcia).
357
Personal observation by the second author, during his tenure as Director of Human
Trafficking Prevention and Training with New York State Division of Criminal Justice
Services.
2013/2014] Online Prostitution and Trafficking 155
Tennessee, New York, and Virginia conducted sting operations by
posting fake prostitution advertisements online resulting in
numerous arrests of men seeking to buy sex.
358
In this article we have summarized information about online
prostitution and trafficking. Describing the history of technological
advances that permitted pimps, traffickers and sex buyers to
expand the sex industry online, we discussed the use of websites,
online classified advertising, message boards, dating and sugar
daddy sites, live streaming video, and the involvement of organized
crime in online trafficking. We have also noted that these
technologies leave digital traces that can be used by law
enforcement, and that online technologies raise new issues for those
involved in challenging trafficking such as adult pornography, child
pornography, and interstate commerce.
359
We have discussed some
challenges to prosecutors: the inseparability of different arms of the
sex industry despite the insistence of some that they are discrete
entities. Other prosecutorial challenges include complex
jurisdictional boundaries, lack of resources and funding. We also
described creative and successful prosecutions.
Challenging Internet giants Google and Facebook and accusing
them of protecting massive profits via free speech arguments, a
Huffington Post blogger wrote,
This is a human rights fight. It’s not about sex. This isn’t
about left or right, liberal versus conservative but about
freedom. This isn’t about actual free speech either. It is
about trillion-dollar interests too lazy to move this issue to
priority one. Everyone needs to get involved to change the
internet giants minds. That includes the LGTB community,
liberal and feminist activists, evangelicals, and everyone
else. We need to unite—for once—to make it clear that
fighting to stop slavery, child rape and sex trafficking is not
358
Associated Press, Cops Bust 66 People in Craigslist Prostitution Ring, NY DAILY NEWS
(Jan. 12, 2008, 1:48 PM), http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/cops-bust-66-people-
craigslist-prostitution-ring-article-1.345129; Hector Castro, Ad on Craigslist Really a Sex
Sting: Nearly 100 Men Arrested in Police Prostitution Ploy, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
(Nov. 15, 2006, 10:00 PM), http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Ad-on-Craigslist-really-a-
sex-sting-1219955.php; Freeman Klopott, Va. Man Nabbed in Craiglist Sex Sting; Drawn in
by Fake Ad, WASHINGTON EXAMINER (Nov. 30, 2009, 3:00 AM),
http://washingtonexaminer.com/va.-man-nabbed-in-craigslist-sex-sting-drawn-in-by-fake-
ad/article/19931; Amy Hunter, Attorney Among Sting Arrests, TRICITIES.COM (Apr. 28, 2009,
7:15 AM), http://www2.tricities.com/news/2009/apr/28/attorney_among_sting_arrests-ar-
247092/.
359
BOYD ET AL., supra note 20, at 3.
156 Albany Law Review [Vol. 77.3
about fighting human sexuality. It is the opposite. We are
freeing people to make their own choices.
360
New community alliances have been formed in response to the
human rights violations of trafficking. After police complained of a
lack of funding and resources to combat prostitution, Big Sisters,
based in Iceland,
361
gave the Reykjavík Metropolitan Police “56
names, 117 telephone numbers and 29 emails of men who expressed
interest in” buying sex acts from women in prostitution “through
the websites einkamal.is, mypurplerabbit.com, raudatorgid.is and
classified ads offering ‘massages’ in [the] daily newspaper
Fréttabladid.”
362
The activist group noted that although sex buyers
attempt to hide their identities, their computer skills are sometimes
limited.
363
San Antonio police have mentioned similar concerns
about a lack of funding for prosecution of online trafficking cases.
364
Applications that detect suspected money laundering by trafficking
networks have been developed by JP Morgan Chase. For example,
sex trafficking was discovered by “investigation of several credit
card transactions at a nail salon during nonbusiness hours.”
365
It is
worth noting that police in 2013 closed down Hong Kong’s largest
prostitution website, charging the owners who they described as
members of criminal syndicates with money-laundering and living
off the avails of a prostitute.
366
Citizen assistance and cooperation with law enforcement could be
360
Frank Schaeffer, Uncool!—Google and Facebook’s Human Trafficking Complicity,
HUFFINGTON POST (June 6, 2013, 8:57 AM), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-
schaeffer/google-and-facebooks-comp_b_3389538.html.
