I remember hearing something about the government going after Backpage for things like this, and thought it would be held accountable. But this mother says that companies like Google and groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation are helping Backpage continue to make money off of aiding the sex trafficking of children. They're protecting Backpage due to "free speech" concerns while free speech is being attacked at every turn!
There is also a video at the link called "I am Jane Doe," about the victim's case. The petition was started by Nacole S. and the Dr. Oz Show and now has over 35,000 signatures.
From the petition:
"I was waiting to pick up my 15-year old daughter from track practice on an afternoon like any other. Minutes passed and then hours. I wondered where she was. Panic began to set in. My husband and I called the police, filed a missing person report, and started frantically searching for our baby girl. Only she was nowhere to be found. We were living every parent’s nightmare.
"When we recovered her 108 days later, we were so thankful to have found her alive. But then we found out the details. Our sweet girl had been bought and sold on the classified ads site, Backpage.com. She was repeatedly raped up to 15 times a day, all while hidden in plain sight on Backpage.com. A website making hundreds of millions of dollars a year off of human trafficking and exploitation of young girls.
"After her ordeal, my daughter and I sued Backpage to determine its role in her harm. The biggest surprise? Two special interest groups, the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) — funded by tech industry giants Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and others — actually intervened to file briefs supporting Backpage. These tech groups were actually defending Backpage’s right to host ads selling children. Amazingly, the CDT and EFF have also jumped into other Backpage cases around the country filed by children."
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