Since the shutdown of the classified advertising site Backpage.com in April of this year, followed by passage of the federal FOSTA/SESTA law designed to curtail online sex advertising later that same month, at least one major American city has seen a spike in street crimes related to the illegal sex trade.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported on Monday that crimes in that city related to “pimping” and sex trafficking have tripled in 2018.
“The government shutdown of Backpage.com this year sought to curtail the type of sex-for-sale classified ads that made the company infamous. Months later, though, the closure has prompted an increase in sex trafficking on San Francisco streets,” The Chronicle reported. “Violence against both sex workers and people soliciting sex is a concerning trend as well.”
Pike Long, deputy director of the San Francisco sex-workers health clinic St. James Infirmary, told the paper that the FOSTA law is directly responsible for the new rise in sex-related crimes.
“Without being able to advertise online, a huge number of sex workers were forced to go outside, and many have reported that former pimps came out of the woodwork offering to ‘manage’ their business again since they were now rendered unable to find and screen clients online,” Long said. “The very bill that was supposed to stop trafficking has quite literally given formerly irrelevant traffickers new life.”
San Francisco is likely typical of American cities since FOSTA became law. As AVN.com reported, police in Indianapolis were complaining in July that the law had pushed sex workers off the internet and onto the streets, causing cops charged with investigating sex traffickers to feel that they were “running blind.”
Nonetheless, a seeming wave of panic over “sex trafficking” has continued. As online political magazine Reason pointed out last week, headlines in the media, including The New York Post, reported, “123 missing children found in Michigan during sex trafficking operation.”
But as a statement by the United States Marshals Service made clear, while 123 children were “found,” only four had actually been listed as “missing.” The remainder were located at their homes, most often with their own parents.
Photo by Kay Chernush for the U.S. State Department / Wikimedia Commons
