The classified service website Backpage.com has come under renewed scrutiny over its use by sex offenders just as it fights a lawsuit in the supreme court.
Police in Indiana said Darren Vann, a registered sex offender suspected of multiple murders, met his latest alleged victim through Backpage.
Vann, 43, was charged on Monday with murdering Afrikka Hardy, 19, who was found strangled at a motel in Hammond, near Chicago. The former marine has confessed to killing seven women and has hinted at more victims over a 20-year span, police said.
The investigation renewed controversy over Backpage as the US supreme court in Washington prepared to hear arguments on Tuesday in a case filed by three sex trafficking victims who say the website helps promote child exploitation.
Lawyers for the three girls said they were sold as prostitutes in advertisements on the adult services section of the site.
A second, separate federal case against the site was filed in Boston last week.
Backpage described the lawsuits as an attempt at censorship and cited the Communications Decency Act, saying it provides immunity from the activities of its members or users.
Activists rejected that defence. “It needs to be shut down immediately,” said Taina Bien-Aimé, executive director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW).
The case in Indiana and the supreme court case shared a common thread, she said. “It’s violence against women. Backpage is facilitating the trafficking of human beings – the exploitation of women and children who are being commodified and bought and sold.”
The website did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Backpage became a leading destination for sex service advertisements after its rival Craigslist bowed to pressure from campaigners and shut down its own adult services section in 2010.
Backpage’s adult services section generated at least $28.9m in 2012, according to media consultant estimates, a significant revenue source for its owner, Village Voice Media.
Pressure mounted on the site after a handful of grisly murders in Michigan and South Carolina were found to have one fact in common: the victims, all young women, had posted on the website.
A boycott from advertisers such as American Airlines prompted the publishing group to separate its controversial cash cow from the Village Voice, a weekly New York paper, and 12 sister publications, including the LA Weekly. They were brought under a new company, Village Media Group.
Backpage’s owner, Village Voice Media, which is based in Phoenix, Arizona, will cite the Communications Decency Act in its attempt to have this week’s suit thrown out of the supreme court.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is among the groups urging the court to crack down. “Don’t let the smiling faces in the ‘escort’ ads fool you,” John Ryan, the NCMEC’s president, wrote in a Seattle Times comment piece. “Many of these children have been beaten, tortured and threatened into submission.”
