Backpage execs refuse to testify at sex-trafficking hearing

The operators of a web site charged with editing and then publishing ads trafficking children for sex invoked their constitutional rights not to answer questions posed by members of a Senate subcommittee chaired by Sen. Rob Portman Tuesday.

Carl Ferrer, who operates the website known as Backpage.com, three times cited his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to not answer questions asked by Portman, R-Ohio.

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Andrew Padilla, chief operations officer of Backpage, also asserted his rights against self-incrimination when asked questions about the web site by Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, the ranking Democrat on the panel.

Backpage, which operates in 97 countries and is valued at more than $500 million, is one of the largest classified advertising websites in the world. The web site Monday night shut down the section where it posts adult advertisements.

The hearing comes one day after the Senate Permanent subcommittee on Investigations released a report which charged that Backpage published the ads after deleting certain words and content that suggests it involves a child. The effort sanitized the ads while allowing them to be posted on the website, according to the report.

“Our report demonstrates that Backpage has concealed evidence of crimes by systematically deleting words and images suggestive of illegal conduct from advertisements submitted to their website before publishing the ads,” said Portman. “And some of those ads involved child sex trafficking,” Portman said. “Backpage’s editing process sanitized the content of millions of advertisements and hid important evidence from law enforcement.”

Staffers for the subcommittee on Investigations have pored through 1.1 million pages of documents turned over by Backpage. The website only handed over the documents after federal courts upheld a Senate subpoena demanding the material.

According to the report, “the terms that Backpage has automatically deleted from ads before publication” includes words such as “Lolita, little girl, teen, fresh, or school girl.” The report went on to declare “when a user submitted an adult ad containing one of these “stripped” words, Backpage’s “Strip Term From Ad” filter would immediately delete the word and the remainder of the ad would be published.”

“Backpage does not deny that its site is used for criminal activity, including the sale of children for sex,” according to the report. “Instead the company has long claimed that it is a mere host of content created by others and therefore immune from liability under” federal law.

“Backpage executives have also repeatedly touted their process for screening adult advertisements as an industry-leading effort to protect against criminal abuse,” the report concludes.

But the report’s authors declared that documents obtained by the subcommittee “conclusively show that Backpage’s public defense is a fiction.”

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