Legal News

Mom Sues Sex Ad Website for Aiding Daughter's Pimp

By Matthew Heller, Editor

The mother of a 15-year-old Missouri girl who worked as a child prostitute has opened up a new front in the legal war on online sex ads, suing the publisher of the Backpage.com website for aiding and abetting prostitution and child pornography.

The plaintiff, identified only as P.K., alleges Village Voice Media ?victimized? her daughter by publishing classified ads in which a pimp advertised the teenager's ?services as an escort for sex.? The ads allegedly included ?explicit nude photographs? of the girl, who was 14 at the time.

A federal law ? Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act ? broadly protects interactive computer services from liability for content posted by website users. P.K. claims that ?safe harbor? does not apply to Village Voice because it ?aided and abetted [the pimp] in the crime of facilitating prostitution? and in the ?exploitation of children and child pornography.?

The pimp, Latasha Jewell McFarland, pleaded guilty to prostitution charges earlier this month. Backpage.com is ?a facilitator of child pornography and facilitator of child prostitution,? P.K. says in a lawsuit filed in St. Louis last week.

The case appears to be the first in which a private individual has sued a website publisher over sex ads. But it follows the blueprint of South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster, who has threatened Craigslist with criminal prosecution for posting ads that allegedly solicit prostitution or contain pornographic images.

A South Carolina judge last month dismissed Craigslist's preemptive suit against McMaster in which the publisher argued the ads were protected under Section 230 and the First Amendment.

But Village Voice could still defend P.K.'s suit by following the blueprint of a decision in which the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Craigslist could not be sued for ?causing? ads to be posted that violate housing discrimination laws.

?Causation ... must refer to causing a particular statement to be made,? the court noted in Chicago Lawyers Committee v. Craigslist, Inc., 519 F.3d 666 (2008), and ?Nothing in the service craigslist offers induces anyone to post any particular listing or express a preference for discrimination.?

Backpage.com's terms of use prohibit ?Posting any solicitation directly or in 'coded' fashion for any illegal service exchanging sexual favors for money or other valuable consideration? or ?Posting any material on the Site that exploits minors in any way.?

According to P.K., that didn't stop McFarland from posting ads as part of the sexual trafficking of her daughter. To show Village Voice ?knowingly? aided and abetted the pimp, she invokes the ?ostrich rule,? which says that "knowledge of a particular fact may be inferred from a deliberate or intentional ignorance or deliberate or intentional blindness to the existence of that fact."

?[A]t best, defendant was deliberately ignorant of the specific crimes that were being committed on its website,? P.K. argues.

McMaster has made a similar argument in his anti-Craigslist crusade, comparing the website to a motel owner who knows prostitutes are conducting business on their premises and fails to do anything about it.

But like those of McMaster, P.K.'s allegations are far too vague, with nothing in her complaint to suggest Backpage.com specifically induced McFarland ? or any other pimp, for that matter ? to ?post any particular listing.? Chicago Lawyers involved housing ads but the 7th Circuit's reasoning on ?causation? should apply equally to sex ads:

If craigslist 'causes' discriminatory notices, then so do phone companies and courier services (and, for that matter, the firms that make the computers and software that owners use to post their notices online), yet no one could think that Microsoft and Dell are liable for 'causing' discriminatory advertisements.

Craigslist is fighting the dismissal of its suit against McMaster but, in response to intense pressure from law enforcement officials, has dropped "Erotic Services" ads.

By Matthew Heller
On Point

Full post as published by On Point News on September 25, 2010 (boomark / email).