Nos genuflectitur ad non princeps sed Princeps Pacem!
Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far; The LORD hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name. (Isaiah 49:1 KJV)
Posted on 03/31/2012 8:11:36 AM PDT by CHRISTIAN DIARIST
Undercover detectives in Nashville, Tenn. responded to an advertisement in the adult section of Backpage.com, a website owned and operated by Village Voice Media. They posed as customers and arranged a hook-up at a local hotel. They arrived at a room where two under-age girls were awaiting, ready to perform sex acts for money.
The girls weren’t turning tricks on their own. Their pimp, who recruited them from out of state, was waiting for them in the hotel parking lot, where the detectives arrested him on charges of trafficking for sexual servitude.
The arrest in the Volunteer State was no aberration. Over the past three years, more than 50 individuals in 22 different states have been charged with trafficking in minors on Backpage.com.
Yet, Village Voice Media accepts no culpability whatsoever for the under-age girls (and boys) who’ve been pimped out over its website. And it adamantly refuses to eliminate the section of its website that accepts sex-related advertisements.
“Censorship will not rid the world of exploitation,” the company states, cavalierly.
Well, Village Voice Media’s recalcitrance has precipitated a much-deserved backlash. This past Thursday, Change.org, a campaign started by more than 650 faith leaders, released a petition with nearly a quarter-million signatures demanding that Backpage.com stop enabling sexual trafficking in minors.
The campaign also held a rally outside theNew York Cityoffices of the company’s flagship publication, The Village Voice. Among the rally’s noteworthy speakers was John Buffalo Mailer, son of Village Voice co-founder and renowned author Norman Mailer.
The Voice, said Mailer, has “lost its way from the days when Dan Wolfe, Ed Fancher, and my father began it.” He implored the current ownership, “For the sake of the Village Voice brand and for the sake of the legacy of a great publication, take down the Adult section of Backpage.com before another child is abused and exploited.”
If the protest by the more than 650 faith leaders, the petition signed by nearly a quarter million concerned citizens, the appeal by the son of one the Voice’s co-founders do not persuade Village Voice Media’s current ownership to stop taking dirty money from criminals pimping under-age girls and boys, itis time for law enforcement to bring the hammer down.
Village Voice Media, publisher of 13 “alternative” newspapers around the country, including the Village Voice itself, was put on notice last August by the nation’s 50 state attorney generals that Backpage.com is an online “hub” for sexual trafficking in minors.
The state AGs should work hand in hand with the U.S. Justice Department to shut down the website’s adult section. And they should drag company executives out of their offices – kicking and screaming if need be – and charge them with knowingly and willfully facilitating the criminal exploitation of children.
I never thought of the Village Voice as other than a liberal and queer advocacy rag, anyway. Adding other undesirables to its resume is not surprising.
Thank you for posting! I lived in N Y. I did not connect the dots to this. Terrible.
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What is needed is for laws against sexually using (what to speaking of pimping out) children need to be actually enforced. And laws against promoting or advertising it. And punishments need to be much more severe. No prison time, please. Just execution. And not after 20 years of appeals.
I like the idea of LOTS AND LOTS OF PRISON TIME.
I even the like the idea of the death penalty for repeat offenders.
What might even be better, though illegal, is to hand over the pedophiles to parents of abused children. [!!]
I don’t like prison time, too much tax money. Just take em out back after the trial and hang em. Rope is re-usable. Better yet, public hangings.
Sounds right too.
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