ATTORNEYS REPRESENTING CRAIGSLIST told Congress on September 15 that the ubiquitous web classifieds site was closing its adult section.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Village Voice Media, which owns this newspaper, owns the classified site Backpage.com. In addition to used cars, jobs, and couches, readers can also find adult ads on Backpage; for this reason, Women's Funding Network and their allies have often called attention to the site, sometimes going so far as to call for its closure.
Certainly we have a stake in this discussion. And we do not object to those who suggest an apparent conflict of interest. We sat quietly and did not respond as the WFN held symposiums across America—from Seattle to Miami—denouncing Backpage. Indeed, we were never asked for response.
But then we looked at the "science" and the media's willingness to regurgitate, without question, these incredible statistics. In the interest of a more informed discussion, we decided to write.
Under intense scrutiny from the government and crusading advocacy groups, as well as state attorneys general, owner Craig Newmark memorably applied the label "Censored" in his classifieds where adult advertising once appeared.
During the same September hearing of a subcommittee of the House Judiciary, members of Congress listened to vivid and chilling accounts regarding underage prostitution.
The congressmen heard testimony from half a dozen nonprofit executives and law enforcement officials. But the most alarming words of the day came from Deborah Richardson, the chief program officer of the Women's Funding Network. She told legislators that juvenile prostitution is exploding at an astronomical rate.
"An independent tracking study released today by the Women's Funding Network shows that over the past six months, the number of underage girls trafficked online has risen exponentially in three diverse states," Richardson claimed. "Michigan: a 39.2 percent increase; New York: a 20.7 percent increase; and Minnesota: a staggering 64.7 percent increase."
In the wake of this bombshell revelation, Richardson's disturbing figures found their way into some of the biggest newspapers in the country. USA Today, the Houston Chronicle, the Miami Herald, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and the Detroit Free Press all repeated the dire statistics as gospel.
The successful assault on Craigslist was followed by a cross-country tour by Richardson and the Women's Funding Network.
None of the media that published Richardson's astonishing numbers bothered to examine the study at the heart of Richardson's claim. If they had, they would have found what we did after asking independent experts to examine the research: It's junk science.
After all, the numbers are all guesses.
The data are based merely on looking at photos on the Internet. There is no science.
Eric Grodsky, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota who teaches about proper research construction, says that the study is fundamentally flawed.
"The method's not clean," Grodsky says. "You couldn't get this kind of thing into a peer-reviewed journal. There are just too many unanswered questions about their methodology."
Ric Curtis, the chairman of the Anthropology Department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, led a Justice Department-funded study on juvenile prostitution in New York City in 2008. He's highly skeptical of the claims in the Women's Funding Network's study.
"I wouldn't trust those numbers," Curtis says. "This new study seems pretty bogus."
In fact, the group behind the study admits as much. It's now clear they used fake data to deceive the media and lie to Congress. And it was all done to score free publicity and a wealth of public funding.
"We pitch it the way we think you're going to read it and pick up on it," says Kaffie McCullough, the director of Atlanta-based anti-prostitution group A Future Not a Past. "If we give it to you with all the words and the stuff that is actually accurate—I mean, I've tried to do that with our PR firm, and they say, 'They won't read that much.'"
A FUTURE NOT a Past is a product of the Atlanta Women's Foundation, the Juvenile Justice Fund, and Harold and Kayrita Anderson's foundation. To measure the amount of juvenile prostitution in the state, the consortium hired the Schapiro Group, an Atlanta business-consulting operation.
The Schapiro Group members weren't academic researchers, and had no prior experience studying prostitution. In fact, the group was best known for research paid for by the American Chamber of Commerce Executives. The study found—surprise—that membership in the Chamber of Commerce improves a business's image.
The consultants came up with a novel, if not very scientific, method for tabulating juvenile prostitutes: They counted pictures of young-looking women on online classified sites.
"That's one of the first problems right there," Grodsky says. "These advertisers are in the business of making sales, and there's a market for young-looking women. Why would you trust that the photographs are accurate?"
In other words, the ads, like the covers of women's magazines, are relentlessly promoting fantasy. Anyone who has tried online dating understands the inherent trouble with trusting photographs.
Even if the person placing the advertisement is the one in the picture, there's no telling how old the photo is, says David Finkelhor, the director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire.
"How do you know when the pictures were taken?" Finkelhor asks. "It's not illegal for an 18-year-old who's selling sex to put up a picture of herself from when she was 16."
And if, for the sake of argument, the photos were an accurate portrayal, how do you train those viewing the photographs to guess the correct age?
In fact, you don't.
Before conducting its full study, the Schapiro Group tested the accuracy of its method in a sample of 100 observers. At one point, the 100 observers are described as a "random sample." Elsewhere, they are described as "balanced by race and gender."
These 100 adults were shown pictures of teenagers and young adults whose ages were known, and were asked to guess whether they were younger than 18.
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I find it amazing that the same publication that has pages and pages among "sex for sell" ads, is running a story about sex trafficking.
"Certainly we have a stake in this discussion. ..."
at that point - this media outlet, who also runs a sex for sale website, this media outlet's credibility dropped off the charts.
You don't need statistics to rate you, Village Voice, there is no chart for credibility on which you would even show up.
i guess if you are fucked up enough to deny the sex trade to help your cause, you are fucked up enough to not be able to afford use of a film title.
This is the problem with Mainstream media: they claim to be sober and responsible, but they really uncritically trumpet press releases from their favored positions. In this particular "men are scum and women are victims" area, they are clueless: remember the breathless story that domestic violence spikes on Superbowl day? Widely repeated but totally false. Not that it stopped our own DA, Garcetti from repeating it. Or that huge percentages of college women were sexually assaulted? Again trumpeted wihtout anyone reading the supporting "study" that defined even an unwanted glance or single remark or even "fear of" unwanted attention as an assault.
