[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.