Seattle Adult Entertainment: Mayors urge online escort service to check ages

Posted on May 10th, 2012 in Seattle adult entertainment by seattlesleuth

SEATTLE — Mayors of nearly 50 cities across the country are urging Village Voice Media to require identification for people posting escort ads on Backpage.com — its online ad service that has come under scrutiny from authorities for allegations that it’s used to promote child prostitution.

Backpage.com critics say the site is used to advertise underage prostitutes who are often victims of sex trafficking. The mayors join state attorney generals, clergy, anti-sex-trafficking groups and others that have put pressure on Village Voice Media, Backpage.com’s parent company.

Shared Hope International has compiled a list of dozens of cases in 15 states in which girls were allegedly offered for sex on Backpage.com, most within the past year. The Seattle Police Department says it has linked 22 cases of child prostitution since 2010 to girls who were advertised as escorts on the website.

See the full article from “Police News”

Seattle Adult Entertainment: Local women working to expose, eradicate human trafficking

Posted on May 10th, 2012 in Seattle adult entertainment by seattlesleuth

Charles and her team are making a movie based on a book called “Sold.” The book examines the story of a girl named Lakshmi, who was sold to a pimp by her parents.
“These girls could be my daughter,” Charles said. “They could be your daughter, could have been one of us.”
Girls from any country and any city — even Seattle — are targets
“It is in our backyard. It’s a huge problem,” Charles said.
Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna said Washington is especially vulnerable to human trafficking because of its international border with Canada, its abundance of ports and its dependency on agricultural workers.
But it’s not just foreign girls who are victimized in Washington.
Noel used to work as a prostitute on a stretch of Aurora Avenue that’s known as “The Track.”

See the full article from “KOMO News”

Seattle Adult Entertainment: Backpage.com Still Sparring With Seattle Over Online Escort Ads

Posted on May 10th, 2012 in Seattle adult entertainment by seattlesleuth

Both sides agree it’s happening: pimps use Backpage.com to sell services of girls they’ve forced into prostitution. But in the ongoing dispute between Backpage and Seattle officials, that’s where the agreement stops.
Backpage’s brand new attorney Liz McDougall once defended Craigslist over the same exact issue: its escort ads. In an editorial published in The Seattle Times on Sunday, McDougall says Backpage is a powerful ally in the cause against forced teenage prostitution. She says the company is using unprecedented online tools to help catch victims.
Washington state Senator Jeanne Kohl–Wells, to put it mildly, disagrees. She spoke with the Seattle mayor at a press conference Monday.
Kohl–Welles: “Now for Backpage.com refer to itself as an ally in fighting human trafficking to me is like having a pimp say he is a guardian or protector of a minor. It’s crazy.”

See the full article from “KUOW NPR”

Seattle Adult Entertainment: Shoreline man arrested in Kent for promoting prostitution

Posted on May 10th, 2012 in Seattle adult entertainment by seattlesleuth

He threatened to shoot up her house and beat her up if she did not work for him. He also threatened that if he ever went back to jail because of her he would tie her and her brother to a tree in the woods and she would have to watch while he tortured and killed his brother. And then he would torture her and she would have to beg for her life.
Kent Police first contacted McDaniels in November 2011 in a dispute over money involving a suspected pimp at a Kent trailer park. He told officers he contracted with an escort company to retrieve money from clients who refused to pay for services. No arrests were made. The woman who was the escort was the same woman who turned in McDaniels outside the RJC.

See the full article from “Kent Reporter”

Seattle Adult Entertainment: Poll: Fewer Than One In Three Approve of McGinn

Posted on May 10th, 2012 in Seattle adult entertainment by seattlesleuth

McGinn’s not the issue. He has been such an inept bumbler that it has been a foregone conclusion for some time now that he would be “one and done.” I’m more interested in the results from the questions “is it harder to park a car?”, “are meter rates too high?”, “have higher meter rates made it harder to find parking downtown?”, “are you more likely to take the bus?”, and “have you considered giving up your car?”
If these percentages can be replicated in other polls, and if they hold up through the end of 2012, it would appear that not only McGinn is in trouble, but that the “new urbanist” war on cars is a political loser, just as I and others have been saying all along, and despite the frantic pimping of that war on cars by Publicola and others.

