SEX MARKETPLACE ANALYSIS

[Pages:19]MIAMI VALLEY

ONLINE COMMERCIAL

SEX MARKETPLACE

ANALYSIS

August 2015

2

Acknowledgements

Principal Investigator Tony Talbott Research Assistance Rachel Bernardo Meghan Carrol Rebecca Judeh Adrianne Lewis William Steele Project Coordination Youssef Farhat

3

Introduction

This report presents a picture of the online commercial sex marketplace for the GreaterDayton Ohio region for a seven week period in the Fall of 2014. Advertisements for commercial sex (or highly suggestive of commercial sex) from were recorded and analyzed. is the largest online commercial sex market in the US. Commercial sex is increasingly being facilitated by online transactions across the nation. In some cases, the people providing this commercial sex are compelled or are minors. According to Federal law, compelled prostitution or prostitution involving minors is defined as human trafficking.

Method

We used a modified version of the Imagine Foundation methodology () for analyzing online commercial sex advertisements.

A team of University of Dayton undergraduate student researchers was assembled from participants in Professor Tony Talbott's semester-long human trafficking class during the Fall of 2014. Researchers performed a content analysis of online advertisements from the "Escorts" (female) link under the "adult" section of , Dayton, Ohio website.

Two students were assigned to each day of the week as coders to check for inter-coder reliability. An additional undergraduate and graduate student were assigned as coordinators. Student coders entered data from all ads on their assigned day of the week. Students worked independently of each other (i.e., each day's ads were entered twice). Coordinators then reviewed the data and resolved any discrepancies between each coder's data.

Data were entered into a Google spreadsheet, cleaned, and entered into IBM's SPSS 19 program for analysis. Information gathered on each ad included: coder initials, day of week posted, date posted, poster age, locations, time, post ID, phone number, race, face shown, price in-call, price out-call, and number of people per ad. In addition, coders were asked to "flag" ads that appeared suspicious or seemed to possess indicators of human trafficking. By the start of this project, all coders had completed eight weeks of a sixteen week course on human trafficking and were very familiar with common indicators.

4

Online Commercial Sex and

"The widespread availability and rapid expansion of the Internet has redefined the spatial and

social limitations of the sex market by introducing new markets for both recruitment and advertisement."1

Recruitment and advertisement for prostitution is increasingly moving to the internet. This enables commercial sex to go "underground"--out of the public eye. Currently, the largest venue in the US for commercial sex ads is the adult services section of 's online classifieds website.2

Although these ads, ostensibly, are for escorts and related services, many are, in fact, for commercial sex. A 2012 study by Arizona State University found that nearly eighty percent of ads in the Phoenix Backpage "adult services" section were for prostitution.3

"Online classifieds like

are now a primary venue

for traffickers to sell sex with

minors and for buyers to purchase sex

with these children."

-Shared Hope International

Shared Hope International, a leading anti-child sex trafficking advocacy organization, views internet technology and Backpage in particular, as being responsible for an "explosion in sex trafficking in the United States." They report an 800% increase over a two year period in minors being sex trafficked using the internet and cite several social service providers who claim a majority of their minor sex trafficked clients were exploited via .4

1 Urban Institute. "Estimating the Size and Structure of the Underground Commercial Sex Economy in Eight Major US Cities." Research Report, March 2014. P. 286. 2 AIM Group. "Online prostitution-ad revenue crosses Craigslist benchmark." July 2013. URL: (accessed 7/10/2015). 3 ASU News. "Study finds extensive prostitution ads on ." September, 2012. URL: (accessed 7/10/15). 4 Shared Hope International. "Online Facilitation of Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking." White Paper, August 2014.

5

Commercial sex advertisements are very lucrative for . The AIM Group reports the site earned over $37 Million in a twelve-month period ending May, 2013.

This revenue was generated by escort and body rub ads on the site. Backpage's monthly revenue from these ads is steadily increasing, due primarily to rate increases for the ads.5

Figure 1 | Source:

The daily rate for Dayton escort ads is $7.00, which places it in the second most expensive location category for Ohio ads. Non-"adult" classifieds on Backpage are generally free.6

Table 1

Location

Akron/Canton Ashtabula Athens Chillicothe Cincinnati Cleveland Columbus Dayton

Daily Rate for Ad

$7.00 $2.00 $2.00 $2.00 $10.00 $10.00 $10.00 $7.00

Location

Huntington/Ashland Lima/Findlay Mansfield Sandusky Toledo

Tuscarawas County Youngstown

Zanesville/Cambridge

Daily Rate for Ad

$2.00 $3.00 $2.00 $2.00 $7.00 $3.00 $5.00 $2.00

5 AIM Group. "Online prostitution-ad revenue crosses Craigslist benchmark." July 2013. URL: (accessed 7/10/2015). 6

6

Timeframe

The study ran for 52 days from 10/16/2014 to 12/7/2014. A total of 846 ads were analyzed and coded. This yielded an average of 16 ads per day.

Figure 2

Dates with 20 or more posts

Sixteen dates had 20 or more posts. There did not seem to be an event-specific pattern to the post frequency data (see table 2).

Number of Posts

33 26 26 25 24 24 23 22

Table 2

Day of Week Thursday Friday Sunday Saturday Wednesday Friday Wednesday Friday

Date

16-Oct-2014 17-Oct-2014 19-Oct-2014 22-Nov-2014 29-Oct-2014 21-Nov-2014 03-Dec-2014 24-Oct-2014

Number of Posts

22 22 22 21 21 21 20 20

Day of Week

Wednesday Tuesday Sunday Tuesday Thursday

Wednesday Friday Sunday

Date

05-Nov-2014 11-Nov-2014 07-Dec-2014 21-Oct-2014 06-Nov-2014 12-Nov-2014 07-Nov-2014 21-Nov-2014

7

Fridays were the most common day of the week to post, while Tuesdays were the least

common.

NUMBER OF POSTS

137

139

133

109

118

115

95

MONDAY

TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY WEEKDAY POSTED

SATURDAY

SUNDAY

Figure 3

8

Locations

Fifty-two separate locations were mentioned in the text of the ads. These locations covered urban, suburban, and rural areas of the Miami Valley and more distant urban areas spanning four states. Map 1 displays all locations specifically mentioned in the ads. Dayton was by far the most prevalent location (78% of total), followed by Miamisburg, Centerville, Cincinnati, Englewood, and Troy. Most Miami Valley locations were clustered along the I-75 corridor (see Map 2). Full list of locations in appendix 1.

Top Ten Locations

1. Dayton 2. Dayton Area/Surrounding Areas 3. Miamisburg 4. North Dayton 5. South Dayton 6. Various cities/Anywhere 7. Centerville 8. Cincinnati 9. Englewood 9. Troy

Table 3

Number of Times Mentioned

807 64

61 55 47 42 30 16 15 15

Map 1: All Locations Mentioned in Ads

 ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download