TAG / BACKPAGE

Two centuries ago, US Congress banned the slave trade. Against that backdrop, Tony Ortega’s defense of Backpage child sex trafficking shows how exploitation evolves—and enablers evade accountability.

Amid the collapse of careers over even distant ties to Jeffrey Epstein, Tony Ortega’s public contempt for efforts to expose predators set the stage for a lifetime of defending the sexual exploitation of kids. 

As the UN champions global efforts against modern-day slavery, scrutiny is mounting over whether its attorney’s financial support of her husband—who long defended the world’s largest child sex trafficking marketplace—undermines the institution’s human rights mandate.

The federal lawsuit targets Backpage and hotels that ignored warning signs—even as Tony Ortega defended the site, masking the serial sexual exploitation of girls like Isabelle Hughes.

With Backpage and its imitators shut down, DOJ is offering restitution using recovered funds—but paperwork and deadlines pose hurdles for survivors.

UK authorities are probing “pimping websites”—online platforms that increasingly fuel sex trafficking and leave victims harder to reach and regulators scrambling to catch up.

While Backpage’s owners are serving prison sentences, former Village Voice editor Tony Ortega—who defended the site and mocked victims—hasn’t faced charges, prompting calls for broader accountability.

The owners were jailed and the website assets confiscated, but the role of Tony Ortega—Backpage’s notorious sex trafficking champion—remains to be fully explored.

The “Can You See Me?” campaign raises awareness and encourages reporting of human trafficking to rescue victims.

The United Nations passed an anti-slavery resolution on December 2 in 1949. Since then, humans owned by others have skyrocketed to 50 million worldwide. What will it take to stop this scourge?