http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2007/08/20/daily24.html?jst=b_ln_hl
Atlanta mayor
says Craigslist used for child prostitution
San Francisco Business Times - 10:28 AM PDT Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin says San Francisco-based Craigslist unwittingly
helps enable child prostitution, according to a report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Atlanta vice officer Kelleita Thurman told the newspaper Tuesday that Craigslist
and similar sites account for 85 percent of the sexual liaisons men arrange
in Atlanta with boys and girls.
In a letter sent Tuesday to Craigslist, Franklin said the site could do more
to prevent itself from being used "as a means of promoting and enabling
child prostitution." She also called Craigslist to revise its warning on
pages for erotic services and personal ads and to remove postings that offer
sexual services for sale, among other things.
A Craigslist spokeswoman told the Atlanta newspaper in an email that she and
CEO Jim Buckmaster are in Europe and "neither of us are aware of such a
letter so it would not be possible to comment about this."
Company founder Craig Newmark, who also was mailed Franklin's letter, no longer
is involved in the company's daily affairs and is traveling, the spokeswoman
said.
Craiglist, 25 percent owned by eBay Inc., (NASDAQ: EBAY) is among the most popular
sites on the web. The site allows users to post ads for a broad range of purposes
from housing and cars for sale to job postings and more.
_____________________________
RELATED:
Excerpt from:
Teen Girls' Stories of Sex Trafficking in U.S.
INTERNATIONAL SEX TRAFFICKING IS A WELL-KNOWN PROBLEM, BUT IT HAPPENS HERE AS
WELL
"Unbeknownst to Debbie, police
say her captors had put an ad on Craig's List — a national
Web site better-known for helping people find apartments and roommates. Shortly
after the ad ran, men began arriving at the apartment at all hours of the day
and night demanding sex from her.
She said she had to comply. "I had no other choice," she said.
Debbie sais she was earning hundreds of dollars a night — all of it, she
said, going to the pimp.
Scheffer said Debbie was forced to have sex with at least 50 men — and
that's not counting the men who gang-raped her on a periodic basis.
Read the full story at:
http://www.makewaypartners.org/TeenGirlsstoriesofsextraffickinginUS.htm
_____________________________
RELATED:
19-Year-Old Charged With Using
Craigslist to Recruit Teens for Prostitution
Thursday , July 12, 2007
Fox News
MINNEAPOLIS
A 19-year-old woman faces federal charges of recruiting minors for prostitution
, after some teenage girls told investigators she was actively recruiting
clients for a sex ring she allegedly operated out of a Burnsville motel where
she worked.
Investigators believe Justine Alex Reisdorf of Eagan advertised
in the "erotic services" section of the Web site Craigslist.org ,
and more recently on the "Live Links" telephone chat line, according to a statement
by FBI agent Lisa Nielsen.
Eagan Police Detective Kurt Bratulich started the investigation in December after
a girl who allegedly worked for Reisdorf confided in him.
Click
here to watch the video report on myfoxtwincities.com.
"I work at one of the schools, so the victim felt pretty comfortable
in talking to me about what was going on," Bratulich said Wednesday. "It kind
of snowballed on the state level, and it turned into a federal investigation once
we found that the Internet was used and that the victims were underage."
Bratulich said the FBI is still investigating and investigators and prosecutors
met with the defense attorney Wednesday to discuss the case. He declined to say
more.
Reisdorf's attorney, assistant federal defender Katherine Menendez, declined to
comment.
Reisdorf, the mother of a 14-month-old girl, was charged June 14 in federal court
with recruiting minors for a prostitution ring from November 2006 until June.
According to court documents and statements from Nielsen, Bratulich learned Reisdorf
was recruiting high school girls to work for her as prostitutes at a town house
she rented in Burnsville. He found advertisements on Craigslist that read:
"Hi Fellas. it's the party girls ... 200 roses for 2 hours for one of us ... 375
roses for 2 hours for 3 of us ... Kandy, Deja and Carmen." He learned "Deja"
was Reisdorf's alias and "roses" was code for dollars.
Authorities searched the Burnsville residence in December, but Reisdorf was in
the process of moving and few items were left, records show.
Nielsen and Bratulich interviewed an underage girl in February who said Reisdorf
had run a brothel in the Burnsville town house and advertised the services
of adult and minor prostitutes on Craigslist.
Another underage female admitted working for Reisdorf, Nielsen said. The girl
also said Reisdorf put ads on Craigslist that contained pictures showing parts
of her body.
In April, investigators traced some erotic postings on Craigslist to "Deja A.
McDone." They connected phone numbers in the ads to Reisdorf.
Last month, another juvenile told Bratulich that Reisdorf was "actively recruiting
minor children to engage in acts of prostitution," Nielsen said. The investigation
indicated Reisdorf used her job at a Burnsville motel "to obtain hotel rooms for
purposes of prostitution," she said.
Nielsen also said Reisdorf no longer exclusively advertises on Craigslist but
solicits prostitution on a telephone chat line known as "Live Links."