[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 118 (Thursday, July 13, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3976-S3978]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                            Sex Trafficking

  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about an issue that 
Members on both sides of this aisle have a deep concern about, and that 
is human sex trafficking and, specifically, the work we have done to 
try to stop one website called backpage.com from selling people online.
  This morning, I--along with my colleagues Tom Carper and Claire 
McCaskill--announced that we have asked the Department of Justice to 
investigate backpage.com for criminal

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violations of the law. This is a criminal referral, and it is a new 
development in this case. We believe there is sufficient evidence to 
warrant this criminal review by the Justice Department, based on the 
work that we have done in the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
  With estimated revenues of more than $150 million a year, 
backpage.com is a market leader in commercial sex trafficking and has 
been linked to hundreds of reported cases of sex trafficking, including 
trafficking vulnerable women and children. Backpage has claimed that it 
``leads the industry'' in its screening of advertisements for illegal 
activity, including sex ads for children. That is simply not true. In 
fact, we now know that this website has long facilitated sex 
trafficking on its site so that it can increase its profits--profits 
that come at the expense of those being trafficked, including children.
  When victims or State authorities try to bring actions against this 
company, backpage has evaded responsibility by saying that it doesn't 
write the ads for sex; it just publishes. Frankly, as a rule, courts 
have sided with the company, citing the immunity granted by a Federal 
law that is called the Communications Decency Act. The law, in essence, 
says that if a company like backpage publishes an ad someone else gives 
them, they are not liable, even though, again in this case, we know 
that this website has long facilitated sex trafficking and they know 
what they are doing.
  We also now know that backpage has actively edited words and images, 
which makes them cocreators of these ads. We also know from a new 
report in the Washington Post just this week that, despite claims, 
backpage has aggressively solicited and created sex-related ads 
designed to lure customers. It further demonstrates that backpage is 
not merely a passive publisher of third-party content. They are 
involved. The article found that backpage workers were active 
cocreators of many of these sex advertisements, including those that 
seek to traffic women and young, underage girls.
  I believe the legal consequences should be that they should lose 
their immunity under the Communications Decency Act, and that is why we 
have asked the Justice Department today to review this matter.
  Let me be clear about the Communications Decency Act. It has an 
important purpose. It is a well-intentioned law. It was enacted back in 
1996 to protect online publishers, and I support the broader 
legislation, the Communications Decency Act. But the law was not 
intended to protect those who knowingly violate the law and facilitate 
illegal conduct, and it was never intended to protect those who 
knowingly facilitate the sex trafficking of vulnerable women and girls.
  We are actively exploring legislation to fix this issue once and for 
all. I have been working with a bipartisan group of Senators on 
potential legislation, and I am hopeful that will soon be introduced in 
the U.S. Senate. We must protect women and underage girls and hold 
accountable websites that knowingly facilitate these types of criminal 
exploitations.
  A couple of weeks ago, I was at a place in Ohio called the Ranch of 
Opportunity in Washington Court House. The Ranch of Opportunity opened 
its doors in the latter part of 2013. It is on a 22-acre site, a 
tranquil setting, a peaceful, spacious, and healthy environment for 
girls between 13 and 18 to help find healing and recovery during a 
residential program.
  The ranch is a place of hope. As it says in its name, it is a ranch 
of opportunity, and a lot of the girls who spend time at the ranch have 
been victims of human trafficking and child abuse. In fact, I am told 
that the majority--roughly 60 to 80 percent--of the young girls who 
come through this program have been trafficked.
  As I have talked to some of the girls and the staff there, of course, 
backpage.com comes up again and again, as it always does when I talk to 
survivors and victims of human trafficking. These types of crimes--
sexual abuse and trafficking--are horrific, but they are happening. 
They are happening all over the country, and they are happening more 
and more. So in your community, wherever you live, sadly I will tell 
you that this is a problem. Part of it is because of these online 
traffickers. In other words, as many of the survivors of human 
trafficking have told me: Rob, this has moved from the street corner to 
the smartphone, and the smartphone is where backpage.com dominates.

