Tag Archive for 'human trafficking'

‘Master Ed’ pleads guilty in Lebanon, MO sex slave case

Published on January 15, 2013 by Trench Reynolds in Lebanon Sex Slave. 6 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .
Edward Bagley Sr.

Edward Bagley Sr.

Final Suspect Pleads Guilty in Sex Slave Case; Faces 20 Years:

As alluded to yesterday 45-year-old Edward Bagley Sr.of Lebanon, Missouri has pleaded guilty to federal charges of trafficking, torturing and raping a woman he kept in his home for several years. Just a slight recap of some of the torture this woman had to endure at the hands of this white trash hillbilly.

The victim was tortured over a six-year period by strangulation, suffocation, breast and vaginal penetration with skewers, and electrical voltage.

And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. You can read more about her ordeal in the archives.

While it’s good to see that all involved are being sent to prison Bagley is only facing 20 years thanks to his plea deal. That means he could get less than 20 years. The torture of this woman is almost Dr. Mengele like proportions and all he’ll get at the most is 20 years? This is not justice unless there some kind of Marquis De Sade room in federal prisons that I’m unaware of. With any luck his fellow inmates will return unto him what he gave to that poor woman tenfold.

Guilty plea expected in Lebanon, MO sex slave case

Published on January 14, 2013 by Trench Reynolds in Lebanon Sex Slave. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .
Edward Bagley Sr.

Edward Bagley Sr.

Guilty plea expected in ‘horrific’ sex torture case:

Tomorrow 45-year-old Edward Bagley Sr.is expected to plead guilty to the sexual torture and trafficking of woman that he and his wife allegedly kept as a sex slave.

Bagley met the girl when she was a 16-year-old runaway and convinced her to stay at his trailer. Bagley would sexually abuse the woman and either broadcast it over the web or charge his friends to watch. He even lent her out to some of his cronies in exchange for things like steaks, cigarettes and cash. He had his name tattooed on her and made her sign what she thought was a legally binding contract making her his property. As one form of punishment Bagley allegedly had her vagina sewn shut. This went on for a number of years. The only reason that she was rescued is because she had a heart attack after being electrocuted by Bagley during one of their torture sessions.

Since the story broke there have been some in the BDSM community who have been saying that there is nothing illegal going on here. One journalist even compared this situation to 50 Shades of Grey. Here’s the thing with that though, in most BDSM relationships it’s not only between two people and those people usually respect each other and the relationship is consensual. Trading your partner out for steaks and smokes is usually not part of the deal. What happened here is nothing short of the torture of a poor unfortunate woman. She was not a willing participant. She was coerced into thinking that she had no other choice. Prison for Bagley is only a modicum of justice in this case.

No word on what Bagley’s possible sentence is but unless it includes the words torture, electrocution, rape and slavery it won’t be anywhere near what this cowardly and depraved piece of pig excrement deserves.

State of Washington forced to settle with Backpage

Published on December 26, 2012 by Trench Reynolds in Backpage and Prostitution and Human Trafficking. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

frank-palmer-washington-state-seal

State agrees to work to repeal law opposed by Backpage.com:

Earlier this year the state of Washington passed Senate Bill 6251 into law. In a nutshell the law required websites and publications doing business in the state of Washington to verify the ages of the women being advertised in ‘escort’ ads. Almost immediately Village Voice Media, which owned Backpage at the time, sued to have the law blocked. They won.

More recently a few weeks ago not only has Washington given up on SB 6251 but they’ve also agreed to pay Backpage $200K for legal fees. That’s not just a devastating loss for you know…freedom but it adds insult to injury to a state that is trying its best to stop online sex trafficking of women and children.

While Backpage continues to make money off the exploited women and children in the adult section of their site Attorney General Rob McKenna sums up what the stumbling block is in trying to deal with sites like Backpage…

“But unless Congress acts to revise the section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, an appeal will be extremely challenging and costly. It is unfortunate that because of this ruling, Backpage will continue to profit from sex ads for kids and others. Congress must revisit the CDA in order to close a loophole that allows companies such as Backpage to make millions advertising an illegal service that takes a particularly devastating toll on children,”

A man after my own heart. As I’m fond of saying the Communications Decency Act was signed into law in 1996. That was the infancy of a publicly available internet. Do you remember the internet from 1996? I wasn’t even on it yet but it dredges up memories of dial-up modems, AOL discs and Netscape. How much has the internet evolved in the past 16 years? Shouldn’t the CDA evolve along with it? And again what is more important, Backpage’s ‘right’ to make money from sexual slavery or the rights of the women and children on their pages not to be sold?

U.S. Senate passes Backpage resolution

Published on December 23, 2012 by Trench Reynolds in Backpage and Prostitution and Human Trafficking. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

us-senate

In other news this past week that probably almost everyone missed the U.S. Senate passed a resolution (S. Res. 439) calling for Village Voice Media to take down the adult section of Backpage.

