General counsel Elizabeth McDougall, of Village Voice Media Holdings, has heard all those names and more, for her defense of the company’s classified ad website, Backpage.com, and its adult ads. Attorney General Rob McKenna of Washington State has publicly assailed McDougall for, in his view, promoting the exploitation of children on the website because some advertisers secretly use child prostitutes.
But what most people don’t know, and McKenna won’t accept, is that McDougall is just as passionate as McKenna when it comes to combating human trafficking of children. She just believes her methods can be more successful than McKenna’s shut-’em-down and drive-’em-underground tactics. Shutting down an online service, McDougall says, “doesn’t eliminate or even minimize human traffickingthe problem just migrates elsewhere. The benefit of it being online is that you can see it, track it, rescue the victims, gather evidence, and arrest perpetrators.”
