LETTER I WROTE TO CRAIGSLIST OVER THEIR FLAGGING ADS FOR PROSTITUTES ANONYMOUS INSTANTLY AFTER I POST THEM

 Dear Craigslist:

As you probably have seen, a lot of attention is on Diddy and his trial.  A series has come out recently attacking Dennis Hof, the man who used to own the Bunny Ranch.  

So there's a lot going on right now in the media about the subject of prostitution.  This includes attention on sex trafficking.

Ever since you stopped carrying escort ads, and Backpage got shut down, there is no real "central" publication that most involved in that world read.  However, a lot of people in sex work do read Craigslist for all kinds of things - such as looking for movers or hiring a dog walker.  The subject of exiting this profession is on their minds right now.  

At the same time, with all of this cracking down on illegal aliens, there's a lot of people now afraid to go to work or they can't come up with the papers to show an employer to get, or keep, work.  I saw on the news something like 2000 people got kicked out of Uber because they didn't have a birth certificate.  Many people lost their homes in the LA fires.  

On top of this, Medicaid or state health insurance, isn't going to pay for transgender surgery and/or hormone treatments.  Now when health insurance did start covering trans surgery - the number of people I saw engaging in sex work to pay for their transition, and support themselves during that awkward transition period of time when they could be male or female - dropped to practically zero.  It was the first time I saw people going through the transition without being in sex work, porn, stripping, etc.  

However, with state or low income health insurance no longer paying for their transition and ongoing care - that means we're seeing a FLOOD of people back into sex work lately.  

At the same time, how do I reach out to these people to let them know there is help available to them to help them exit that isn't connected with the cops, or a church?  Prostitutes Anonymous is literally the only hotline/program I'm aware of that isn't religious in focus, or requires you work with law enforcement in order to get help.  Which can get sticky because for the last 20 years now, almost all sex trafficking that's connected to the cartels does involve law enforcement supporting the traffickers.  Look to the Diddy case where the plaintiffs named Las Vegas Metro chief as threatening Cassie SHE'D be the one in trouble if she tried to press charges against Diddy.  This problem is not unique to Las Vegas either.  You can look up Celeste Guap and see everyone on the police force AND on the human trafficking task force was blocking her from calling for help because they had badges in Oakland.  The link between law enforcement and a scandal around sex trafficking where they have been backing the traffickers is literally now in every major city in the US - and you can google this to see what I am saying is true.  

We have Covid now mutating again.  We possibly have bird flu and even ebola popping up.  So getting someone OUT of prostitution, porn, etc., or at LEAST getting them some safe sex education that's not offered in the schools really anymore now everyone is focusing on trans issues - is literally now a matter of public safety.  

So there's every reason we have right now to want to place ads on your site so people wanting help to exit that world can find the help they need.  However, literally whenever I place an ad on your site for either the program itself, or asking for volunteers to help us - your site has me blocked each and every single time within five minutes or less.  You don't have a category I could pay to place the ad in where I think sex workers would discover the ads because you don't take escort ads openly anymore.  This leaves me with only placing ads in "groups" and "volunteers".  

Only no matter how I word the ads - you block me.  This isn't a reader flagging the ads as these ads are literally blocked within minutes of posting no matter what time of day I post them in.  I have a VPN, so I don't think someone is tracking my IP address to know exactly when I place the ad to know when to block me.  

And this whole border crisis right now is putting a LOT of moms out of work who have kids to feed who will be considering prostitution to feed those babies.  So they're going to be looking on Craigslist for work, or ideas to help them.  I want them to find our ad to get some help.  

There's LITERALLY no reason why you can't stop blocking our ads.  If anything, your blocking me could be considered as backing the traffickers.  If your main buyers of your product were coming to you to buy alcohol and I wanted to place ads for alcoholics to go to AA, and you blocked those ads as you're doing with my ads, you could be considered as supporting the alcohol industry.  If you were found to be taking money to support alcoholics finding alcohol ads, but not finding ads for AA - then again you could be seen as harming alcoholics - either intentionally or negligently - but harming them either way.

