Preventing sexual trafficking of underage

State Senator J. Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, crafted a bill that would keep underage from being exploited via escort agencies on the sites as, for example, backpage.com making the sites check identification of its users. The site is running escort advertisements as the part of the “village voice”, owning the Seattle weekly newspaper. Police of Seattle and Tacoma say there are many adults who use the site backpage.com in the sexual exploitation of youngsters. When the user logs into the escort partition of backpage.com, it asks them to check the box by saying they are adult people.

It is significantly easier and safer for the delinquent, buying and selling, to utilize the Internet to sell young people,” said leader of Youth Care, an organization which main occupation is to rescue children from the streets. Giovengo said that in the previous year the organization helped more than twenty young people bought on backpage.com. Giovengo also added that they are behind any legislation that would help to rescue young people.

Fifty-one solicitor general condemned the site. Washington Solicitor General Rob McKenna asked the state to do something about it. Kohl-Welles told that she hopes to introduce new legislation during the budget-cutting special session that ends this month. The representatives of the village voice didn’t respond to interview, but in the past, the administrators of the website told that in fact, it would be impossible to verifying the ages backpage.com users.