If a child is sold on the Internet as a sex slave – who do you blame?

The Supreme Court of the State of Washington is considering arguments on behalf of a group of former sex slaves.

“My clients were in 7th and 9th grade,” states the attorney.

These children were rented out as escorts using a website known as Backpage.com. The pimp who took out the ads in this case went to jail – that’s not the issue.

The issue now is whether the website itself can be held responsible for ads placed by those pimps.

The lawyer for the women argued absolutely because the site posted rules on how to write the ad in a way that

“One of the rules says, ‘Don’t advertise time incriments in 15 minutes.’ It’s actually instructions to pimps on how to post an ad that works.” Clearly, the attorney says, this is all about selling sex.

But the lawyer for Backpage says – don’t be ridiculous. Escort services are legal, and those advertising guidelines are actually designed to deter the sleazeball element from misusing the site.

“Because the plaintiffs admitted that the ads that are written here were authored, created, posted by the pimps that actually victimized them,” says Backpage’s lawyer.

He’s saying just because a site allows ads for escort services and a lot of those escorts turn out to be 14 or 15, it might be uncomfortable, but it’s perfectly constitutional.

Prompting one justice to comment under his breath, “It’s somewhat of an ostrich defense.” He continues, “That (Backpage) escapes liability by sticking (its) head in the sand and just don’t pay any attention to what’s being done.”

Since Backpage has won all of its cases so far, the courts seem to be saying that’s just what the Founding Fathers intended. Unless the Washington case goes differently.