Anorexia was another one: primarily confined to white uppper middle class kids, media made it seem as if the majority of US females teenagers were as clueless as they are (then they run stories on "epidemics of obesity" and a week later the "tyranny of thin" which obviously wouldn't exist if we had an "epidemic of obesity.")
Part of the problem is the MSM's uncritical acceptance of news from favored people like women's groups. The other is that few real "reporters" are left: they are "journalists" who are credentialed but not smart, skeptical only as to whoever is socially on the outs and who therefore function more as a PR arm for whoever seems the most socially acceptable or has the loudest voice.
You & author of this article bit the bait hook line and sinker. More social conservative pandering to male egos keeping them in an infantile state handing them yet another prostitute to parade around in public representing womankind in your minds. Profiteers of strife Mcculough and Palin are chump change. There's always a John, but so long as they keep up the hatred on prostitutes as the root of all evil, the pimp and the john get by on murder. You see, Sir, so long as YOU are fed the illusion it's someone else's doing, your ego stroked by corporate handlers, you're a slave to your own weaknesses. Bash feminists as the root cause of your weakness, when your handlers authoring the narrative keep you stuck on stupid using womankind as collateral damage, war games chaff, and legislative punching bags to infinity and beyond. The last person anyone should aspire to be in America is a white woman. The silent majority who goes to pains to be fair, is denied equal rights constitutionally and religiously, and is abused unmercifully. The conservative right 'movement' is a rally cry for every hateful, predatory, materialist, avaricious moron seeking out a scapegoat to project their own irresponsibility onto. Limbaugh, Falwell, Newt-- all standing on a podium demanding womankind give them her breast or else. This is what's passing for manhood in America. Middle aged Peter pans selling their own Anita Bryant utopia.
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/conte... Keep beating on women, it sells more abortions, which you can also blame women only over! Raise your daughters to be feeble minded bots, manipulative shrews trolling for gullible males, and best of all never ever teach them how to defend themselves from psychological or physical violence. Curious how the institution of marriage is perverted by social conservatives demanding socially acceptable roles of prostitution, only to get indignant about the free agents who didn't bother having a pimp.
I can't imagine a greater sales tool than crabs in a barrel politics posing as religious right when it's satanism they've embraced disgracing the name of Christendom 'doing the lords work'. It worked the previous century, and the century before that-- so that merits 'conserving'? Murdoch, Koch, Limbaugh, Palin-- is anyone allowed to earn an honest living without getting sucked up into the drama of the wh*re's of babylon? How long do you think you can get by in life deflecting accountability for yourselves to service your ego's calling that 'manhood'? David Horowitz is a 72 yr old man who made a career out of spitting on his parents and his children. It's all about him, don't you know?
Super Bowl 2011:
According to the media hype There was supposed to be hundreds of thousands of under age child sex slaves kidnapped and forced to have sex with super bowl fans. At the Dallas Super Bowl 2011.
WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL OF THEM?????
WHERE ARE THE THOUSANDS OF SUPER BOWL KIDNAPPED FORCED CHILD SEX SLAVES???????
Politicians, women's groups, police and child advocates were predicting that up to 100,000 hookers would be shipped into Dallas for the Super Bowl.
It was all a big lie told by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, and various anti-prostitution groups: Traffick911, Not for Sale, Change.org, Polaris Project, Salvation Army and the Dallas Women’s Foundation, which are anti-prostitution groups that tell lies in order to get grant money from the government and charities to pay their high salaries, and get huge amounts of money into their organizations. As proved in the links below:
Top FBI agent in Dallas (Robert Casey Jr.) sees no evidence of expected spike in child sex trafficking:
“Among those preparations was an initiative to prevent an expected rise in sex trafficking and child prostitution surrounding the Super Bowl. But Robert Casey Jr., special agent in charge of the FBI’s Dallas office, said he saw no evidence that the increase would happen, nor that it did.“In my opinion, the Super Bowl does not create a spike in those crimes,” he said. “The discussion gets very vague and general. People mixed up child prostitution with the term human trafficking, which are different things, and then there is just plain old prostitution.”
http://www.dallasnews.com/spor...
This myth of thousands or millions of underage sex slaves tries to make every sports fan a sex criminal. No matter what the sport is, or in what country it is in.
Brian McCarthy isn't happy. He's a spokesman for the NFL. Every year he's forced to hear why his customers are adulterers and child molesters. Brian McCarthy says the sport/super bowl sex slave story is a urban legend, with no truth at all.
These anti-prostitution groups lobby the government in a big way, getting Politicians to truly believe their lies.
I would like to see a news organization do a full report on the lies, myths and exaggerated numbers being told about sex trafficking slaves. But they won't do it because they are all sacred of the anti-prostitution groups, so the media continues to tell lies and only report what the anti-prostitution groups and politicians tell them to. The articles about the super bowl and sport sex slaves, has been proved wrong many times, but news organizations still report about it, as if it were fact.
Below are the few brave souls that told the truth in the media:Sex Trafficking in Sports Events links:
http://sextraffickingtruths.bl...
http://bebopper76.wordpress.co...
Dallas TV News show about super bowl sex slave myth:
http://www.wfaa.com/sports/foo...
Dallas Newspaper article:
What makes me sad about this is how much of a setback this study is to become. There are plenty of instances of trafficking, not just in America, and I feel that if the information listed here ends up making its way mainstream (and eventually, it will), then it will be more of a step backward for those trying to fight underage sex trafficking than any lack of awareness could be.
sex trafficking is a global issue watch this documentary by MTV Exit it provides a compelling look into this dark, inhuman, and exploitative world and shows how each one of us can help to prevent modern-day slavery.
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