PHOENIX (CN) — Police testimony in the 18th day of trial over Backpage.com renewed questions as to whether ads placed on the classifieds site were obvious enough to suggest prostitution if taken at face value.
Brian Griffin, a police lieutenant from Northborough, Massachusetts, who investigated Backpage escort ads from 2012 to 2015, told federal prosecutors Friday morning that he could never make a prostitution arrest based solely on an ad placed on the website — no matter how obvious it may be what services were being offered.
Fifty of the 100 felony counts Backpage founder Michael Lacey and four other former executives and employees face in federal court are accusations of facilitating prostitution based on racy ads using innuendos to suggest sex for money, often billed as selling escorts or full-body massage services.
The remaining counts relate to money laundering and conspiracy.
Only one of the 50 ads listed in the indictment directly offers a sexual service for money, though, and spotting such an ad is just the "first step" in making a prostitution arrest, Griffin said.
“I need to do a little more work,” he told the jury, like arranging to meet up with the ad's poster in person and making a clear agreement to swap sex for money.
Defense attorneys have argued that if police can’t arrest someone for placing the ad, then the ad isn’t illegal, and Backpage therefore isn’t responsible for any illegal actions that take place after it’s posted.
Prosecutors say every ad placed in Backpage’s adult escort section was actually for prostitution, making it obvious enough to the defendants that by selling ads they were enabling prostitution to be sold on its site.
“Have you ever called an ad like this ad, and it turned out to not be a prostitute?” prosecutor Austin Berry asked Griffin.
“No,” Griffin replied, speaking to roughly two dozen prostitution arrests he has made.
“So, 100% of the time, it's a prostitute?”
“Yes.”
That testimony was perhaps contradicted by Anastasia Beck, a woman who was sold on Backpage at just 15 years old in 2015. Beck testified Thursday that twice a customer responded to her prostitution ad and asked only to talk or go for a walk. But Beck had talked about exchanging sex for money with both of those customers over the phone, she said, and she met up with them expecting to have sex until the customers suggested otherwise.
Attorney Bruce Feder, representing Backpage’s former executive vice president Scott Spear, asked repeatedly whether Beck had appeared in ads for sex work on other sites like Facebook and Craigslist. He and other defense attorneys have more than once suggested that such websites host even more objectionable content than Backpage, asking why Backpage is under fire while other sites aren’t.
The judge sustained an objection to that question under Federal Rule 412, which prohibits questioning sex crime victims about other past or present sexual conduct not immediately related to the case at hand.
Feder earlier asked Beck whether she read Backpage’s terms of service, which included a section prohibiting users under the age of 18. Beck said she didn’t read the terms and clicked that she was 18 anyway.
The government on Friday called another witness who was trafficked via the site at the age of 15, Jessica Svendgard. The now-28-year-old said she was featured in at least 100 ads in 2010.
Attorney Joy Bertrand, representing former Backpage assistant operations manager Joye Vaught, elicited on cross-examination that police eventually contacted Svendgard through Backpage and arrested and prosecuted her pimp, pointing to Backpage’s usefulness to police in investigating prostitution.
The defense has emphasized numerous times that Backpage simply hosted a space for content to be posted and can’t be held accountable for what customers did with the space.
Lacey’s attorney Paul Cambria cross-examined Griffin, who said he used phone numbers listed on Backpage to find prostitutes in his area.
“Was there ever a contemplation of charging the phone company?” he asked.
“No,” Griffin replied.
Prosecutors argue the Backpage ads were clearly prostitution because they contained links to The Erotic Review, a site dedicated to rating and reviewing prostitutes for other customers to read before a transaction.
But Cambria asked another officer who testified early Friday morning whether he knew whether the sexual conduct described in those reviews really happened.
“There’s no way for me to verify whether the reviews were true,” Phoenix Police Detective Eric Murray replied.
Murray said Thursday that while he assumed ads placed in the adult escort section were prostitution, like Griffin, he couldn’t make an arrest based on that assumption.
Prosecutors ended the week going over Backpage’s finances with an Internal Revenue Service investigator, though they haven’t yet drawn a link from the company’s transactions to the money laundering charges facing the defendants.
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