And there have been cases of minors being advertised on websites like Backpage. The year of this vote, it was nearly 750 teens and children. Roughly 1/2 the federal prosecutions for sex trafficking in the US are for people younger than 18. Attorneys general from nearly every state signed a letter to Congress. But by 2018, celebrities like Amy Schumer and Seth Meyers were doing anti-trafficking PSAs, calling for a change to Section 230. It's a provision of the Communications Decency Act. So if someone posts something defamatory or something that results in harm- like if an exchange on a dating app leads to harassment in real life- the social media platforms can't be sued.Ĭongress established this back in the early days of the web in the mid-'90s. Section 230 basically says online platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Craigslist, anywhere users post or leave comments, the companies that operate those platforms, they're generally not responsible for what users say. Victims of trafficking had already tried to go after Backpage and sites like it for facilitating sex trafficking and prostitution even while Kara was still being trafficked, but most of those efforts failed because of something called Section 230. The lawmakers figured, get rid of all the ads, and you'll cut off a whole part of this market. The law would go after sex ads on the internet, like the kinds of ads Kara's traffickers posted. SESTA is short for Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking Act, and its goal was to stop sex trafficking by focusing on something really specific. So this is the part of the story where I explain the law that Congress enacted, what they wanted it to do, and what, in fact, it ended up doing, especially to Kara. No one from his gang ever bothered her again.Īnd as soon as she saved up enough money, Kara drove back home to Florida. Then, Kara says, she could have testified against him in court, but she feared for her safety, and so she didn't. Later, they charged him with promoting prostitution. Adam pled guilty to domestic abuse, spent a short time in jail. Windie found Kara a bed to sleep in, clothes to wear, food to eat, and a job bartending so she could make a bit of cash. She'd be in the front seat, scanning the news for parts of the country with sudden influxes of people.Īfter that, everything changed, starting with basics. He'd actually rely on her for help planning their destinations. By then, they'd spent enough time together that he trusted her, let her have a phone. In 2014, she and her trafficker at the time- I'll call him Adam- were on a long drive, headed to North Dakota for an oil boom. Altogether, she was charged at least eight times in three different states- Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida. And then, again, in 2010, and again, and so on. The first time she got in trouble was in 2008, just six months after her 18th birthday. Kara says they'd just charge her with solicitation and tell her, that's what you got for being a prostitute. She says nowadays, the police might ask her if she was being trafficked, but nobody asked her that back then. She says no cop ever asked her if she needed help. The whole time Kara was being trafficked by these gangs, she kept getting into trouble with the police. Warning to listeners- there is no explicit content in this story at all, but it does talk about sex and sex trafficking. We're going to hear the story of one woman who was trafficked, and then you're going to hear the story of the law, and then, after that, the story of how the law actually affected her.
One of our producers, Lina Misitzis has been looking into how things played out from that point- with the people that the law is supposed to help, victims of sex trafficking, but also with other people who are not the official target of the law. A law passes with overwhelming majorities, House and Senate. So that's a goal I think most people would agree with. Congress wanted to stop the sex traffickers' ads. The problem they were solving in this case? Well, prostitution is illegal in America, but there were millions of ads for it online, some of them advertising women and children who were held by sex traffickers. Act 1, "Catching Deer, When You Wanted Lions." So we begin with an example of the United States Congress seeing a problem and then using all its powers, doing everything it can, moving decisively to eliminate the problem forever.
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