Kamala Harris and the feds said the site "facilitated sexual exploitation" through classified ads
Kamala Harris and, later, the federal government called Backpagea "prostitution website." Its owners said it was a classified ads platform. The government prevailed and the three surviving owners were sentenced to prison terms earlier this week.
A fourth owner, James Larkin, 73, took his own life on July 31, 2023, the daybefore he was to go on trial.
Backpage grew out of the Phoenix New Times and other weekly publications which, like manysuch papers, carried pages of "personal" ads each week. With the growth of the internet, the papers began consolidating the classifieds and running them on Backpage.
Harris' state charges were dismissed in 2017 butfederal prosecutors stepped in and opened an investigation that eventually led to the federal money-laundering charges.
The defendants and their conspirators obtained more than $500 million from operating an online forum that facilitated the sexual exploitation of countless victims, said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri, head of the Justice Departments Criminal Division.
Free press proponents used different language to characterize the venture.
San Francisco Bay Guardianpublisher Bruce B. Brugmann described [the papers'] aesthetic as "desert libertarianism on the rocks." The publishers expanded their alt-weekly empire nationwide, eventually running 17 free papers, including theMiami New Times,Westword, theDallas Observer, andTheVillage Voice.
But in November 2023, a federal jury in Phoenix convicted three executives of the site on charges of money laundering and related charges.
The three were sentenced Aug. 28.Michael Lacey, 76, of Paradise Valley, Arizona, was sentenced to five years in prison and three years of supervised release; Scott Spear, 73, of Phoenix, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and three years of supervised release; and John Jed Brunst, 72, of Phoenix, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and three years of supervised release. The Court also ordered that all defendants turn themselves in to the U.S. Marshals Service by noon on Sept. 11.
A noble beginning
First Amendment advocates and many other journalists defended New Times and the other papers for their crusading work and noted that collectively,the papers and their staffers were nominated for more than 1,400 national writing awards, won one Pulitzer, and were finalists for a Pulitzer six other times.
Lacey and Larkin built New Times from an anti-war student newspaper into a wide-ranging record of Maricopa County culture and politics.
"New Timesdidn't shy away from honest reporting on local law enforcement and power figuresincludingSen. John McCainand hiswife Cindyor on controversial issues like abortion, immigrant rights, or the 1976murder ofArizona RepublicreporterDon Bolles," Reason magazine said in a 2023 article.
Among the court battles they foughtand wonwas one over infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio demanding data onNew Timesreaders; Arpaio was eventually forced to pay Larkin and Lacey a $3.75 million settlement, which they used to establish the immigrant rights organization Frontera Fund, the Reason article noted.
But prosecutors zeroed in on the sex ads and"began demonizing Larkin, Lacey, and other Backpage executives as deliberate merchants of harmful content rather than people providing a platform for the speech of millions of individual users, most of whom were engaging in protected expression," as Reason put it.
"We've never, ever broken the law. Never have, never wanted to," Larkin said back in 2018, according to Reason. "This isn't reallyI know this is probably heresythis isn't about sex work to me. This is about speech.Though of course, sex workers have an absolute First Amendment right to post ads."
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The author of this article wrote regularly for Phoenix New Times in the 1970s.
Photo Credit: Consumer Affairs News Department Images
Posted: 2024-08-30 19:44:15
