Rob McKenna

Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna and county prosecutors from around the state this week filed their response to a lawsuit from online classified site Backpage.com.

Backpage.com, the website under fire for its adult services sections, fired a volley back at Washington state this week with the announcement of a lawsuit.

Backpage is suing Washington over an anti-human trafficking law recently enacted in the state. The move seems especially egregious to law enforcement officers, among them state Attorney General Rob McKenna, because of Backpage executives' recent claims of being allies in the fight against human trafficking.

For more than three months, she was sold online for sex. She had run away at 15, gone back home, then run away again. Finally, an undercover police officer caught her, and her pimp. This time she went home and stayed, but she was not the same.

“She was a different child after that,” her father said. “It was like she was programmed. She spoke different. She looked different. They cut her hair, they dyed her hair, they bought her new clothes.”

Now 17, the girl is in counseling and in college, “on her way,” her father said.

Hawaii’s Sen. Akaka Joins List of Federal Lawmakers Critical of Sex Trafficking on Backpage.com
U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, has joined a growing list of U.S. Senators and Representatives concerned about Backpage.com‘s trafficking of young girls – a practice lawmakers said generates tens of millions of dollars per year for its parent company, Village Voice Media Holdings via classified advertisements. See the press release here.