Mentally Disabled Women Enslaved and Sexually Tortured Into Cardiac Arrest

At 16, F.V. fell under the control of Edward Bagley, who exploited her mental disability to turn her into his slave. For five long years, she was forced to dance at strip clubs, raped by his friends (who paid Bagley in cigarettes and steaks), branded with tattoos symbolizing slavery, and sexually tortured for an online viewing audience. Among the men indicted for paying to see F.V. torture are Nevada's Postmaster General. Yes, even prominent people support the human trafficking and torture business.

As Amanda Kloer warns on End Human Trafficking, "The details of this case are especially disturbing, even for this blog." F.V. was only saved from this life of torment after being suffocated and electrocuted for one of the online sex videos sent her into cardiac arrest, and the doctors wanted to know how exactly a 23-year-old ended up with a heart attack.

Cases like F.V.'s serve as a reminder of exactly why anti-trafficking advocates are so concerned with making sure the force of the internet is used for good, not evil. F.V.'s years of rape and torture were shown via the internet, and F.V.'s trafficker sold her online. While there's no reports currently on what sites Edward Bagley used on the internet to sell F.V., it's no secret that the World Wide Web has made traffickers' job in selling their "product" a lot easier, just like it has facilitated the sale of any product.

In what really can only be described as a brilliant PR move, last week Craigslist responded to mounting pressure to stop sex trafficking from occurring on its website by putting a big black "Censored" bar in place of its adult services section. But despite this attempt to reframe the conversation, asking Craigslist to show a little corporate responsibility and prevent its site from being used to sell women and children for rape is not censorship. A Change.org petition that garnered almost 10,000 signatures didn't even ask that the entire section be closed, instead insisting that real steps be taken to reduce the ease of trafficking on the site. Craigslist's action was taken voluntarily. Oh, and also, selling people for sex against their will isn't free speech. It's just facilitating a serious crime.

I respect sex workers' rights and their voluntary decision to sell access to their bodies. Unfortunately, the sex-for-sale industry has a severe sex trafficking problem, turning it into rape-for-pay. For even a single woman to suffer in the gruesome, horrifying the way F.V. did through the aid of the internet, when there are steps we can take to prevent this, is unacceptable. Ploys about being censored don't serve any women; working to make certain that nobody's body is sold involuntarily concerns everybody. The F.V.s of the world deserve not to have their lives stolen away.

Photo credit: Franco Felini