Backpage.com sued by teen prostitutes

Three teen girls from Seattle are suing Backpage.com accusing the site of enabling sexual mistreatment and saying that the website did nothing to prevent their alleged exploitation.

Backpage.com is a popular classified ads website and they were slapped with the lawsuit on Friday. According to Global Post, lawyer Erik Bauer said that he thinks that prostitution cannot be stopped but kids should not be sold. Bauer went onto say it is never ok to advertise and sell kids. According to Fox, two of the teens are 13-years-old and the third teen is 15-years-old. the girls' lawsuit claims that photos of them started to appear in numerous ads that were paid for by their pimps. The lawsuit claims that the owners of Backpage.com did nothing at all to prevent the incident. The actions described in the complaint date back to 2010. Backpage.com requires people who buy ads to click a button to verify that users are over the age of 18. However the lawsuit alleges that this is not enough to deter people who misuse the site. According to the News Tribune, court records state that one of the ads promoted one of the younger girls as the "80 dollar day special." Liz McDougall, general counsel for Backpage's corporate owners, said that this lawsuit will probably not pass the "legal muster" and that it is actually barred by federal law.