A few weeks ago I posted the press release from the Village Voice-owned Backpage.com about their response to the lawsuit filed against them by a victim of sex trafficking that allegedly took place on their pages.

In the interest of fairness here is the press release from the attorney, Robert Pedroli Jr., who is filing the lawsuit on behalf of his client.

Today, Pedroli & Gauthier has filed a lawsuit against Village Voice Media, LLC, which is doing business as backpage.com. This is the same company that owns the company that operates River Front Times and many other alternative newspapers around the country. The backpage.com is an internet website that allows advertisements to be placed for a fee and is very similar to Craigslist. Craigslist has recently removed its adult services section from its website.

The suit was filed on behalf of an unnamed girl, through her Mother, who was the victim of sex trafficking as a fourteen year old child. Her female pimp, who recently plead guilty in The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri to charges relating to the allegations raised in the lawsuit, used the backpage.com website to post advertisements which contained child pornography and advertised the child on-line in thinly veiled language, as being available for sexual contacts.

This case is different from the many cases against internet content facilitators which have thus far failed. To our knowledge this is the first case to proceed under the Child Abuse Victim’s Rights Act (CAVRA) private cause of action statute, alleging that the facilitator was liable for aiding and abetting the person guilty of posting the content and perpetrating the criminal violations of law. Aiding and abetting can constitute a strong suspicion that these child crimes were being committed and that it failed to investigate for fear of what it would learn.

If we are successful, our hope is that the financial punishment will shut down the websites as we don’t believe that these businesses will be able to ensure the age of all escorts posting on their websites in an economically feasible manner. We hope that, if any of these types of businesses incur possible liability for any child who is posted on their site, then the profitable business model fails. It will be difficult for these websites to continue in light of the great financial exposure they will face due to child sexual trafficking.

If companies like Village Voice Media don’t care about the trafficking of women and children they will when this and other lawsuits take a big chunk out of their bank account. Let’s face it. Print media is dying. Village Voice Media needs the money from these ads in order to survive.