I've already written you and asked you politely to cooperate with me and stop blocking our ads.  You're still blocking them.  Leaving me to believe you're blocking sex trafficking victims from finding help to escape.  Which other websites have lost over less when it came to the SESTA/FOSTA laws.  

So I'm going to ask you one more time politely to stop blocking our ads for www.prostitutesanonymous.net  I'm going to wait two weeks to give you time to update your software to stop doing this in case it's being done automatically.  I'm going to then try and place our ads again after the 4th of July weekend.  

If our ads are flagged again immediately across the board as you've been doing for over 20 years now, then you will leave me no choice but to start writing people like the FCC and the Inspector General's office a complaint about how you are supporting sex trafficking by this exclusion of ads for our hotline and program.  A program which if a single mom is arrested on a prostitution charge - without our help she will go to jail.  If she's locked up more than 24 hours, her kids get put into foster care.  If she has other charges added onto that prostitution charge and she can't get released within one year - her kids get adopted out from under her permanently.  Which considering how the cities now can get up to $80,000 per kid they get adopted, with a large chunk of that money coming from the federal government paying them for each child they can adopt out - that's a HUGE incentive to lock these women up in jail for as long as they can.  

However, if they know about our program, they can ask to be sent to her instead of being incarcerated.  If the court denies their motion, they can then file a complaint the judge violated their 14th Amendment right to choose the medical care and spiritual care of their own choosing - and FORCE the court to give them going to our meetings or going to jail.  

So your refusal to get our number in front of these same women - could also be construed as supporting these kids being sold right out from under them to child traffickers - which is all that this has become lately or "kids for cash".  

Meaning if you continue to refuse to stop blocking us, I can not only file a SESTA/FOSTA complaint to these agencies alleging you're supporting sex trafficking by blocking us from finding potential victims and getting them help, but I can also file a complaint with the attorney general's office saying you're supporting sex trafficking and sexploitation.  Facebook has already lost a few of these cases over basically doing the same thing as you're doing to me.  So I think my filing a complaint like this would at a minimum stir up some dust for you - and considering what happened to Backpage I don't know if you want to take on that kind of heat right now with Trump in office acting like a bull in a china shop when it comes to trying to stop sex trafficking by any means possible he feels Biden was actively engaging in while he was president.

I will also file a lawsuit for $1,000,000 for defamation.  How is that defamation?  When I'm claiming to be a reputable 40 year old program designed to help sex trafficking victims and other sex workers find a way out of sex trafficking, and they see my ads are not on your site, they're going to think I'm either not serious about our work as to why it's not there, or they're going to think it means there's something wrong or fishy about our program.  I've had people wonder why if we're so great we aren't on Craigslist when Wikipedia for example has no problem with our site up on the TV.  So it casts doubts in people's minds also about our reputation and legitimacy - which is a form of defamation.  It has the same end result - it damages us and our reputation when you keep blocking our ads and we have to tell people we're not on your site because you've blocked us routinely.  

Yet I do see you placing ads just fine for paid protestors to throw bricks at government employees and to set illegal fires.  Yet you block my ad in a heart beat.  You know we're legit because I've got 40 years of news clippings up on our site, along with talk shows I've been on such as Donahue, Sally and Jerry Springer.  

So you have not valid reason to keep blocking us this way.  Now I can write off the past blockings as your software was blocking us for the word "prostitution" or "prostitute".  But when I call this to your attention and call you out on it, and you then continue to intentionally block us, then that leaves me with no choice but to think you're using your site to support sex trafficking and illegal prostitution.  If you're taking money from prostitutes, and not offering them a free, reputable way out that isn't law enforcement or a church, then you could seriously be viewed as supporting sex trafficking, or even "pimping" which if you take money from an illegal prostitute, it's pimping and a felony.  