  In touring the State, I have heard over and over again about this 
specific link between drugs and human trafficking. I have talked to 
trafficking survivors who have told me that their trafficker first got 
them hooked on heroin and other drugs. I saw this firsthand in May, 
when I toured the Salvation Army of Greater Cleveland Harbor Light 
Complex. They have been operating in Cleveland for 65 years, providing 
incredibly important services to some of the most vulnerable members of 
society, including women who have been trafficked. It is important to 
know that link is there.
  Both of those issues are so important to address--trafficking and 
what is happening in terms of the increasing heroin and prescription 
drug and fentanyl crisis in this country, which is now at epidemic 
levels. That is why the STOP Act is so important--the Synthetic 
Trafficking and Overdose Prevention Act, which we are trying to get 
passed here, as well as the Prescription Drug Monitoring Act, which is 
so important. There is a connection.
  Human trafficking requires urgent action, and so does the opioid 
epidemic. On human trafficking, including sex trafficking, we are now 
told it is a $150 billion a year industry. Think about that. It is the 
second biggest criminal enterprise in the world behind the drug trade. 
Unfortunately, again, it is happening in all of our States.
  Just last month, a 26-year-old man was indicted on human trafficking 
charges. He used backpage.com to advertise the availability of two 
girls, ages 15 and 17. He advertised them for sex and trafficked them 
out to several hotels in the area. Thankfully, in this case, members of 
the Central Ohio Human Trafficking Task Force rescued both of the 
victims, one in Columbus and one in Toledo.
  Cases like this are alarming, but they are happening all over the 
place. At the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, experts 
on this issue report an 846-percent increase in reports of suspected 
child sex trafficking from 2010 to 2015. That is an increase of more 
than 800 percent in 5 years. The organization found this spike to be 
``directly correlated to the increased use of the internet to sell 
children for sex.'' Again, it is the dark side of the internet, and 
trafficking has now moved from the street corner to the cell phone.
  To confront this problem, as chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee 
on Investigations, along with my colleague and ranking member, Senator 
Claire McCaskill, now Senator Tom Carper, I opened a bipartisan 
investigation into sex traffickers and their use of the internet. The 
investigation began over 2 years ago. The National Center for Missing & 
Exploited Children now says that nearly three-fourths--73 percent--of 
all suspected child sex trafficking reports it receives from the 
general public are linked to one website, backpage.com.
  According to leading anti-trafficking organizations, including Shared 
Hope International, service providers working with child sex 
trafficking victims have reported that between 80 percent and 100 
percent of their clients have been bought and sold on backpage.com. 
Backpage now operates in 97 countries--934 cities worldwide--and is 
valued at well over one-half billion dollars. According to an industry 
analysis, in 2013, $8 of every $10 spent on online commercial sex 
trafficking advertising in the United States goes to this one website, 
backpage.com.
  As I said earlier, they say that they lead the industry in screening; 
in fact, their top lawyer described their screening process as a key 
tool for disrupting and eventually ending human trafficking. That is 
not true. Despite these boasts, the website and its owners have 
consistently refused to cooperate with our investigations on the 
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. With regard to our inquiries, 
despite subpoenas for company documents on how they screen 
advertisements, they have also refused to provide us documents after a 
subpoena. As a result, this body, the U.S. Senate, last year, for the 
first time in more than 20 years, voted to

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pass a civil contempt citation--in other words, holding backpage.com in 
contempt and requiring them to supply these documents and come forward 
with this information or else face a lawsuit and potential criminal 
violations. Finally, last August, after going through the district 
court, the Circuit Court, all the way to the Supreme Court, we were 
able to get their request to appeal it rejected, and we were able to 
get the documents.
