PETITION CLOSED

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Tell Gawker to Stop Facilitating Child Sex Trafficking
  1. Signatures
    990 out of 1,000
    Petitioning
    1. Publisher, Gawker.com (+ 1 other)
      Petitioning
      close
      • Publisher, Gawker.com (Nick Denton)
      • Author, Gawker.com (Adrian Chen)
  2. Created By
    Amanda Kloer
    Washington, DC
About this Petition Petition Letter

In response to Craigslist's recent voluntary removal of their adult services section, Gawker.com stepped in with a guide to buying Internet sex. With their nearly 20 million readers and the vast amount of child trafficking on similar sites, Gawker is practically guaranteed to be facilitating more child rape.

Like Craigslist, the sex-for-sale websites Gawker is promoting are a mixed bag of men, women, and transgender individuals voluntarily engaged in prostitution, adults who have been forced or coerced into prostitution, and children. The latter two categories are victims of human trafficking, and online classified ads like Craigslist and the websites in Gawker's guide have played an increasingly large role in facilitating their repeated rape for profit. The demand for commercial sex, which when it outstrips willing suppliers causes human trafficking, is a complex and nuanced phenomenon. It's affected by the price and availability of commercial sex, social norms and laws around buying sex, and potential buyers' ethical views. Craigslist's adult services section and similar sites have provided a space where buying sex is easy, normalized, and anonymous, effectively increasing the demand without increasing the supply. Hence the human trafficking on online classified sites like Craigslist.

If Craigslist (or any other online classifieds site) wasn't a website, but an abandoned warehouse at the edge of town where children as young as 11 were being bought and sold for sex by dozens of men a night, no one would argue that warehouse's closing impinged upon "freedom of speech." No one would claim, as Danah Boyd on the Huffington Post recently did, that the child sex warehouse should continue to operate since "a one-stop-shop is more helpful for law enforcement." And if the pimps and traffickers were locked out of it one night, no one would publish a guide directing them to other abandoned warehouses around town they can turn into child sex factories. A website and a warehouse may not be exactly the same, but with this guide Gawker is standing on a virtual street corner directing would-be child traffickers and abusers to new meeting points. And the saddest part is that they really don't seem to understand that's what they're doing.

Please, ask Gawker to remove their online guide to sex and stop facilitating child trafficking.

Recent Signatures

Please Stop Facilitating Child Sex Trafficking

Greetings Mr. Denton

As a reader of Gawker.com and someone who cares deeply about child protection and ending child sex trafficking, I am asking you to remove your recent article titled, "Your Post-Craigslist Guide to Buying Online Sex". Like Craigslist's adult services section, online classified ads and escort sites, including many of the ones your guide promotes, facilitate human trafficking, especially the sex trafficking of children. According the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, nearly 100,000 American children are forced into the commercial sex industry each year, and the Internet plays a large and growing role in that trade.

By shutting down their adult services section without warning, Craigslist sent pimps, traffickers, and men looking to buy sex with children scrambling for some new place to buy and sell victims. By publishing your guide, you gave them a road map to further child exploitation.

If Craigslist (or any other online classifieds site) wasn't a website, but an abandoned warehouse at the edge of town where children as young as 11 were being bought and sold for sex by dozens of men a night, no one would argue that warehouse's closing impinged upon "freedom of speech." No one would claim, as Danah Boyd on the Huffington Post recently did, that the child sex warehouse should continue to operate since "a one-stop-shop is more helpful for law enforcement." And if the pimps and traffickers were locked out of it one night, no one would publish a guide directing them to other abandon warehouses around town they can turn into child sex factories. A website and a warehouse may not be exactly the same, but with this guide you are standing on a virtual street corner directing would-be child traffickers and abusers to new meeting points.

Please remove your online guide to buying sex and don't publish another one. Let's make it hard for the pimps and traffickers who sell kids to get their products, which are human beings, to the market.

[Your name]

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