While I appreciate the effort this shows me a couple of things. The first is that it’s obvious that congress is behind the times since Village Voice Media no longer owns Backpage. Backpage is now owned by the founders of Village Voice Media and supposedly no longer has any connection to the Village Voice family of newspapers. Secondly this resolution will be about as effective as a strongly worded letter from the U.N. to Iran, as in not effective at all. Backpage will continue to go on about how it’s their constitutional right to collect advertising money from pimps and traffickers in order to exploit women and children that are in sexual slavery.

There is something of actual use to come out of the resolution as it…

…supports the efforts of law enforcement agencies to provide training to law enforcement agents on how to identify victims of sex trafficking, investigate cases of sex trafficking, prosecute sex trafficking offenses and rescue victims of sex trafficking.

Again, the intention is there but the road to hell is paved with congressional resolutions. What we need are new laws. Laws that would not only make the risk greater than the reward for traffickers but for johns as well.

You can pass all the resolutions you want but until real laws with teeth are passed congress is just spinning it’s wheels.

Thanks to Dr. Jones for the tip.

‘Journalist’ compares sexual torture and slavery case to 50 Shades of Grey

Published on October 7, 2012 by Trench Reynolds in Lebanon Sex Slave. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Is Missouri couple’s ’50 Shades of Grey’ lifestyle a crime?:

Diana Reese is a freelance journalist in Kansas City. The Washington Post carried her article that compares the trashy mom porn novel 50 Shades of Grey to a case in Missouri where a mentally challenged woman was held captive for 7 years.

As far as I can tell, because I haven’t read the book, 50 Shades of Grey is about a man who introduces a naive young woman into the world of BDSM. From what actual practitioners of BDSM have told me it’s just a Harlequin romance novel that made it big. But I’m not here to trash the book. I’m here to call Ms. Reese’s article not only irresponsible journalism but trying to get ink (or pixels) by using something that’s popular to trivialize the plight of a woman who was tortured and traded for 7 years.

I’ve posted about the story of Edward Bagley Sr. and his wife Marilyn of Lebanon, Missouri before. They allegedly took in a mentally challenged 16-year-old runaway in 2002. Bagley convinced her to come live with him and even made her sign a contract that said he owned her which she thought was legally binding. He is believed to have raped and tortured the woman for years over webacam and with private shows for some of his buddies. He had the girl tattooed with his name to show dominance over her and that she was his property. Investigators say that Bagley also traded her out to some of his friends for money, clothes, cigarettes and steaks. Did I mention at one point she allegedly had her vagina sewn shut as a form of punishment?

This is not BDSM in any sense of the term. This is just pure sadism in its basest sense, torture for the sake of torture.

How dare anyone try to compare the torture this woman endured from the ages of 16 to 23 as a ‘relationship’.

Licensing and zoning more important than sex trafficking

Published on September 23, 2012 by Trench Reynolds in Backpage and Prostitution and Human Trafficking. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

2 women post $10K bail on new Oxford massage parlor charges:

This is an article from the Worcester Telegram about Lanyun Ma, 42, and Wei Ma, 22, who were both charged with human trafficking while running a backpage advertised massage parlor in Oxford, Mass. However instead of focusing on the horrors of human sex trafficking the article focused more on the matters of the local city council.

Foreign sex workers are often brought in illegally from other countries in horrid conditions and are forced to work of their ‘debt’ by being forced to sexually pleasure any degenerate who can come up with $60 and a tip. Often they are basically kept prisoner, forced to live in the same room they’re violated in and are often held against their will or have their families back home threatened with violence.

Instead of focusing on that the article instead focused on the licensing and zoning of massage parlors in the Oxford area.

This is why hardly anyone gives a crap about sex trafficking in this country. While countless women and children are being sold and violated people in this country are more concerned about what is it doing to their property values.

Internet Archive supports Backpage sex trafficking

Published on July 30, 2012 by Trench Reynolds in Backpage and Prostitution and Human Trafficking. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Are those pillars or bars?

US Judge Grants Injunction in Backpage.com Lawsuit:

Last week a federal judge granted an injunction against a Washington state law that would require sites like Backpage to verify the ages of the women being advertised in their adult section.

The decision U.S. District Judge Ricardo S. Martinez issued Friday stops the law from taking effect until the lawsuit challenging it can be heard in court.

I posted about the lawsuit here.

Judge Martinez believes that the ‘free speech’ issue may have some merit. I disagree but I don’t get to make the rules.

What I want to talk about is the unusual ally that the Village Voice Media owned backpage.com has garnered in their fight to keep making profits on the victims of sex trafficking. That would be the Internet Archive, aka Archive,org, aka The Wayback Machine, aka the site you go to when you want to see how bad websites looked in the past.

Backpage and Internet Archive argue the new law violates the Communications Decency Act of 1996, as well as the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments and the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Yet they once again not only gloss over the Thirteenth Amendment but basic human rights as well.

Let’s not kid ourselves, this about money and nothing else. Backpage wants to make it off the backs of sex trafficking victims and doesn’t care who gets raped, kidnapped, beaten, tortured and killed to get it. Organizations like the EFF and now Internet Archive are nothing more than their willing dupes.