It doesn't matter if you are "just a website".  When I was arrested in 1984 for felony pimping for taking service fees and screening fees on the clients, LAPD also arrested my hotel manager, the cab driver that had driven me to the hotel, my nail lady, my dry cleaner AND my mother they had photographed as handing me a bucket of KFC and her handing me a $20 bill for the chicken.  So if my mom can be charged with pimping over taking a $20 bill from me to pay for KFC - as that is "taking money from a prostitute" - then you can too for taking ads as I see still are being placed for escorts while also blocking my ads.  Which could be considered as supporting the criminal behavior of illegal prostitutes and their pimps - which is considered a felony also of conspiracy to support criminal behaviors.  If you're aiding them to be a prostitute, but also blocking my ads to get them out - again that makes it appear you're supporting and benefiting felony traffickers and pimps and could get you right in the same mix Backpage found themselves in if I start filing complaints and lawsuits.

Now if you have any questions for me, you can reach me at (702) 749 3129.  Otherwise, I'll try to place my ads again in two weeks and if they are blocked instantly again - then I will proceed to take steps legally as I've outlined I'll be forced to do.  This nonsense from you has gone on long enough!  We have young kids out there prostituting without condoms or protection encouraged by women like Bonnie Blue right now (the 1000 guy porn performer), and this is posing a serious health crisis to America right now if nothing else - so this isn't even really about prostitution or not at this point.  

I hope you just stop blocking my ads and we can move on from here.  

Sincerely,

Jody Williams

www.prostitutesanonymous.net

Copyright - all rights reserved

INTERVIEW I GAVE ON SEX TRAFFICKING THROUGH FOSTER CARE

 https://x.com/BeachySylvia/status/1929816339847258408?t=XdeVQu9lv6lRSN-cI-b0iA&s=19

JOHN QUINONES WROTE THE BOOK "HEREOS AMONG US" = THIS IS THE CHAPTER REPRINTED HE WROTE ABOUT JODY WILLIAMS

 CHAPTER SIX 

Returning to the Scene of the Crime 

 

I always try to get a window seat when I fly from New York to the West Coast because I love to look at the spectacular scenery below. The whole panorama of America unfolds, from the wetlands around JFK airport to the thick forests of Pennsylvania, the vast fields of the Midwest, the Rocky Mountain peaks, and the almost endless desert that leads into Los Angeles. I especially love the view when I stop a bit short of the Pacific and descend into the vast glittering cityscape of Las Vegas. 

 

For most people, those lights mean fun.  And I've had my share of parties, shows, and great meals in Sin City. But while reporting stories there over the years, I've learned that the lights tend to obscure a harsher reality. Only those who have lived in Vegas really know what I mean. Vegas has always been a center of decadence. It got its name from the Spanish word for fertile field because the early Spanish visitors were drawn to its springs and oases, which provided respite from the harsh Mojave Desert. In the twentieth century, Vegas became a rough-and-tumble gamblers' mecca, where the drinks flowed all night and the buffets were endless. In the last decade, the city has lost some of its surface grit, as families discover it as a vacation destination, where kids can ride roller coasters, and folks can sit down to five-star meals in famous restaurants. 

 

But, as is often the case, there's a world of pain beneath that exuberant facade. And a real need for good people to step forward and take a stand against the darkness that remains well hidden beneath the city's bright lights. Sometimes those who are best equipped to make heroic stands are those who have explored it themselves. They return to the scene of their own crime and make things better. There are more of them than you might imagine. 

 

"You have not lived until you have done something for someone who can never repay you." 

—Anonymous 

 

I recently flew to Vegas to film a segment for What Would You Do? On my day off, I scheduled a meeting with one of Las Vegas's more interesting heroes, a middle-aged woman named Jody Williams who lives with her teenage daughter far from the glittering lights, out at the edge of town where the cookie-cutter condo suburbs push right against the grit of the desert. 

