Backpage was hit with lawsuits saying it promotes the crime by rewriting ads offering children for commercial sex. By Sebastien Malo. I Am Jane Doe, narrated by Academy Award nominee Jessica Chastain and directed by award-winning filmmaker Mary Mazzio, chronicles the epic battle that several American mothers are waging on behalf of their middle-school daughters, victims of sex trafficking on Backpage. The documentary follows the journey of these young girls and their mothers in real time as they run headlong into a collision course not only with Backpage but with judges, powerful corporations, special interest groups, and an outdated internet freedom law that has been interpreted by federal judges to protect websites from any responsibility for hosting ads which sell underage girls.
Fifteen minutes from where I live? Until last month, when Backpage abruptly shut its "adult" section, abused minors were being sold on the website as "escorts", alongside second-hand laptops and kitchen appliances. On Tuesday, Backpage was hit with lawsuits saying it promotes the crime by rewriting ads offering children for commercial sex.
Each year, some , to , children are at risk of being trafficked for commercial sex in the United States, according to the U. Department of Justice. In , Backpage made more than 80 percent of its revenue from commercial sex advertising in the United States, according to a U. Senate report released last month. Though Backpage may have yielded to the pressures of government officials and campaigners, the sex trafficking victims and their mothers haven't forgotten how it turned a profit by running ads from their pimps offering the girls for money, Mazzio said.
In her documentary film, "I Am Jane Doe", Mazzio chronicles the stories of sex-trafficked teens who have embarked on quixotic legal battles against the online classified advertising website, among the world's largest. Backpage's general counsel, Liz McDougall, said she could not comment on the film because she had not seen it. Jane Doe is the name given to anonymous legal parties in U.
The characters wage uphill battles, with Backpage repeatedly triumphing in court by arguing it is hosting content, not creating it, and is thus protected from liability by the federal Communications Decency Act CDA. The CDA, passed in , was intended to protect free speech online by removing liability for a newspaper, say, for libelous comments posted on their websites by readers. The law has since shielded social media and e-commerce sites from liability in a variety of lawsuits. Mazzio, a former Olympic rower, said she was stunned by the perseverance the young protagonists had displayed in taking on such a big enterprise against all odds.
