Craigslist Taking a Step in the Right Direction?

Craigslist removed access to the Adult Services section of its site in the United States today. Although Craigslist has not verified that the change is permanent, is this a hopeful sign of things to come for the website that has been reputed to be a popular forum for sex trafficking?

From the Wall Street Journal blog:

By Geoffrey A. Fowler

The Adult Services section of Craigslist has been removed and replaced with the word “censored” since Friday night.

It wasn’t immediately clear who was responsible for the move, which only impacted listings in cities in the U.S. Craigslist executives didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Controversy has swirled around the use of the classifieds site for prostitution, erotic massage and other adult services.

Last year, Craigslist instituted a manual screening system where each adult ad is reviewed by a lawyer for compliance with the law and Cragslist’s own standards before it gets posted. Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster has said the screening caused a steep drop in the number of such listings making it onto the site.

But the move wasn’t enough for some critics. Last month, 18 state attorneys general published an open letter to Craigslist demanding that it take down that portion of the site altogether.

Buckmaster has defended the Adult Services section, saying that shutting it down would only force such ads to other parts of Craigslist and other sites.

The censored label was reported earlier by TechCrunch.

Craigslist and Sexual Services

In January I attended a non-profit leadership conference where Lynn Lukow, the Executive Director of the Craigslist Foundation, spoke about the charitable contributions made by the website’s partner foundation. He focused his lecture on how Craigslist believes that strong communities are the cornerstone for a better society, how their company wants to do the most good for the most amount of people, how advocating for fair wages and decent jobs should be the focus of what they labeled themselves as the “independent sector.” Lukow also mentioned how Craigslist asks themselves over and over, “Are we doing the right thing?” He said if they find that they are not, then they need to regroup.

During the question and answer period at the end of his speech, I nervously stepped up the microphone and asked why, with all their attempts at building strong communities and their focus on “thinking holistically,” did they continue to allow the buying and selling of sexual services on their website? Did this really fit into their goals toward community development?

For years Craigslist has been under fire for allowing erotic services to be posted on their website. Most recently, the website has been blamed for the creation and growth of prostitution rings – some involving underage girls and boy - in several cities, including my most recent place of residence, Kansas City, Missouri.

Lukow replied, extremely flustered might I add, that Craigslist does not allow illegal activity to be sold on their website. But if illegal services are offered, there is very little they can do to stop the activity because so much is being bought and sold on Craigslist that it is nearly impossible to censor everything.

I asked if this was a moral dilemma for a foundation that prides themselves on utilitarian ideals. He said that Craigslist believes that communities can decide for themselves what should be bought and sold in their communities.

This comment was insinuating – hopefully unintentionally- that if a community decides that it is permissible to sell the sexual services of boys, girls, men and women then they should be allowed to do this through their website.

As one might expect, Lukow was regarded as a complete flop after these rushed, almost incoherent and false statements. His responses were counterproductive and caused an entire conference of 700 young people to think twice before visiting his website.

All across America, people are learning more about the injustices spread through Craigslist. They are boycotting it, using other websites like www.kijiji.com as a replacement. This movement has taken root and is beginning to make profound change.

Today in the news, there is a movement to stop the “Adult Services” portion of the website.

Check it out: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ijE8ghEyZTvfzAddOR1DDMwpU4RQD9HQ6FI80

Sign a petition: http://humantrafficking.change.org/petitions/view/petition_to_end_craigslist_sex_slave_trafficking

State Attorney General's Call on Craigslist to Remove Adult Services

From the Associated Press State AGs: Craigslist should drop adult services

HARTFORD, Conn. — State attorneys general nationwide are demanding that Craigslist remove its adult services section because they say the website cannot adequately block potentially illegal ads.

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal announced Tuesday that he and colleagues in 16 states have sent a letter calling on the classified advertising site to get rid of its adult services category. The attorneys general say Craigslist is not completely screening out ads that promote prostitution and child trafficking. The site creators pledged in 2008 to improve their policing efforts.

Other states joining the effort are Arkansas, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

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Craigslist's so-called Adult Services Section drew new attention in early August with an open letter from the Rebecca Project: "Craig, I am AK. In 2009, I met a man twice my age who pretended to be my boyfriend, and my life as an average girl— looking forward to college, doing my chores, and hanging out with my friends—ended. This “boyfriend” soon revealed he was a pimp. He put my picture on Craigslist, and I was sold for sex by the hour at truck stops and cheap motels, 10 hours with 10 different men every night. This became my life.

Men answered the Craigslist advertisements and paid to rape me. The $30,000 he pocketed each month was facilitated by Craigslist 300 times. I personally know over 20 girls who were trafficked through Craigslist. Like me, they were taken from city to city, each time sold on a different Craigslist site —Philadelphia, Dallas, Milwaukee, Washington D.C. My phone would ring, and soon men would line up in the parking lot. One Craigslist caller viciously brutalized me, threatening to dump my body in a river. Miraculously, I survived.

Craig, I am MC. I was first forced into prostitution when I was 11 years old by a 28 year-old man. I am not an exception. The man who trafficked me sold many girls my age, his house was called “Daddy Day Care.” All day, me and other girls sat with our laptops, posting pictures and answering ads on Craigslist, he made $1,500 a night selling my body, dragging me to Los Angeles, Houston, Little Rock —and one trip to Las Vegas in the trunk of a car.

I am 17 now, and my childhood memories aren’t of my family, going to middle school, or dancing at the prom. They are making my own arrangements on Craigslist to be sold for sex, and answering as many ads as possible for fear of beatings and ice water baths.

Craig, we write this letter so you will know from our personal experiences how Craigslist makes horrific acts like this so easy to carry out, and the men who carry out, and men who arrange them very rich. Craig, we know you oppose trafficking and exploitation. But right now, Craigslist is the choice of traffickers because it’s so well known and there are rarely consequences to using it for these illegal acts."

The saga continued, first with Craigslist's response arguing that "We work with law enforcement to bring to justice any criminals foolish enough to incriminate themselves by misusing our site, and want to make sure everything possible has been done in your cases. . . craigslist is used by more than 50 million Americans to facilitate billions of interactions each month, and criminal misuse of the site is quite rare. . . craigslist is one of the few bright spots and success stories in the critical fight against trafficking and child exploitation." This was followed by the Rebecca Project's question

"Where is your outrage? . . . Craig, if this were a bar and children were being raped in the basement we would close the bar down to protect the children. We are asking you to do what’s right, close down the adult services section until you have an effective solution that ensures children will not be bought and sold online."

Today, 17 state attorney generals called on Craigslist to shut down the Adult Services section. "Ads for prostitution, including ads trafficking children, continue to be a grave problem on Craigslist," said [Maryland Attorney General] Gansler. "While the company has made progress in blocking such ads, it is unfortunately not enough. More must be done to combat the human exploitation that these ads foster."

Trafficking of U.S. Children

From NPR, an advocate and survivor discuss sex trafficking of children within the U.S.:



According to Malika Saada Saar, co-founder of The Rebecca Project for Human Rights, "[T]he venue of Craigslist...is really evolving as almost a virtual slave market in which children are bought and sold over the internet."