Suit alleges online classified service is vehicle for sale of underage teens for sex

A woman and a teen are suing Backpage.com, alleging the service not only let their pimps sell them hundreds of times for sex in the Boston area but is going out of its way to make it easier for pimps to traffic minors and evade arrest.

In the suit, filed last week in US District Court, a 17-year-old identified as Jane Doe No. 1 and a 20-year-old named Jane Doe No. 2, are asking a judge to order Backpage.com and its owners to stop letting pimps advertise underage prostitutes, as well as damages, penalties and lawyers' fees.

The suit describes how the women say Backpage.com facilitated their pimps. Jane Doe No. 1 says she started when she was 15:

Jane Doe No. 1 was trafficked and sold by pimps - utilizing the brokering services offered by Backpage.com - to men across Massachusetts and Rhode Island who raped her in exchange for payment. Jane Doe No. 1 estimates that she was raped over 1000 times over the course of one and a half years.

Jane Doe No. 1 was first trafficked on Backpage.com in February of 2012, when she was 15 years of age, after running away from home. She was told that Backpage.com was the best website on which to be sold because ads on Backpage.com would generate more customer responses than other websites and that traffickers were unlikely to be apprehended by law enforcement if they used Backpage.com rather than other websites. Jane Doe No. 1 was also told that selling on Backpage.com "was like selling a car."

In March 2013, after leaving home once again, Jane Doe No. 1 was again trafficked on Backpage.com. From early June 2013 to September 10, 2013 she was trafficked on Backpage.com every single day. During this time, Backpage.com facilitated an average of 10-12 sex transactions per day with Jane Doe No. 1.

Jane Doe No. 1's pimp required her to post on Backpage.com because they could "avoid getting caught" by using that site, instead of other websites available online. He also told her that Backpage.com would "make him the most money" and "was the most popular with customers." Jane Doe No. 1 was only trafficked on Backpage.com.

The pimp often instructed Jane Doe No. 1 to post advertisements of herself in the "Escorts" section of Backpage.com as directed by the website. Every advertisement on Backpage.com for Jane Doe No. 1 included the label "Escorts," which Backpage.com added to the advertisement. The term "Escort" is known to be a signal that the individual in the advertisement is being offered for sex in exchange for money. ...

Jane's Doe No. 1's pimp also required her to simultaneously post multiple advertisements on Backpage.com in multiple cities. That way, Jane understood that her pimp could use the multi-city functionality of Backpage.com to gauge the volume of responses and determine where to traffic Jane Doe No. 1 for maximum profitability. By posting multiple ads in multiple cities, her pimp was able to maximize the number of customers willing to purchase sex with her at any given time. Backpage.com's multi-city functionality further enabled Jane Doe No. 1's pimp to evade law enforcement by moving frequently. Jane Doe No. 1's pimp moved her from city to city usually every one or two days.

Jane Doe No. 1 was trafficked in Boston, Cambridge, Dorchester, Mattapan, Malden, Dedham, Worcester, Northborough, Marlborough and Quincy, Massachusetts. She was also trafficked in Warwick, Woonsocket, North Providence and South Providence, Rhode Island. She typically remained in any one location for no more than a day or two at a time before moving on to another city or town.