THIS GUIDE WAS PREPARED BY: Elizabeth Swanson, Ph.D. Professor, Literature and Human Rights Arts and Humanities Division, Babson College 2017 T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S PART I: INTRODUCTION 1-22 Director’s Statement 1-2 About Trafficking 3-6 About Backpage.com 7-9 About the Jane Doe Cases 10-13 About the Communications Decency Act 14-16 Related Cases: Precedents 17-18 Amending the CDA 19-22 PART II: TEACHING GUIDE 23-54 Commercial Sexual EXploitation and Child Sex Trafficking 23-30 Gender Socialization and Social Media 31-37 Social Media and Girls 33-34 “Porn Culture” and Boys 34-35 Lesbian, Gay, and Transgender Youth 35-37 Freedom of Speech and Online Commerce 38-42 Stakeholder Analysis 42-49 The Jane Does and their Families 43 Law Enforcement 44-45 Congress & the Courts 45-46 Corporations & Alternative Newspapers 47-48 Non-governmental Organizations 48-49 Witness, Testimonial, and Empowerment 50-54 PART III: APPENDICES 55-64 AppendiX I: I Am Jane Doe Timeline 55-57 AppendiX II: Classroom Role-Play EXercise 57-59 AppendiX III: Classroom Research Resources by Topic 60-64 P A R T I: I N T R O D U C T I O N DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT Statement of the Director of I AM JANE DOE, Mary Mazzio It’s after midnight and your daughter hasn’t come home. You don’t know where she is. Her friends don’t know where she is. You wait until 5AM and then call the police. This heartbreak happens every night in America, in every city, and every town. Children go missing. Rich children and poor children. Children of all ethnicities and colors. Mostly girls, but also boys and transgender children. Many are preyed upon and seduced in online chat rooms, at the mall, or even fast-food restaurants. And then these children simply disappear. What happens to them? Estimates vary, but thousands of children who go missing are bought and sold for seX. Online. Officials call this “seX trafficking,” which is a sanitized description of a child who is shuttled from motel room to motel room and repeatedly raped. The children most at risk for child seX trafficking are those who are homeless, LGBTI (Lesbian, Gay, BiseXual, Transgender, InterseX), runaway, adopted and in foster care. 73% of the children trafficked online who were reported by the public to the National Center for Missing & EXploited Children (NCMEC) in 2016, were bought and sold on Backpage.com, a company formerly owned by the Village Voice. According to a Senate report, Backpage is worth between $450-$600 million dollars, the bulk of its profitability attributable to ads selling children and adults for commercial sex. Several young victims and their mothers decided to file lawsuits against Backpage, seeking to hold the company partially responsible for the damage and trauma to their daughters. Most of these cases have not gone well for these children (who are referred to as “Jane Doe” in legal filings.) Most of their cases have been dismissed under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects websites from liability for third-party posts. Thus far, Backpage has successfully argued that although it hosts ads for the sale of these children, it does not create the ads, and thus is immune from all liability. The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals recently agreed, and in a stunning decision, expanded the protection of Section 230 to cover alleged criminal activity by a website owner. The court ruled that even if Backpage had profited from or participated in child seX trafficking as a co-conspirator or otherwise, it still could not be held criminally liable. Meanwhile, Backpage has made millions of dollars from these types of sex ads, and children continue to be bought and sold every day on Backpage.com. - 1 - When I read about Jane Doe No. 1, Jane Doe No. 2, and Jane Doe No. 3, all middle-school girls from Boston who had filed suit against Backpage, three things struck me. First, I was shocked to learn about the breadth and scope of child seX trafficking, and that it happened in such alarming numbers in the United States. Second, I remember thinking how brave these young girls were, putting a face to the pain and a voice to the trauma they had experienced. They were standing up and fighting back on behalf of thousands of other children who had been sold online. Third, it was clear from reading various court documents that many federal judges didn’t understand the actual crime of child sex trafficking. How could hosting child seX ads be legal in the United States? My goal with this project was to ask that very question. And to create awareness about the institutions that are enabling this crime against children to proliferate online, including federal judges and special interest groups (supported by technology companies). The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Center for Democracy and Technology, two high profile special interest groups dedicated to internet freedom, have been actively supporting Backpage with these legal cases