The closure of Backpage. Now, she is lucky to receive two a week through other advertising platforms. The site earned its owners hundreds of millions of dollars, assistant US Attorney Elizabeth Strange said, and prioritised profit over the safety of victims of trafficking being advertised on the site.
The indictment document itself contains a selection of harrowing accounts from underage victims of trafficking through the website. Some are as young as The accounts tell of rape, gang rape, rape using a weapon, murder and torture. While these circumstances justify the closure of the Backpage. New Zealand Cracker was one of the many subsidiary sites Backpage. Photo: Unknown. In , research by Canterbury School of Medicine found more than 50 percent of sex workers worked for a business, and about 40 percent were independent workers.
Independent sex workers find clients through posting ads, primarily on online platforms like Cracker. Cracker was cheaper, too. But privacy is very important to a lot of sex workers, and many choose not to use platforms which infringe on their anonymity.
Catherine Healy says putting your face online can backfire for sex workers. Workers, in particular, are outraged, upset, and scared about what this change means for their livelihoods and their future in the industry. They say that with work drying up, some will become desperate for work and, as a result, may agree to unsafe acts for fear that refusal would mean they would lose the client. What has changed, is that now that workers are struggling to find clients at all, they may feel they have no choice.
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Catherine says she is confident that even with these added pressures, New Zealand sex workers will adhere to safe sex practises. The sex work industry is so heavily stigmatised β it is difficult to forget that, even for a day, when you are working in the industry. One of the sites reported about new unique hits on the website in one day. A huge increase from before.