361
Buying sex is illegal in Iceland, although selling it is not. This law is similar to that of
Sweden. GENERAL PENAL CODE [GEN. PENAL C.] No. 19/1940, ch. XXII, art. 206 (Ice.); see also
A New Law Makes Purchase of Sex Illegal in Iceland, JAFNRETTISSTOFA (Apr. 21, 2009),
http://www.jafnretti.is/jafnretti/?D10cID=ReadNews&ID=523.
362
Big Sister Watches Buyers of Prostitution in Iceland, ICELAND REV. ONLINE (Oct. 19,
2011), http://www.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/daily_news/Big_Sister_Watches_Buyers_
of_Prostitution_in_Iceland_0_383393.news.asp.
363
Id.
364
Phil Anaya, Constables Busy Busting Men Suspected of Soliciting Sex on Craigslist,
KENS5.COM (Oct. 27, 2011, 9:05 PM), http://www.kens5.com/news/Constables-office-busts-
men-soliciting-sex-for-drugs-using-Craigslist-132732983.html.
365
Judge Herbert B. Dixon, Jr., Human Trafficking and the Internet* (*and Other
Technologies, too), ABA, http://www.americanbar.org/publications/judges_
journal/2013/winter/human_trafficking_and_internet_and_other_technologies_too.html (last
visited June 15, 2014).
366
HK Closes Largest Prostitution Website, BANGKOK POST (Dec 6, 2013, 3:49 AM),
http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/asia/383475/hong-kong-largest-prostitution-website-
paralysedhttp://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/20182940/hong-kongs-largest-prostitution-
website-paralysed/.
2013/2014] Online Prostitution and Trafficking 157
a major step forward in providing evidence of online trafficking.
This might occur via crowdsourcing, the online broadcast of a
problem, such as trafficking, to a large and undefined group of
people who then apply their talents to solving the problem. Via
crowdsourcing, new collaborations between the public, NGOs, law
enforcement, and researchers can produce new information such as
mapping the location of trafficked individuals or those at high risk
for trafficking.
367
Despite the obstacles to combating online prostitution and
trafficking, law enforcement and prosecutors have tools to
successfully charge and convict pimps, traffickers and most
importantly sex buyers. It is incumbent upon policy makers and
law enforcement to enforce existing laws and where needed, to
develop new laws and policies that will abolish online (and offline)
trafficking and prostitution. While many have been recruited, sold
and trafficked into prostitution on social networking sites, the sites
can also be turned against traffickers. A thirty-year-old New Jersey
woman used Facebook to contact a family member who then rescued
her and others from a trafficker who held them captive.
368
The
creative and proactive use of online technologies against sex buyers,
pimps, and traffickers is cause for hope.
367
Survivors Connect has used an open-source platform, Ushahidi, to crowdsource
information about cases of violence against women, potential trafficking, and resources.
Aashika Damodar, founder of Survivors Connect noted, “No one individual or organization
can know everything there is to know about the conditions or locations of trafficking,
however, with increased awareness, all individuals may have some piece of knowledge that
can be critical to solving the larger puzzle.” Telephone Interview with Aashika Damodar,
Founder of Survivors Connect (Nov. 15, 2011) (on file with the author). Damodar suggested
that individuals can contribute to ending trafficking via the use of simple online technologies
such as a text message or email about suspicious web activity. Id.; see also Jeff Howe, The
Rise of Crowdsourcing, WIRED MAG., June 2006, at 176, 176–78 (identifying several fields in
which crowdsourcing has been used effectively); Dan Woods, The Myth of Crowdsourcing,
FORBES.COM (Sept. 29, 2009, 6:00 AM), http://www.forbes.com/2009/09/28/crowdsourcing-
enterprise-innovation-technology-cio-network-jargonspy.html (describing misconceptions
about how crowdsourcing works to solve problems by sending issues to uniquely qualified
individuals rather than by sheer number of participants).
368
Bob Holt, Facebook to the Rescue for NJ Woman Coerced into Prostitution,
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM (Dec. 31, 2011, 12:10 PM), http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/
state/facebook-to-the-rescue-for-nj-woman-coerced-into-prostitution.
