Why Fight? It could be YOUR daughter, YOUR niece, YOUR neighbor...
Over the last couple of days I've been in an ongoing dispute with the Village Voice and want to put it to bed. I've spent the last 2 years meeting with every expert on the issue of Human Trafficking that I can find, reading countless books, meeting with victims and former traffickers, and studying effective international models to combat trafficking. We are working with the State Dept, the Department of Homeland security, and multiple NGO's. We've built a technology task force inclusive of Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, and others. We've traveled domestically and abroad with the simple desire to help these girls and boys. Our goal has never been to inflate statistics, but rather to inform and inspire the public in an effort to address an issue that has been largely underserved. And I can assure you it's a big problem everywhere! From the little boys being raped in hotel rooms just outside of the Atlanta airport, to the girls drugged and trafficked in North Brazil, to the teenage girls pimped at truck stops in the Midwest, to the victims in Russia, India, Cambodia, right down to the girls being forced to sell themselves on Backpage.com.
I don't dispute nor have I ever disputed that the data around human trafficking is not sufficient, nor do I dispute that sex trafficking and voluntary prostitution statistics are often times conflated. In fact I wrote a post on Quora prior to the Village Voices article stating just that.
While on the Piers Morgan show, when presenting the data that I understood to be accurate, I miss spoke in saying that 100k-300k children are being trafficked in the US. The data point that I was referring to assumes 100k-300k children in the US are at risk of being Trafficked. I am by no means the authority on Human Trafficking statistics. There is great value in disputing the hard numbers and pointing to insufficient allocation of government spending and this effort would be commended if Backpage.com, which is owned and operated by the Village Voice, wasn't profiting off of the victims at the same time. Due to this, I question the bias data that is being delivered by the Village Voice that will earn 20 plus million dollars this year on Backpage.com, through facilitating the sale of women and girls for sex.
The Village Voice has repeatedly attempted to reduce sex trafficking to an "under-age" issue. And while they claim to spend millions of dollars fighting underage sex trafficking, they fail to address the countless number of girls that are over the age of 18 and being forced by their pimps and traffickers to post ads on Backpage.com. I have personally had conversations with many of these victims and have heard horror stories confirming this. Furthermore, if the Village Voice and Backpage.com really wanted to combat human trafficking it would create an ID based age gate system that would cost far less than a couple million dollars to build. Why don't they? I believe their real concern is that it would cost them far more than that in lost revenue if they were no longer to host this illicit activity. I am all for an open uncensored web. I support the democratization of media. I don't want to censor the Village Voice; I just want them to stop selling trafficking victims (people) next to couches and bicycles. I don't believe in companies choosing profits over human dignity. It has never been my aim to tell an adult woman what she can or can't do with her body, or where she can sell it. I simply desire to help those who are being sold in the sex trade by force, fraud, or coercion.
Village Voice, you have attempted to discredit the work my wife and I have done to fight human trafficking. If you don't feel that our ad campaign was effective, that's fine. If you want to claim that I'm stupid or a bad actor, I'll live with it. If you want to research the true statistics around human trafficking, I welcome it. But when you make bias claims in an effort to defend your bottom line, I stand up. If you make snide remarks about my wife's efforts domestically and abroad to fight human trafficking, I stand up.
You claim that we pal around with Snoop Dogg, an admitted trafficker. Indeed, we did meet with Snoop and his team and had a very direct conversation about human trafficking. We discussed how these girls suffer and the potential value that could be derived if he were to publicly stand up against sex trafficking to show pimps, it isn't cool anymore.
You attacked me about not supporting the Wyden Cornyn Bill:
Dig the poetry, @aplusk, but how about helping pass Cornyn-Wyden to provide teens with actual treatment and drop the myths and censorship?
My foundation has supported and will continue to support:
You have implied that we are not helping shelters for victims, to which I would encourage you to meet with a couple of the organizations we support, Gems Girls in NY or Cast in Los Angeles both amazing organizations helping countless victims. The girls there could probably teach you a lot about how your platform was used by traffickers to support their misery. I might not be doing enough, and I will continue to research and find better data, but I can sure as hell say, "I've never made a dime at the expense of a sex trafficking victim." Can you?
As for advertisers, it's my intention to continue to make them aware of who you are and what happens on your platform. They can do with that what they choose.
Thank you to everyone working to raise awareness about human trafficking.
To support the efforts of the DNA foundation:
http://Facebook.com/dnafoundation
