By Linda Smith. Ten years ago, we shopped and socialized in bustling downtown commercial districts, but today, we are more likely to turn to the Internet to fulfill our desires. Physical visits to local shops and services have given way to virtual business visits with the innovation of adapting to the worldwide web. Just as legitimate businesses have migrated online, so have criminal ventures, and a virtual visit to a number of classified services websites seamlessly facilitates the purchase of sex with a minor.
Today they stand on the virtual street corner of Craigslist, easily accessible for the shopper in the mall of human misery. Craigslist is the giant in the nascent online classifieds industry. We use it to sell that slightly used couch or find a cheap replacement washing machine; to buy and sell bicycles, to find apartments for rent in cities across the country.
Craigslist has been under attack for facilitating the trafficking of women and children for sex by not prohibiting the thinly disguised ads that put them out for sale.
Craigslist claims to have screened hundreds of thousands of ads submitted for posting to the adult services web page, but has only reported of the rejected ads to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for investigation into the potential of an exploited child in the ad. Indeed, demand is enormous for commercial sex and allows these online classified businesses to garner huge profits while facilitating the public appetiteβone which continues in the disturbing trend towards the purposeful hunt for younger and younger victims.
Most girls who survive the experience of being forced into prostitution report having been sold through Craigslist to ten or more men every day, sometimes being forced to post the ads for their own victimization.
