The battle between our nation's attorneys general and online classifieds site Craigslist continued Wednesday when 17 AGs penned a letter to the site's founders asking that they immediately remove Craigslist's adult services section.
Ads for prostitution are "rampant" on Craigslist, they wrote. "Because Craigslist cannot, or will not, adequately screen these ads, it should stop accepting them altogether and shut down the adult services section," according to the letter.
The letter was signed by attorneys general from Arkansas, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
The letter referenced two women who recently came forward and said they had been sold for sex on Craigslist, as well as an undercover CNN report that easily found advertisements for prostitution.
In response to the two women, Craigslist co-founder Jim Buckmaster posted a blog post earlier this month that said the company wanted to learn more in order to improve the site's preventative measures. He asked them to send police reports or any other information to Craigslist's lawyers. He also suggested that at least one of the girls might have been victimized before Craigslist ditched its "erotic services" section in favor of a monitored "adult services" section in May 2009.
The attorneys general said Wednesday that this response amounted to victim blaming.
"It also disregards, perhaps intentionally, two fundamental facts. First, Craigslist is the only player in the sex industry who is in a position to stop these ads before they are published," they wrote. "Second, once an ad goes live on the site, it is a virtual certainty that someone will be victimized. Yes, the perpetrators may eventually be apprehended and brought to justice, but the victim, assuming she survives, will carry the scars for life. No amount of after-the fact documentation will erase that enduring harm. Equally important, your much-touted 'manual review' of Adult Services ads has failed to yield any discernable reduction in obvious solicitations."
"No amount of money, however, can justify the scourge of illegal prostitution, and the suffering of the women and children who will continue to be victimized, in the market and trafficking provided by Craigslist," they concluded.
The letter from the two women was publicized in the form of an advertisement funded by the FAIR Fund. That group also asked Craigslist to remove its adult services section.
Recently, Buckmaster posted another blog post called "Manual Screening Matters," which touted its screening process. He pointed the finger at other services – namely eBay – which he said has not imposed strict rules, and clearly traffics in sex ads.