By Eric Tooley
Angela and I just spent a week in Washington, DC at the Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation Global Summit. Last Friday news broke that the Department of Justice seized and shut down Backpage.com, the largest sex trafficking website in the world. The Coalition had targeted Backpage.com for several years for the following reasons:
- “All of the child-trafficking cases prosecuted by this office over the past two years involved backpage.com.” — St. Paul, MN County Attorney
- in 2013, eight out of every ten dollars spent on online commercial sex advertisements in the U.S. went to Backpage.com. — US Senate Subcommittee
- “Adult and child sex trafficking victims were forced into prostitution through escort ads that appeared repeatedly on Backpage.” — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton
I announced on the Noble Choices FaceBook page that we debut a program on Sex Trafficking for churches and schools this fall.
Noble Choices has been a proud member of this coalition since our beginning in 2014. Noble Choice’s mission is not one of activism but one of education via prevention programs, counseling, and recovery programs. The Coalition welcomes our efforts as part of their prevention work.