Labeling the federal prosecution of Backpage.com founders Michael Lacey and James Larkin a “witch hunt”—an increasingly familiar phrase in recent months—the libertarian political magazine Reason argues in its December issue that public perception, guided by media reporting, of the Backpage case is very different from the actual charges against Lacey and Larkin.
“The pair had been under escalating legal and political pressure for years, with an array of high-profile politicians and law enforcement figures accusing Backpage of abetting sexual exploitation. The site's ‘Adult’ section housed ads for escorts, dominatrixes, strippers, webcammers, and other legal categories of adult entertainment—but media coverage of the bust framed it as a victory against ‘human trafficking,’” wrote Reason Associate Editor Elizabeth Nolan Brown.
“The actual charges included in the federal indictment against Lacey, Larkin, and several former colleagues say otherwise,” she continued. “They stand accused of violating the Travel Act by facilitating prostitution, of money laundering, and of conspiracy.”
The site, as a company rather than as individuals, did plead guilty to one count of “human trafficking,” however, stemming from a case in Texas in which a 15-year-old girl was repeatedly hired out for prostitution through Backpage ads, by a man named Jovan Miles who was sentenced to 40 years behind bars for trafficking the teenager.
Nonetheless, Brown writes that before its shutdown by the federal government in April, Backpage served as an asset to law enforcement in tracking down actual sex traffickers.
“’Can't do this without your help,’ an FBI agent working juvenile exploitation cases wrote to Backpage staff in 2015,” Brown reports, ‘one of hundreds of positive comments the platform received from law enforcement officers. And since the site was seized in April, numerous local news reports have cited cops saying it's now harder to find missing young people and to nab potential pimps.”
The writer blames the public perception of Backpage as a cauldron of illegal sex trafficking on “a strange-bedfellows coalition of the Christian right, progressive feminists, and opportunistic lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle.”
Backpage, Brown claims, was actually the target of second choice for federal prosecutors who initially set their sites on the Craigslist platform. But when Criagslist agreed to shut down the section of its classified ad site labeled “adult,” the feds backed off—even though ads for adult services including prostitution simply scattered to other sections of Craigslist.
When law enforcement made a similar demand of Backpage, “its founders refused, arguing, with Craigslist as evidence, that doing so would make no difference.”
The decision appears to have led to their ultimate undoing, as Lacey and Larkin now face a trial in 2020, with prosecutors already moving to seize their assets, worth up to $100 million, as AVN.com reported.
“They're worried about how they'll pay their lawyers if this persists, especially with all the extra work prosecutors have been creating,” Brown writes. “The state has also made moves intended to separate them from their current lawyers. ‘It's just a brutal prosecution,’ Larkin says. ‘They're going to bend us to their will.’”
Photos by Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, Sacramento County Sheriff's Office