See the full article from “PubliCola”

Seattle Strip Clubs: Live Review: Father John Misty and Har Mar Superstar at Neumos

Posted on May 9th, 2012 in Seattle strip clubs by stripclubbouncer

Opening for Father John Misty was the memorable and ridiculously entertaining Har Mar Superstar. Specializing in funky RnB, Har Mar Superstar’s singer and resident stripper Sean Tillmann titillated the crowd throughout his energetic set – disrobing throughout each of his songs, leaving him in just a pair of sherbet stripped briefs by his last song. Performing songs backed by Jefferson Catfish Quinn on guitar, Macey Taylor on bass, and Father John Misty himself (J. Tillman) on drums, Har Mar Superstar got the crowd amped and dancing.

See the full article from “SSG Music (blog)”

Seattle Escorts: McGinn lashes out at backpage.com after Seattle Times editorial

Posted on May 8th, 2012 in Seattle escorts by seattleescortlover

Posted: 5:34 p.m. Monday, May 7, 2012
McGinn lashes out at backpage.com after Seattle Times editorial
Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn lashed out Monday at backpage.com, a website that says it’s trying to stop child prostitution but that McGinn says it promoting it.
The city is apparently so frustrated, that the mayor called a late-afternoon news conference, following an opinion piece by backpage’s lawyer that ran in The Seattle Times earlier in the day.
McGinn waved a print-out of the editorial at the beginning of the news conference. He noted that backpage earns more than $22 million per year by advertising adult escort services online.
According to the essay in The Times, the company goes through a system of triple-checking the identities of escorts who are allowed to post ads, and that online advertising helps police to find underage prostitutes.

See the full article from “KIRO Seattle”

Seattle Adult Entertainment: Dozens of Mayors Ask Backpage to Check Escort IDs

Posted on May 7th, 2012 in Seattle adult entertainment by seattlesleuth

Nearly 50 US mayors, including Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn, signed off on a letter today urging Village Voice Media CEO Jim Larkin to require people advertising escort services on Backpage.com, which VVM owns, to provide photo ID showing they’re 18 or older before advertising on the site. VVM owns Seattle Weekly. 
Noting that Backpage, unlike other advertising services, only requires escorts to check a box online saying that they’re over 18, the mayors wrote, “We urge you to take quick action and help us address underage sex trafficking by requiring a photo ID for prospective advertisers. We believe this is the only way to provide safeguards against individuals who may be placing advertisements on under aged individuals. We stand ready to discuss this issue with you and hope to hear from you soon that Backpage.com will require a photo ID for prospective advertisers.”

See the full article from “PubliCola”

Seattle Adult Entertainment: Mayors urge online escort service to check ages

Posted on May 7th, 2012 in Seattle adult entertainment by seattlesleuth

SEATTLE (AP) – Mayors of nearly 50 cities across the country are urging Village Voice Media to require identification for people posting escort ads on Backpage.com – its online ad service that has come under scrutiny from authorities for allegations that it’s used to promote child prostitution.

Backpage.com critics say the site is used to advertise underage prostitutes who are often victims of sex trafficking. The mayors join state attorney generals, clergy, anti-sex-trafficking groups and others that have put pressure on Village Voice Media, Backpage.com’s parent company.

Shared Hope International has compiled a list of dozens of cases in 15 states in which girls were allegedly offered for sex on Backpage.com, most within the past year. The Seattle Police Department says it has linked 22 cases of child prostitution since 2010 to girls who were advertised as escorts on the website.

See the full article from “WOWK”

Seattle Adult Entertainment: Sammamish Police Blotter: Minor Pedestrian Traffic Accident, Major Neighbor …

Posted on May 4th, 2012 in Seattle adult entertainment by seattlesleuth

Jogger hits car: a Sammamish man reported to police that he was driving northbound on 212th Ave from E. Lake Sammamish Parkway when a jogger came running around the curve in his lane of travel and full speed down the hill. The car took evasive action to avoid hitting the jogger, and the jogger hit the passenger door mirror with his hand. The driver pulled over and yelled back at the jogger “what was his problem” the jogger flipped him off and ran off into the woods. No suspect was found.
Driving while license revoked: An Auburn woman was arrested for driving with a revoked license after police stopped her near the boulder Creek Apartments. The woman admitted having ties to prostitution and sex trafficking through websites such as backpage.com and to having been arrested for such crimes.

See the full article from “Patch.com”

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