Backpage has Washington sex trafficking law blocked

Published on June 7, 2012 by Trench Reynolds in Backpage and Prostitution and Human Trafficking. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Backpage.com sues over Wash. sex-trafficking law:

In the state of Washington law SB 6251 was set to take effect today. The law would require that sites like Backpage and papers like Village Voice Media publications would be required to verify the ages of the people in ‘escort’ ads. (ie, prostitution and trafficking ads)

Village Voice Media and Backpage being the stalwart defenders of the disadvantaged that they are not only sued to have the low blocked, they won, for now. Once again the greedy cowards at VVM hide behind the federal Communications Decency Act. Now I’m no legal expert but the essence of the CDA was to protect site owners from when one of their troll users posted something criminal or inflammatory on their websites. What the CDA never accounted for was website owners making millions of dollars on women and children being forcibly sold into sex slavery. Not to mention that the CDA was passed in 1996. In terms of internet years that was a lifetime ago. That’s when people were still using dial-up to connect to their AOL accounts on 28.8K modems. The internet has evolved so much in that time yet the CDA is stuck in the era of the dancing baby. It’s an archaic law that is in desperate need of a modern upgrade.

Of course we have a quote from Backpage’s new head legal weasel Liz McDougall about how the fine folks at Backpage shit puppies and rainbows…

Company lawyer Liz McDougall said that Backpage is “an online industry leader in working cooperatively with law enforcement to identify, arrest and prostitute…I mean prosecute human traffickers,” and that Washington’s law would force criminal conduct back underground, where it’s harder to track.

“The trafficking of children for sex is an abomination,” she said in a written statement. “I believe aggressive improvements in technology and close collaboration between the online service community, law enforcement and (nongovernmental organizations) is the best approach to fighting human trafficking.”

I may have altered the quote somewhat. Joking aside what she’s really saying is that this law interferes with Backpage and VVM making money hand over fist keeping their dead industry alive on the backs of rape victims. If Backpage were to shut down the adult section it would not make traffickers harder to track and it would decrease their numbers greatly. Backpage may be the leader of online trafficking today but they still don’t come close to the numbers that craigslist had at the height of their involvement in the sex trade. When sites like craigslist and Backpage shut down their erotic/adult sections the number of sex traffickers decrease. The harder you make the threshold of entry higher for traffickers to post online it would greatly decrease their presence.

ND man facing 20 years for sex trafficking and Trench thinks that’s too much

Published on May 31, 2012 by Trench Reynolds in Craigslist and Prostitution and Human Trafficking. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Chad Lee Lindley

Human trafficking charge filed against Fargo man accused of hiring prostitutes on Craigslist:

40-year-old Chad Lee Lindley of Fargo, North Dakota is looking at a 20 year stretch in prison on human trafficking charges. Police say that he was an aspiring pimp advertising for new recruits on craigslist…

“I do have job openings that will provide the fun, provide the case, and provide the lifestyle that you’ll love,”

“Gorgeous young women between the ages of 18 to 40 years old ready to make up to $10,000 or more a week,”

“Must be experienced or know what this job is, professional, seductive, passionate and most of all sexy.”

Now you should know by now that I want to eliminate all forms of human trafficking especially those that are proliferating on craigslist and backpage however 20 years for this schmo is too extreme. Granted he’s a wanna be pimp assbag but as far as I could tell he never actually had any women working for him.

The problem is he’s being made an example. In 2009 North Dakota passed a law that specifically targeted human trafficking. This is the first time it’s being used in the Fargo area. While I most certainly agree that examples should me made out of traffickers this guy isn’t who you want as the poster boy for enforcing trafficking laws. You want the guy who has actually trafficked women and children and sold and traded them as sex slaves. You want the guy who has used violence and intimidation to keep their victims in line. This guy is just Henry Winkler in Night Shift.

Don’t get me wrong, the guy should be charged but any talk of 20 years when traffickers much more deadly than him get less than half of that is laughable.

From the mouth of Liz McDougall II

Published on May 28, 2012 by Trench Reynolds in Backpage and Prostitution and Human Trafficking. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Liz McDougall

Officials pin sex busts on Backpage:

Basically this is an article from the Boston Herald about how various officials in Massachusetts are appalled by how so many women and children are being trafficked on the Village Voice Media owned backpage.com. Your usual banter from politicians however what I want to talk about is what Village Voice Media legal weasel Liz McDougall had to say about this.

“Backpage is working diligently to rid its site of human trafficking,” McDougall said. “Although Backpage is a for-profit business, it does not want to make a single penny off of this abhorrent activity.”

She is either a liar or a blind fool. Not only does backpage make ‘pennies’ off of the sex trafficking by most reports they made two billion seven-hundred million pennies off of their prostitution ads in a year.

If Backpage and Village Voice Media really find human trafficking that abhorrent then they would shut down the adult section. It’s that simple.