Victory! Washington Post Stops Advertising for Massage Parlors

On the heels of Craigslist's shutting down of their adult services section and Backpage.com's lawsuit from a child trafficking survivor, The Washington Post has announced they will no longer run ads for massage parlors. The announcement comes after over 3,400 Change.org readers and several NGOs complained that these massage parlors are often fronts for human trafficking operations. The WaPo's decision exemplifies the continued trend of businesses making socially responsible decisions.

For years after their competitors had stopped running similar ads, the sports section of the Washington Post was filled with ads for (primarily) Asian massage parlors. However, most of these massage parlors were thin fronts for prostitution and many of them were hiding human trafficking victims. Last year, Katherine Chon from the Washington, D.C.-based anti-trafficking organization Polaris Project said that almost all of the trafficked women they'd served from commercially-fronted brothels were enslaved in places advertised in the Washington Post. Many of those women were lured to Washington, D.C. with the promise of good jobs, including jobs in the commercial sex industry where they would be able to control their choices and money. Instead, they were held in massage parlors in debt or physical bondage, forced to have sex with clients, and unable to leave.

The Washington Post's ombudsman said the decision was based on law enforcement pointing out to them that "illegal activities" were taking place in many of the establishments advertising in the paper, and that WaPo staff had seen postings on adult websites talking about these illegal activities. However, the change was first publicly announced in an article reflecting on Craigslist's decision to shut down their adult ads and the lawsuit and letter from several state attorneys general asking Backpage.com to do the same. That sure makes it look like the WaPo saw the writing on the wall and knew they would be the next targets if they kept advertising for businesses which traffic women and girls for sex. Their preemptive action is just one more sign that more and more businesses are choosing to act responsibly because more and more consumers are demanding it of them.

The last hold-out of the large companies who advertise for human trafficking victims is Village Voice Media's Backpage.com. They basically said "thank you, but no" to a request from state attorneys general to shut down their adult ads and laughed off a lawsuit from a 14-year-old girl who was trafficked through their site. Will Village Voice Media get back to their progressive roots and join Craigslist, the Washington Post, and other newspapers and online classified ads around the country in corporate social responsibility? Or will they continue to allow their product to be used to advertise for child sex trafficking?

Ask Village Voice Media to stop advertising for child sex trafficking on Backpage.com.

Photo credit: Prince Roy