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A Texas woman, claiming that she
was raped, beaten and sex trafficked at the age of 15 by a pimp who posed as a
Facebook “friend,” has filed suit against the social network, alleging its
executives knew minors were being lured into the sex trade on their platform.
The woman, identified only as
Jane Doe in court papers filed in Harris County District Court in Houston on
Monday, also named as defendants the now-shuttered classified ads website Backpage.com and its founders.
Attorneys for Backpage.com and the former employees
named in the lawsuit as defendants also did not return calls for comment.
According to the lawsuit, the
woman was “friended” on Facebook in 2012 by a user who appeared to know several
of her real-life friends. The man messaged her through Facebook, according to
the lawsuit, which was seen by Reuters.
The lawsuit alleges that at one
point following an argument with her mother, the trafficker offered to console
her, but after picking her up from her home he beat and raped her and took
pictures that were posted on Backpage.com.
The lawsuit says Facebook did not
do enough to verify the user’s identity, which the lawsuit said was false, and
that Jane Doe was never warned that sex traffickers were operating on the
social media network.
The plaintiff’s attorneys, David
Harris and Louie Cook of the law firm Sico Hoelscher Harris LLP in Houston, did
not reply to requests for comment.Backpage.com was
shut down by authorities earlier this year after a Justice Department
investigation into allegations that the website was used primarily to sell sex.
Source: Reuters
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