‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good [people] do nothing,” said Edmund Burke. In the case of sex trafficking around the globe, what we are doing is worse than nothing.
Right here in the United States is a media company — Village Voice Media, the parent of New York’s own Village Voice — that has of late achieved notoriety for its role in facilitating sex slavery.
VVM’s online advertising arm, Backpage.com, has been under fire from law enforcement, clergy and anti-sex-trafficking groups for its role in assisting pimps who’ve kidnapped women and girls to sell for rape.According to the advertising consultancy AIM Group, Village Voice Media isresponsible for about70 percent of online-prostitution advertising, earning it a cool $24 million a year.
Earning it off of incredible human suffering, mind you.
Some actually defend backpage.com’s “right” to provide a forum to peddle women and girls to serve as sex slaves. They throw their hands in the air and chant, “First Amendment.”
Give me a break. There may be no legal remedy here, because of the protection these creeps receive from the Communications Decency Act. But if activists can organize a boycott to try to force Rush Limbaugh off the air for calling a woman a “slut” and “prostitute,” then there is no reason the same shouldn’t be done to Village Voice Media for facilitating the monsters who force girls and women into actual prostitution.
No reputable advertiser should be allowed to be associated with any Village Voice property unless the company stops running these ads.
According to Equality NOW,an international human-rights group, this VVM company doesn’t just help American men prey on women and girls. It’s an international scourge as well, operating in 14 countries outside the United States. It advertises for sex tours — and if you think that the girls who are used in sex tours have made a “choice” to be there, I’ve got a bridge in Alaska to sell you.
Tzili Mor, Equality Now’s New York director, told me,“All over the worldwhereBackpage.comoperates it potentiallyadvertises for underage girls — and sometimes women of age — to be used as sex slaves.Some areabducted, held and raped. It’s a really easy way to [procure] women the way you would buy a sofa or table for your house. The Village Voice is normalizing the transaction of buying women.”
Backpage.com claims it is taking measures to protect against sex trafficking. Guess what? They’re not working. As The Post recently reported, a 15-year-old Long Island girl was kidnapped, drugged and gang-raped by pimps who then sold her on Backpage.com. It could be your daughter or niece or sister next.
Attorneys general from 48 states have written Village Voice Media urging it to abandon its role as accessory to pimpery.According to the letter, Backpage.com Vice President Carl Ferrer admitted to them that “the company identifies more than 400 ‘adult services’ posts every month that may involve minors.”
In 2011, Backpage.com made 2,695 reports to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children regarding ads on the site that it suspects involve the sexual trafficking of children.
The AGs called Backpage.com a “hub for [the trafficking of minors]” and deemed the company’s efforts to limit ads soliciting sex with children to be ineffective.
Of course, minors aren’t the only issue here. No matter her age, a woman is not a piece of property to be bought and sold for the sick pleasure of a man who wants to pay to rape her.
Equality Now’s Mor says, “We can’t sit quietly and idly by while big business is protected at the expense of women’s rights. It’s a sad statement that the US cannot get its act together to protect girls and womenfrombeing raped. We need to be outraged by this.”
I’m outraged. Are you?
Kirsten Powers is a Fox News political analyst.