Is the Washington Post a Paper Pimp?

Ever wonder where traffickers advertise their victims?  Turns out it's in one of the nation's most prestigious newspapers - The Washington Post.  Advertisements for massage parlors that are often fronts for brothels selling trafficked women are run in The Post every day, despite the fact that the publication has reported on human trafficking in massage parlors.  You can tell The Washington Post to stop making money off exploitation!

According to some men who post their sexual exploits online, The Washington Post has been a primary source for them to visit massage parlors and spas in the DC area.  Most recently, on March 16, one man wrote "Washington Post is posting ads again" in response to another  john's question about where to find commercial sex in DC.

During my tenure at Polaris Project, a non-governmental organization combating modern-day slavery, we've worked with dozens of women who've been victims of human trafficking within brothels disguised as massage parlors.  Almost all of the women from commercially-fronted brothels we've worked with in the DC area have been victimized in locations that have been advertised in The Washington Post's Sports section.

These women are often offered legitimate jobs, but then forced into prostitution.  Many are unable to leave the brothel.  Several are threatened with gang violence and others are threatened with harm to family members if they tried to leave. Some women are in debt bondage, and most have experienced some type of sexual violence or coercion from customers frequenting the brothels. All of them want to escape.

In early 2006, representatives of The Washington Post's Advertising Department said that if they knew there was illegal activity occurring in these "massage parlors," they would take the advertisements down.  Did they not know that their own journalists had reported on human trafficking in several massage parlors advertised in their paper?

I picked up yesterday's paper and saw that while there were only six advertisements for commercial sex-oriented parlors and spas in the Sports section, The Washington Post was still accepting such ads.  I attribute the decrease in overall ads (which was up to 35 at one of its high points in 2002) mostly to the work of the DC Task Force on Human Trafficking and the general state of the economy.

In 2006, even the Ombudsman of The Washington Post, Deborah Howell, agreed that the paper should join the Los Angeles Times and its peers- The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, and the Boston Globe- by not facilitating the sexual exploitation of women through these advertisements.

I hope readers will encourage The Washington Post to join us in the fight against modern-day slavery, and take action against exploitation.

Images from The Washington Post from Polaris Project