In April 2018, federal authorities closed down the online classified ad site Backpage.com and filed a 93-count indictment against founders Michal Lacey and James Larkin, as well as several other top executives, charging them with facilitating prostitution, momey laundering and other serious crimes.
But as they await a trial date that has been pushed all the way to May 5 of this year, more than two years after the original indictments, Lacey and Larkin find themselves facing a civil lawsuit from a New York woman who says that she was sex-trafficked via the site starting at age 12, according to a New York Times report.
The woman, 23-year-old Melanie Thompson, claims in the lawsuit that she was “repeatedly raped, sexually abused and exploited by men” who paid for sex with her.
While Thompson says that she was trafficked by a man who used the classified ad site to advertise her for sex, she asserts in the lawsuit that Lacey, Larkin and the other Backpage execs knew she was a minor at the time and not only allowed her to be advertised for sex on the site, but actively took measures to conceal the fact that she was underage, according to a report by WNBC TV in New York.
The man who actually advertised and sold her on the site held her against her will to do so, according to the Times account of the lawsuit. Though her captivity and trafficking began prior to her captor advertising on Backpage, the lawsuit says, there was an “influx” of buyers once she was advertised on the site, many of whom were “more violent” than her previous purchasers.
The lawsuit also targets former Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer, who has pled guilty to conspiracy in the case and cooperated with investigators. Ferrer is now awaiting sentencing in the case.
Lacey and Larkin have pled not guilty and vowed to fight the charges, though an attempt to claim that the government violated their First Amendment rights by shutting down the site fizzled in a federal court hearing last summer.
Prior to passage of New York’s Child Victims Act last year, many Backpage victims could not file lawsuits due to the state’s narrow statute of limitations, according to the Times account. But under the new law, underage sexual abuse victims may file suits any time before they reach age 55.
Photos by Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, Sacramento County Sheriff's Office
