McCaskill, senate subcommittee releases investigation findings on Backpage website

After almost two years of investigating, Senator Claire McCaskill and her Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations colleagues released their findings on the website “Backpage.com.”

According to the subcommittee, Backpage is leading the online marketplace for commercial sex. The findings suggest that the website knowingly facilitated sex trafficking, especially the trafficking of minors.

“Backpage is a $600 million company, built on selling sex,” McCaskill said. “And importantly, on selling sex with children.”

The report claims that as early as 2006, executives from Backpage told moderators for the website to edit text of adult ads to conceal the true nature of the underlying transaction. In 2010, the company allegedly started using manual and automated methods of deleting key words that could suggest illegal activity. Some of the key words allegedly included “teenage,” “rape,” “young,” “amber alert,” “teen,” and “school girl.”

The report also cites internal documents showing that up to 80 percent of the site’s ads are edited to conceal the true nature of the underlying transaction.

“In one email, for example, a Backpage supervisor instructed moderators that ‘young ads do not get deleted unless they are clearly a child,'” McCaskill said.

The report goes on to suggest that there is evidence that leaders at the company were that aware the site facilitated prostitution and sex trafficking. Moderators told subcommittee members that “everyone at the company knew the adult-section ads were for prostitution.”

Senator McCaskill tweeted Tuesday morning, before the hearing that after the report was released Monday night, that Backpage had “shut down its sex classifieds.”

Backpage executives refused to answer questions during Tuesday’s hearing, invoking their fifth amendments rights to not answer anything that may incriminate themselves.

Throughout the investigation, the subcommittee claims that Backpage executives were often not cooperative with investigators, refusing to answer subpoenas or provide documents.

In the past, Backpage has defended themselves, claiming they are a host of content created by others and are immune to liability under the Communications Decency Act (CDA).

You can view a video of the hearing and other documents from the subcommittee here.