 

I left my hotel room and headed down the boulevard of luxury, known by all as the Las Vegas Strip. Driving past Treasure Island Hotel, where seventeenth-century sirens battle renegade pirates in a manmade cove several times a night, and the Bellagio Hotel, with its twenty-nine-foot-tall fountain flow-ing with molten white and dark chocolate, and past the fake Eiffel Tower at Caesar's Pal-ace, I found it hard to believe that I was on my way to meet a woman who had dedicated her life to rescuing women-and some men—who had been trapped into lives of sexual servitude. 

 

Las Vegas, with its exotic architecture, 24/7 casinos, and first-class restaurants, is also a center for prostitution. I've never understood the appeal of sex for hire. Early in my career, I spent years covering the wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua. The sex trade thrived there, with all the soldiers, journalists, and foreign workers living together in hotels. But I never took part in it. When I see a prostitute, I feel sorry for her. It's not a good life. And all fantasies aside, I don't believe there is any such thing as a "happy hooker." I wish more men would see things this way. I can't imagine an America that would ever return to practice slavery, where humans were property. But the truth is, we're surrounded by a modern-day slave trade right now and most of us don't realize it. 

 

Gangs drag women and girls all over the world to work in brothels and clubs. When you see an ad in the back of a magazine advertising a "girl from the Orient," or a "barely legal cute blonde," chances are they've been coerced or even forced into the job. The traffickers kidnap, beat, rape, and psychologically torture women, and sometimes men, to get them into the sex industry. 

 

Often, a young woman will be promised a good job, as a nanny or clerical worker, in another country, only to find when she arrives that she's expected to have sex with numerous men in order to repay the thousands of dollars she owes her smuggler. According to the U.S. State Department, eighteen thousand people each year are trafficked into this country, most of them women and children brought in for sex work. 

 

Jody had given me her address but thank goodness, I had a global positioning system in my car. Otherwise, I never would have found the condominium where she and her daughter rent a room, because they can't afford an entire place of their own. The condo was in a new subdivision at the edge of other almost identical subdivisions. All the houses looked the same. It was somewhat eerie. 

 

It wasn't always like this for Jody, who led the high life back in the eighties. She was once known by the name Rene Chanel Le Blanc, and she ran a Los Angeles-area brothel that grossed thirty grand a month. 

This was back in an era before cell phones and personal computers were common, and since the brothel was equipped with closed-circuit TVs and Jody issued beepers to all the call girls, the newspapers referred to her as the "High Tech Madame" after she was busted. 

 

"It was the most elaborate operation I've ever seen," said one of the arresting officers. 

Jody reveled in her success. By no means does she try to make out that what she did back then was in any way saintly. 

 

"But all the while I was in the business, women were coming to me for help in getting out of it-even when I was a madame," said Jody. 

 

She'd help these women get out of the life because she has an intrinsic desire to help others. She attributes this core to her rough childhood. 

 

"Sociopathic, child-molesting father, you know?" she said. "And my mom was a schizo-phrenic, with multiple personalities." 

 

Somehow, Jody developed a feeling of empathy for others in similarly tough situations. She chose the perfect business for finding people in need. Men in need of sex and power. Women in need of father figures. 

 

Prostitution is a world of sadistic, often psychopathic pimps and criminals, where fear and disease are pervasive. People are sucked into this criminal universe; one singularly based on an elusive need for pleasure. People are trapped. Jody knows that most prostitutes would rather be doing almost anything else. But they get addicted to the action, and the power, and their ability to please others on demand. And their pimps convince them they aren't good enough to do anything else. 

 

"Prostitution is not work," says Melissa Farley, a psychologist and expert on the sex trade. "Rather, it's a human rights violation." 

