New York Times: “As Prostitutes Turn to Craigslist, Law Takes Notice”

As a follow up to Children for Sale on Craigslist, we are pleased to see that law enforcement is becoming savvy to the sex trade’s use of this venue. The New York Times reports on September 4:

“Craigslist has become the high-tech 42nd Street, where much of the solicitation takes place now,” said Richard McGuire, Nassau’s assistant chief of detectives…

…in Jacksonville, Fla., a single ad the police posted for three days in August netted 33 men, among them a teacher and a firefighter. “We got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hits” in phone calls and e-mail messages, said John P. Hartley, the assistant chief sheriff there…

On one recent day…some 9,000 listings were added to the site’s “Erotic Services” category in the New York region alone: Most offered massage and escorts, often hinting at more…

The police say that Craigslist has changed prostitution’s patterns, with people roaming the country, setting up shop for a week or two in hotels – often near airports – where they use laptop computers and cellphones to arrange encounters for hundreds of dollars, then moving on to their next location…

The police say the focus on such misconduct is worthwhile because prostitution is often linked to other crimes involving drugs, weapons, physical abuse and exploitation of minors and immigrants.

Law enforcement officials ask why Craigslist even includes Erotic Services among its 191 categories. Mr. Buckmaster, the company president, said the site created that category “at the request of our users” for legitimate massage, escorts and exotic dancers.


Equality Now, an organization that combats violence and discrimination against women, recently sent us an update on its actions with respect to Craigslist:

We have been informing law enforcement agencies of various Craigslist postings that most likely appear to involve human trafficking. These include the following:

  1. A woman from Ecuador being pimped from an apartment in Queens in 2004. The guy posting her on CL was arrested and charged with promoting prostitution. The woman was also charged.


  2. The sex tour company Jumpoff Destinations.


  3. A woman pimping several other women in the Hudson Valley last year. She was arrested.


  4. The pimp “John T.” in 2004 posted more that half a dozen women on CL in Westchester, Rockland, and the Bronx. Bronx DA was informed of this and I believe he was arrested.


  5. A series of Asian Massage parlors in Manhattan, 7 or 8 of them, was turned over to the sex crime unit of the New York County DA last summer. I believe that two of the locations were raided. In at least one they arrested the madam but at our request did not arrest the women being prostituted.


  6. We established contact with a man in Vancouver last summer who was trying to entice women from the Philippines to come to Vancouver to work as escorts and to make pornographic films. Extensive Email communications were turned over to the Vancouver PD.


  7. Information on what appeared to be a network bringing women for prostitution from Florida to Westchester County was turned over to the FBI earlier this year.


  8. A woman seeking other women to work as escorts in Las Vegas via CL was contacted. Pretending to be a pimp I arranged to provide her with Asian women on a rotating basis. With Melissa Farley’s assistance I was put in touch with a Las Vegas PD Lieutenant who is now investigating this.


  9. Currently compiling information on a prostitution network operating in New York’s northern suburbs and Fairfield County which since the end of May has advertised at least ten women with at least ten different phone numbers on CL. They post everyday and have been in operation since at least January of 2007.


  10. Earlier this summer informed the Seattle PD of sex tour ads on the erotic services section of CL because Washington has a state sex tourism statute.


See also:

Chicago Tribune: “10 charged in Internet prostitution: Illinois, Indiana ring placed ads on Craigslist” (12/21/07)
…investigators monitored advertisements in the “erotic services” section of Craigslist. The ring operated in Illinois and Indiana and involved at least 11 women, some of whom were high school freshmen and sophomores, he said.


“If you’re looking for exploitation at its absolute worst, this is it,” Dart said…

Two of the juveniles—one from Iowa—were runaways, officials said, adding the alleged leaders recruited some women from a strip club and found others at a currency exchange…

“The erotic services link on Craigslist provides a free advertising network for prostitutes and pimps, and it’s unrealistic for us to believe company officials are unaware of these ads,” Dart said.

Ad posted on 9/9/07 to Western Mass Craigslist, Erotic Services category:
Hot Phone Sex OR Meet Horney Women Seeking Erotic Encounters – w4m
“Seeking Guys For Discreet Affairs – Casual Dating – Phone Sex – One Night Stands”

Children for Sale on Craigslist
…a significant percentage of these ads on Craigslist do not advertise solely “legal escort services” as Craigslist may like to believe. Instead, a considerable percentage of the ads are a thinly veiled guise for one of the many faces of human trafficking that exists here in the United States…

Craigslist: How to Report Exploitation of Minors

Belltown Messenger: “Greed, Lust and Ink”
…the only motivation for running escort ads in the first place is unbridled greed-and these supposedly liberal publications can’t have it both ways when defending the rights of society’s underdogs in their editorial content…

