Two Boston Women File Lawsuit Against Backpage.com for Child Sex Trafficking Allegations

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A legal team led by the firm Ropes & Gray filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court on Thursday against Backpage.com on behalf of two Boston women who have been victims of sex trafficking in the Commonewealth, according to a news release on Thursday.

The suit claims that the defendants — which include Backpage.com LLC, its parent company Camarillo Holdings LLC and New Times Media LLC — “created a business model to knowingly promote, support, contribute and benefit from child sex trafficking in the United States,” acts the suit claims are in violation of the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, as well as the Massachusetts Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2010.

More specifically, the lawsuit alleges that the two women — referred to as Jane Doe No. 1 and Jane Doe No. 2 — were each trafficked as part of separate “stables” of young girls who were moved repeatedly by traffickers from city to city after they placed advertisements in each city on Backpage.com.

Jane Doe No. 1 was previously a victim of sex trafficking in 2012 and 2013 at the age of 15 and 16 years old, when she was sold for sex more than 1,000 times over the course of 18 months in the Boston and Rhode Island areas. Jane Doe No. 2 was trafficked at the age of 15 in several locations across Massachusetts in 2010 and 2012, according to Thursday’s release.

“As a result of the determined efforts of Backpage.com, the market for online commercial sex has grown, the demand for children for sale has expanded, and the practices of Backpage.com contributed to fueling that demand,” said John Montgomery, a former managing partner of Ropes & Gray, which is leading a team of attorneys working on a pro bono basis for the case.

Montgomery told the Boston Business Journal that the legal team has been working with several groups “trying to be of assistance and trying to meet a legal need that these individual plaintiffs and others like them.”

The lawsuit, moreover, alleges that Backpage.com’s owners “intentionally played up” efforts to combat the online sex trade, a move that reportedly enabled the site to “shield itself from scrutiny.”

“The creators of Backpage.com systematically misrepresented their enterprise to law enforcement agencies, non-profit advocacy organizations, and the media about the defendants’ commitment to serve as the ‘sheriff’ of the internet to eliminate online child sex trafficking,” Montgomery said in a statement. “As a result of the scheme, Backpage.com secured the support of many opponents of child sex trafficking, substantially decreasing public, legislative, and media scrutiny of its enterprise, enabling its business strategy to thrive.”

For more information on the lawsuit, click here.