 

Farley wrote a book, Prostitution & Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections, using statistics compiled by the State Department. She has no trouble equating prostitution with slavery. Right now, prostitution is legal in parts of Nevada. Proponents of legal sex-for-hire claim that it's cleaner and safer for the "girls" than the illegal sex trade since it's regulated by the state. But Farley says that's a myth, and she'd like all prostitution to be made illegal in Nevada.  That doesn't win her any friends among the powerful who would like to see it legalized in all of Las Vegas. I myself can't see how that would work. 

 

The U.S. Department of Justice has already put Las Vegas on its list of cities where human trafficking is a serious problem. There's no need to encourage more. 

 

Still, even though prostitution has been proven to hurt most involved, it's not a very sympathetic issue. These victims aren't fuzzy little seal pups being clubbed by a ravenous mob. These are provocatively dressed women selling their bodies to people with emotional problems; it's not a good scene. Not many people are interested in helping prostitutes, much less people who are trafficked more like cattle than the human beings they are. 

 

Jody's the first to agree. She knows it was wrong to have once worked as a madame. 

After being busted and serving a few months in jail, Jody eventually left the business and became a paralegal. All the while, she occasionally got calls from women who needed help. 

 

"At first I'd just get two or three calls per year from people who thought I could help them—it was really informal," she said. Then, on August 15, 1987, the night before hippies and New Agers all over the world got together for what was billed as the “harmonic convergence," Jody had a powerful spiritual experience that was soon to change her life. 

 

She'd been out of the sex trade for about two years. That night, she was in her bathtub when the whole room went blank and suddenly, she was blinded by an overpowering white light. 

 

"I couldn't even feel my body," she said.  "Even when I shut my eyes, I saw white. 

 

Then I saw what I took to be an angel, all gold and white and about ten feet tall. I heard crying and sobbing in that light and I also saw blood flowing through the streets. A voice told me people were dying, and I needed to do something about it. I needed to help those who still suffered." 

 

Jody believed God had called on her to start a twelve-step program for sex workers, modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous. At first, she refused to listen. She thought, "Me? 

Start a twelve-step program? Are you kidding?" 

 

Then God's voice told her that she had been freed from the sex trade for a reason, and that was to help others in need. She shouldn't waste the opportunity given to her. Helping others was the price of her recovery. In an instant, the light and the voice disappeared. 

 

It was soon thereafter that Jody founded Prostitutes Anonymous, since renamed Sex Workers Anonymous, a twelve-step program to help prostitutes free themselves from the business. Later, she founded Trafficking and Prostitution Services, or tapsdirectory.org, to assist sex workers who were held or trafficked against their will. She's always funded her own work, through her jobs as a paralegal and in advertising. But a few years ago, she became disabled from stress and other ailments and stopped work. Now she and her daughter barely get by on Social Security payments. 

 

Jody thinks this drop of income was part of God's plan for her, because it is forcing her to expand her organization to receive funding so it can survive long after she's gone. Jody's training her daughter to run it, and she has big plans. She wants to build a community in the desert where people fleeing sex trafficking can live and learn new skills. 

 

So far, she's helped thousands of people. She's bought plane tickets, rented apartments, paid huge phone bills, and stayed up countless nights helping others escape lives of degradation and exploitation, disease, and self-hatred. She estimates spending well over $300,000 of her own money in her efforts. For that, she's a hero. 

 

I spoke to one young woman who doesn't want me to use her name because she's struggling to put her years as a sex worker in the past, so I'll call her Laurie. "When I was a kid you'd never have thought I'd be a prostitute," she says. 

 

She studied ballet. Got good grades. And scored very high on her SATs. Then, when she was nineteen, she had trouble finding a job. When someone said she could make good money as an exotic dancer, she started working the pole in a club. The money was easy. She was soon offered even better money if she'd do more than just take her clothes off onstage. And she realizes now that having sex for hire with men gave her more than just the cash she needed to get on with her life. It fulfilled her in unexpected ways. 

 

"My father died of an aneurysm when I was twelve," she said. "I think I've always needed to replace him." 

