How Pimps Use the Web to Sell Girls

[Blue_Tires]

In November, a terrified 13-year-old girl pounded on an apartment door in Brooklyn. When a surprised woman answered, the girl pleaded for a phone. She called her mother, and then dialed 911.

The girl, whom I’ll call Baby Face because of her looks, frantically told police that a violent pimp was selling her for sex. He had taken her to the building and ordered her to go to an apartment where a customer was waiting, she said, and now he was waiting downstairs to make sure she did not escape. She had followed the pimp’s directions and gone upstairs, but then had pounded randomly on this door in hopes of getting help.

Baby Face said she hurt too much to endure yet another rape by a john. She told prosecutors later that she was bleeding vaginally and that her pimp had recently kicked her down a stairwell for trying to flee.

The episode also shines a spotlight on how the girl was marketed — in ads on Backpage.com, a major national Web site where people place ads to sell all kinds of things, including sex. It is a godsend to pimps, allowing customers to order a girl online as if she were a pizza.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/opinion/how-pimps-use-the-web-to-sell-girls.html?src=mv&ref=general

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/21/4-in-brooklyn-charged-with-sex-trafficking/

[seabeyond]

1. really... there are no women issues for us to be so very concerned about. i am so THRILLED

that girl could not take one more raped and had the courage to reach out for help.

and

i am so sad

[zazen]

2. and the monster who'd penetrate a crying 13-year-old

I wish johns were a LOT more afraid of prosecution and public humiliation in this country.

It's inconceivable to me how someone could pay a presumably willing 30-year-old non-drug addicted rather well-adjusted person for sex even in a legal brothel in Las Vegas. How could you enjoy yourself if you knew someone was simply tolerating you for money? Still, that's within the bounds of the "law," and at least there's a minimum standard of not overtly hurting someone that's met.

It's utterly inconceivable to me that these (mostly) men actually get off on physically and emotionally destroying obviously damaged teenagers and worse. The blind entitlement and objectification of other human beings like they're lobsters to be selected in a restaurant boggles the mind. I know more and more online pornography is desensitizing men to the harms happening to actual trafficked women and girls, but I'd hope that, aside from a few serial rapists, they'd stop at using criminal documentation (which is what that pornography is) and not perpetrate another crime.

Those poor, poor kids.

[Tumbulu]

5. johns must be prosecuted, period!

this just has to stop! I agree with your points.

[dawg]

8. Sounds more like rapists than johns to me.

This goes far beyond the crime of simply paying a woman for sex.

[2ndAmForComputers]

11. Correct. There's NO comparison between this monstrosity and adult, non-violent prostitution.

But, of course, people with an agenda want to make it look as if it's the same thing. See also: war on drugs; marijuana vs. meth.

[dawg]

13. I don't favor legalization under any circumstances, though.

I think toleration of prostitution leads to a culture where these type of abuses are more likely to happen. But I understand that there are lots of differing opinions on that subject.

[jeff47]

17. The opposite makes more sense.

A John walks out after being with an adult prostitute and sees another prostitute he believes is underage. If prostitution is illegal, how likely is he to report the underage girl? Not very likely.

On the other hand, if prostitution was legal, he's far more likely to report because he hasn't broken the law himself. Not to mention legal prostitution enables government oversight, so legal brothels can be forced to do an age-check on their prostitutes and the government can audit those records. It's not like Nevada brothels have a lot of underage girls in them, for example.

I'm not saying there are no issues in countries that have legalized prostitution. But estimates of underage prostitution in those countries are down.

[Nye Bevan]

18. Wasn't there more alcohol-related violence and gangsterism during Prohibition? (nt)

[dawg]

19. To me, it's not really the same.

The major difference being the potential for girls, women and boys to be horribly abused (physically and psychologically) by the sex trade.

I'm not a big fan of locking people up for nonviolent offenses, though. I like the idea of putting johns pictures in the paper at their own expense. If they don't think there's anything wrong with it they shouldn't have a problem with that.

[Nye Bevan]

20. If it's legal, taxed and regulated, as opposed to being hidden underground,

I think there would be less abuse.

[dawg]

12. The best thing for the ordinary johns would be their 2x2 picture in their local paper.

At their expense, of course. (Which would really suck if it was the NYT, but I'm guessing most of them could afford it.)

Of course, the situation in the OP is more of a rape situation and should be prosecuted as such.

[freakydeeky]

22. bit hysterical there...

Bit late but I just wish people could see past these tactics.

The "for the children" tactic is how you can steam roll over any details to push your crusade, want to ban alcohol, bring up the fact that children might get ahold of it, same with drugs and most anything in general. Because child pornography exists on the net the government should be able to watch everything you do and track you right? Why would you object unless you were a kiddy fiddler, that is the type of tactic this article is using. Child prostitution should be dealt with separately, and frankly the criminalization of all prostitution only leads to this type of problem you have the police wasting their time on adults, and the crimes that lead from prohibition and children get lost in the infrastructure of criminality you have created through prohibition.

If sex workers and brothels had to pay taxes and do paper work, age would be on record, and there would be disincentive to hire anyone illegal, too simple an answer though.

This issue is a bit like the pro life issue. There is total disregard for the actual result of the crusade, the anti abortion folk don't really give a damn about the result of unwanted children because they fixate only one aspect, and would rather not deal with complex reality of the real world. Such is the same with folks screaming about the online classifieds and such, prohibition to drive sex work even further underground and put women in more risk as the final result.

[zazen]

23. you wait a month to call us hysterical?

What a weird, specious, unfounded argument. Have you nothing better to do than search DU for month-old debates about trafficking and insert your own hysterical child rape defending apologia?

Take your "freaky" ness and defend child rapists elsewhere.

[libodem]

3. Hope some enforcement types follow this lead

And rescue more victims. The younger the girls the more tragic this seems. I wish I ran a shelter to protect them and deprogram all the abuse.

This is so sad. Oprah, once did an excellent program on human trafficking.

[MineralMan]

4. Disgusting. Law enforcement needs to be stinging

these people, not dope smokers.

[mistertrickster]

7. Stories like these are getting more media attention

Don't know if that means that the problem is getting worse or that we're finally hearing more about it.

Anyway, this is despicable and sickening. No social problem is worse than this kind of sex slavery of women and children, and it needs to be attacked with the full power of law enforcement.

[RZM]

9. And yet 'pimp' can be used as a laudatory term

I've never quite understood that. I would venture to say that most pimps are truly despicable people. The idea of using force to demand a woman hand over the money she makes from selling her body on the streets to strangers seems to me at least as bad as the johns who provide them with their living. If anything, it's a little worse.

[Liberal_in_LA]

10. horrible. Glad authorities are trying to end this crap

[russspeakeasy]

14. Pictures in the papers and jail sentences. That will help.

[NNN0LHI]

15. This needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law

[Nye Bevan]

16. This is not a prostitution issue. This is about child rape.

You can argue about whether or not Elliot Spitzer should have been prosecuted for patronizing a prostitute. But anyone involved with the rape of a 13 year old girl should go to prison for a long time.

[Aerows]

21. Exactly

A grown man patronizing an adult prostitute is one thing. A grown man forcing himself on a 12 year old is an entirely different situation. In that case, it's not just the pimp that needs to go to jail, the person who did such a thing needs to go to jail, too.

If you would force yourself on a 12 or 13 year old just because you paid for her, I'd say you would be likely to do it if you think you can get away with it.