Prostitution: Factsheet on Human Rights Violations
 The average age of entry into prostitution is 13 years (M.H. Silbert and A.M. Pines, 1982, “Victimization of street prostitutes”, Victimology: An International Journal, 7: 122-133) or 14 years (D. Kelly Weisberg, 1985, “Children of the Night: A Study of Adolescent Prostitution”, Lexington, Mass, Toronto). Most of these 13 or 14 year old girls were recruited or coerced into prostitution. Others were “traditional wives” without job skills who escaped from or were abandoned by abusive husbands and went into prostitution to support themselves and their children. (Denise Gamache and Evelina Giobbe, Prostitution: Oppression Disguised as Liberation, National Coalition against Domestic Violence, 1990)…

Estimates of the prevalence of incest among prostitutes range from 65% to 90%. The Council for Prostitution Alternatives, Portland, Oregon Annual Report in 1991 stated that: 85% of prostitute/clients reported history of sexual abuse in childhood; 70% reported incest. The higher percentages (80%-90%) of reports of incest and childhood sexual assaults of prostitutes come from anecdotal reports and from clinicians working with prostitutes…

Pimps target girls or women who seem naive, lonely, homeless, and rebellious. At first, the attention and feigned affection from the pimp convinces her to “be his woman.” Pimps ultimately keep prostituted women in virtual captivity by verbal abuse–making a woman feel that she is utterly worthless: a toilet, a piece of trash; and by physical coercion–beatings and the threat of torture. 80% to 95% of all prostitution is pimp-controlled. (Kathleen Barry, The Prostitution of Sexuality, 1995, New York, New York University Press)…

“About 80% of women in prostitution have been the victim of a rape. It’s hard to talk about this because..the experience of prostitution is just like rape. Prostitutes are raped, on the average, eight to ten times per year. They are the most raped class of women in the history of our planet. ” (Susan Kay Hunter and K.C. Reed, July, 1990 “Taking the side of bought and sold rape”, speech at National Coalition against Sexual Assault, Washington, D.C.)…

83% of prostitutes are victims of assault with a weapon. (National Coalition Against Sexual Assault)…

A Canadian Report on Prostitution and Pornography concluded that girls and women in prostitution have a mortality rate 40 times higher than the national average. (Special Committee on Pornography and Prostitution, 1985, Pornography and Prostitution in Canada 350)…

One woman (in another study) said about her health: “I’ve had three broken arms, nose broken twice, [and] I’m partially deaf in one ear. I have a small fragment of a bone floating in my head that gives me migraines. I’ve had a fractured skull. My legs ain’t worth shit no more; my toes have been broken. My feet, bottom of my feet, have been burned; they’ve been whopped with a hot iron and clothes hanger–the hair on my pussy had been burned off at one time. I have scars. I’ve been cut with a knife, beat with guns, two by fours. There hasn’t been a place on my body that hasn’t been bruised somehow, some way, some big, some small.” (Giobbe, E. (1992) “Juvenile Prostitution: Profile of Recruitment” in Ann W. Burgess (ed.) Child Trauma: Issues & Research. Garland Publishing Inc, New York, page 126).

In one study, 75% of women in escort prostitution had attempted suicide. Prostituted women comprised 15% of all completed suicides reported by hospitals. (Letter from Susan Kay Hunter, Council for Prostitution Alternatives, Jan 6, 1993, cited by Phyllis Chesler in “A Woman’s Right to Self-Defense: The Case of Aileen Carol Wuornos”, in Patriarchy: Notes of an Expert Witness, 1994, Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine)…

Pornography Trains and Indoctrinates Prostitutes
In a study of 475 people in prostitution (including women, men, and the transgendered) from five countries (South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, USA, and Zambia)…92% stated that they wanted to escape prostitution immediately…

New York Times: “The Girls Next Door”; Worldwide Sex Trafficking; Role of Porn

Realities of Teen Prostitution Mock Notions of ‘Sex Work’, ‘Sex-Positive’, ‘Freedom’ and ‘Empowerment’; Media Glamorizes Pimps

Prostitution Research & Education: How Prostitution Works
Real sexual relationships are not hard to find. There are plenty of adults of both sexes who are willing to have sex if someone treats them well, and asks. But there lies the problem. Some people do not want an equal, sharing relationship. They do not want to be nice. They do not want to ask. They like the power involved in buying a human being who can be made to do almost anything…

A Thought Experiment for Those Who Want to Legalize Prostitution
Record: How many vaginal tears? Level of soreness? How many tears in the anus? Level of soreness? Do you have an infection? Colorful bruising? Sore jaws? Sores in the mouth? Unwanted pregnancy? Did you get an STD even though you used a condom? (condoms break, guys refuse to use condoms, guys pretend to use condoms, or condoms fall off inside the orifice during course of intercourse). Did you need drugs or alcohol to dissociate from the work? Do you feel psychologically liberated? Or, psychologically devastated? How so? Anyone stalking you? If so, fear level? Were you pressured to perform an act that you didn’t want to, but consented to anyway?