 

Natasha has a different story. She says she never got rich off her work, preferring to work just enough to get by. "I didn't want to go out and get a regular job. I was very reclusive. Not highly sociable. If I could work an hour or two and make five hundred bucks, great," she said. While Natasha says she didn't experience much violence while working, she got involved with a man who beat her regularly. That only fueled her sex work. The men who paid her gave her positive feedback, which gave her some semblance of the support she'd longed for at home, where she was being flattened, emotionally and physically. 

 

"I used prostitution like a drug," she said.  

 

About five years ago, she started feeling fed up with the life. "I told myself I'd quit, but I couldn't," she says. "I got a license to sell real estate and to sell securities, but I wouldn't get a job. I'd just go back to the sex work. I kept saying to my-self, 'What's wrong with me? Why can't I get out of this? I'm not stupid." 

 

That went on until last year, when she came across Jody's website, www.prostitutesanonymous.net She called the number, and Jody answered. Natasha told her about her life, explaining how she was in a relationship with a former client and that it was a disaster. 

 

Here was this anonymous woman in the desert far away, but Natasha felt like she could talk to her about anything. She'd call Jody early in the morning, or late at night, and Jody always answered, always talked. There was never any question about her always being there. 

 

"I felt really good after talking to Jody," said Natasha. "Somebody finally understood me. Sometimes we'd talk for hours." 

 

Jody helped Natasha understand how sex work an addiction can be, and how she had a codependent personality. 

 

"I'd always do thing for others, so I could feel better about myself," Natasha said."Being with men was part of that. I realize now that it's addictive. That was an eye-opener to me. And Jody explained all these dynamics. She said it wasn't just about the money. She said there were lawyers doing it. Lobbyists in Washington, people who didn't really need the money. She said it was an addiction, for sure." 

 

Jody and Natasha have never met. Their relationship is completely based on telephone and e-mail. Jody has dozens of relationships like this. She's gone into businesses and homes and rescued sex workers who are being held captive. And she's even hired gunmen to help her do it. But most of her work isn't that dramatic. Most of it involves listening, commiserating, and offering advice. 

 

Natasha thinks she'd be in terrible shape now if it weren't for Jody. 

 

"Jody gives me hope. She helps me understand the impulses that make me want to go back into the life," she says. "I'm just living hand to mouth right now, and it's hard. But she gives me ideas for jobs. For ways to change my life. And that's really important for anyone. 

 

"I definitely think she is a hero. And right now she's the only one I've got," added Natasha. 

 

Meanwhile, Jody continues her work. She knows she could have a better apartment, car, and lifestyle if she devoted herself to a more regular career and gave up trying to help people find new lives outside of the sex trade. But she can't. 

 

"If I don't help them, who will?" she says. Her name and number are passed around by word of mouth, along with people finding her on the Internet. 

 

Her days and nights are very unpredictable. There was the night one girl called for help, but before Jody could rescue her, her pimp ran over her legs with a motorcycle, breaking both of them. Or the time a pimp poured gasoline on a girl and set her on fire before Jody could get to her. 

 

"There are just so many stories"" said Jody. 

 

And that doesn't include all the threats she has received from pimps, brothel owners, madames, and even the police and other officials and business interests who have a financial stake in prostitution. 

 

"But it's a craziness I understand," she said. "The people in the business trust me, the sex workers, because they know I've been there myself. 

 

"I've been very, very, very lucky," she added. "I mean I've literally had guns jam as someone was trying to shoot me. I know somebody upstairs is watching out for me." 

 

Sometimes she thinks about giving up, starting a quiet life with her daughter. "Then I get the next phone call. And I hear their voice, their need, and what else can I do but help?" she said. "We get those calls every day now." 

"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others." 

—Mahatma Gandhi 

 

It takes a special person to return to the very place that negatively molded large portions of her past, as Jody has, to help others. Turning harsh experiences into the positive drive needed to change the world around them.