against the Jane Doe children. Given the damage that is happening to children on sites such as Backpage (and there are many other websites like Backpage), we hope this project gives rise to two specific discussions. First, that members of Congress, tech companies, website operators, NGOs, and internet freedom groups come together to discuss ways that internet freedom can be vigorously maintained while better protecting children victimized by online seX trafficking. Second, there is a larger question about whether website companies should bear more responsibility for harm that occurs on their sites. The evolution of doing business online has resulted in greater efficiency and profitability for companies, but now that the market has matured, why are websites still protected under Section 230 when off-line brick and mortar companies do not enjoy such protection? Whether adults sell themselves on Backpage for consensual seX (which they do), or whether Backpage sells couches (which it does), are not topics of concern to us. Our only concern with this project is the purchase and sale of children for rape and sexual abuse, and examining who should bear responsibility for that harm. -Mary Mazzio _______________________________________________________________________________________ Mary Mazzio is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, Olympic athlete, recovering lawyer, wife of one and mother of two. For more about I AM JANE DOE, www.IamJaneDoeFilm.com. For more about Mary: http://www.50eggs.com/about-50-eggs/. Mary’s most recent film, Underwater Dreams, raised approXimately $100 million dollars in public and private commitments to fund STEM education for under- represented students in partnership with the White House, where the film was screened with introductory remarks by President Obama. The film, with funding from the Gates Foundation, Bezos Family Foundation, Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, and others, is doing a deep dive in major cities across the US. For more about this project, which has reached hundreds of thousands of underserved children—including press, our partnership with NBC Universal/Comcast, EpiX, and other information—the website is www.UnderwaterDreamsFilm.com. President Obama’s remarks are here: https://vimeo.com/131891915. - 2 - ABOUT SEX TRAFFICKING According to the International Labor Organization, over $99 billion per year in profits is generated by the global trade of humans for seX—including pornography, seX-trafficking, prostitution, and seX tourism—and nearly one- third of those profits ($32 billion) are generated in the United States.1 There are no clear statistics on the number of children (defined as being under the age of 18) eXploited on an annual basis, but many non-profits serving children agree that approximately one in six, or 15%, of all homeless and runaway children have been trafficked for seX.2 The Department of Justice estimates in its NISMART 2 Report that 1.6 million children are on the street at any given time—and that estimate is as high as 2.5 million, according to The National Center on Family Homelessness.3 Thus, 1 “Global Estimate of Forced Labour Executive Summary.” International Labor Organization, 2012. http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/@ed_norm/@declaration/documents/publication/wcms_18195 3.pdf 2 The most frequently cited reports for such statistics include the US Department of Justice, National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children (NISMART 2) Report, October, 2002. <http://www.missingkids.com/en_US/documents/nismart2_runaway.pdf>, and Richard Estes and Neil Alan Weiner, “The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the U. S., Canada and Mexico, Executive Summary,” 2001. http://www.gems-girls.org/Estes%20Wiener%202001.pdf. See also Covenant House, “Homelessness, Survival Sex and Human Trafficking: As Experienced by the Youth of Covenant House New York,” 2013. <http://www.endhomelessness.org/page/- /files/Covenant%20House%20Fordham%20University%20Trafficking%20Report.pdf.> and “Key Facts,” National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.<http://www.missingkids.org/keyfacts>. 3 Bassuk, Ellen, et al. America’s Youngest Outcasts: A Report Card on Child Homelessness. The National Center on Family Homelessness, 2014. <http://www.air.org/sites/default/files/downloads/report/Americas-Youngest-Outcasts-Child- Homelessness-Nov2014.pdf> - 3 - extrapolating out 15% to the general population of children most at risk— homeless and runaway—nets a figure that is 1.6–2.5 million in the hundreds of thousands. A new study Children on the from the University of Louisville paints a starker picture: 40% of all homeless children street at any given they surveyed in Southern Indiana and parts time. of Kentucky were victims of child seX trafficking.4 Furthermore, this crime is one that is very rarely reported and discussed, Up to 40% of yet remains one of the darkest human rights violations existing within US borders.