Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn lashed out Monday at backpage.com, a website that says it’s trying to stop child prostitution but that McGinn says it promoting it.
The city is apparently so frustrated, that the mayor called a late-afternoon news conference, following an opinion piece by backpage's lawyer that ran in The Seattle Times earlier in the day.
McGinn waved a print-out of the editorial at the beginning of the news conference. He noted that backpage earns more than $22 million per year by advertising adult escort services online.
According to the essay in The Times, the company goes through a system of triple-checking the identities of escorts who are allowed to post ads, and that online advertising helps police to find underage prostitutes.
But the mayor pointed out the backpage has refused his request to require escorts to verity their age in person, before posting an ad online.
“It’s time to stop the evasions, time to stop the excuses, time to stop the double-speak that they put in The Seattle Times today about how they’re an ally in the war against exploitation of minors,” McGinn said. “Our police chief, our police department, has labeled it for what it is: it is an accelerant.”
McGinn has been battling backpage over the issue of human trafficking for nearly a year.
He displayed a letter Monday signed by more than 40 of his fellow mayors, demanding that backpage require in-person identification before selling an escort ad. Signers include the mayors of New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.
KIRO