  Over 1 million documents were eventually turned over, including 
emails and internal documents. We went through them all, and what we 
found was very troubling, to say the least. After reviewing the 
documents, the subcommittee published a staff report in January that 
conclusively showed that backpage is more deeply complicit in online, 
underage sex trafficking than anyone ever imagined. The report shows 
that backpage has knowingly covered up evidence by systematically 
deleting words and images suggestive of the illegal conduct, including 
child sex trafficking. The editing process sanitized the content of 
millions of advertisements in order to hide important evidence from law 
enforcement. I encourage people to take a look at this report. They can 
look at it on our website and other websites here from myself or 
Senator McCaskill.
  Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer personally directed his employees to create 
an electronic filter to delete hundreds of words indicative of sex 
trafficking or prostitution from ads before they were published. In 
other words, they knew these ads were about selling girls, selling 
women online; yet they published them.
  Again, this filter they used did not reject ads because of the 
obvious illegal activity. They edited the ads only to try to cover up 
the illegal activity. It didn't change what was advertised; it changed 
the way it was advertised. Backpage did nothing to stop this criminal 
activity. They facilitated it, knowingly.
  What did they do? Well, afraid to erode their profits--they were 
afraid because, as Mr. Ferrer said, in his words, it would ``piss off a 
lot'' of customers. They began deleting words. Beginning in 2010, 
backpage automatically deleted words including ``lolita,'' referencing 
a 12-year-old girl in a book sold for sex, ``teenage,'' ``rape,'' 
``young,'' ``little girl,'' ``teen,'' ``fresh,'' ``innocent,'' ``school 
girl,'' even ``amber alert''--and then they published the edited 
versions of those ads on their website. They also systematically 
deleted dozens of words related to prostitution. This filter made these 
deletions before anyone at backpage even looked at the ad.
  When law enforcement officials asked for more information about the 
suspicious ads, backpage had destroyed the original ad posted by the 
trafficker, so the evidence was gone. This notion that they were trying 
to help law enforcement flies in the face of the fact that they 
actually destroyed the evidence that would have helped law enforcement.
  We will never know for sure how many girls and women were victimized 
as a result of this activity. By backpage's own estimate, the company 
was editing 70 to 80 percent of the ads in their adult section by late 
2010. Based on our best estimate, this means that backpage was editing 
more than one-half million ads a year--more than one-half million ads a 
year.
  At a hearing on the report, the backpage CEO and other company 
officials pled the Fifth Amendment, invoking their right against self-
incrimination rather than responding to questions we had about the 
report and its findings.
  We also heard powerful testimony from parents whose children had been 
trafficked on backpage. One mother talked about seeing her missing 
daughter's photograph on backpage. She frantically called the company 
to tell them that it was her daughter--they finally found her--and to 
please take down the ad. Their response: Did you post the ad?
  Her response: Of course I didn't post the ad. That's my daughter. 
Please take down the ad.
  Their response: We can take it down only if you pay for the ad.
  Talk about heartless.
  Based on our report, it is clear that backpage actively facilitated 
sex trafficking taking place on its website in order to increase 
profits at the expense of vulnerable women and children. Then, after 
the fact, they covered up the evidence of these crimes.
  What is happening to these kids is terrible. It is not just tragic. 
To me, it is evil.
  No one is interested in shutting down legitimate commercial activity 
and speech. As I said earlier, the Communication Decency Act plays an 
important role, but we want to stop this criminal activity.
  I see some of my colleagues are here to speak. I appreciate their 
allowing me to finish, but I urge all of my colleagues on both sides of 
the aisle to join me in reforming these laws to be able to protect 
these innocent victims, these children.
  I yield back my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Ms. HEITKAMP. Mr. President, before the chair of the Permanent 
Subcommittee on Investigations leaves, I also would like to put into 
the Record that, recently, in a raid that was performed in the 
Philippines, some very interesting documentation was seized about 
backpage, according to news reports, and the FBI was immediately 
called.
  I think there is an opportunity to use that information to advance 
the investigation and to continue to expose the participation of 
backpage, not just as a billboard or as a want ad but as a knowing 
participant in the trafficking of children--not just in our country but 
globally.
  I thank the chairman.