Unlucky Diamond?

Under pressure, Craigslist is revamping its adult services ads. But critics wonder if the change will actually stop illicit activity.

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Mayhem's Mates

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By Winston Ross | Newsweek Web Exclusive

May 14, 2009 | Updated: 3:58 p.m. ET May 14, 2009

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She calls herself "Diamond." And thanks to Craigslist, the 25-year-old prostitute hopes never to walk the dusty streets of Reno, Nev., again.

But when the San Francisco-based Web site pulled the plug Wednesday on its "erotic services" section, Diamond's luck may have run out. Coming under fire from law enforcement in several states and facing bad publicity over a recent murder case in Boston, Craigslist said it was replacing the old category with a new one, "adult services," that will be actively monitored by employees.

In recent years, sex workers have flocked to Craigslist and other Web sites, believing cyberspace to be a much safer way to meet new clients than pounding the pavement. "You know they have access to a computer, to the Internet," says Diamond, suggesting that it means they're maybe a little less likely to be deranged or crack-addled. "They can read. It just feels more ... professional."

Diamond may feel safer, but critics say it's not necessarily so. In the wake of several crimes linked to the privately held Craigslist in recent months, several attorneys general moved to end a tenuous truce signed last fall between the site's purveyors and the top lawyers from 40 states. The pact was designed to rein in the selling of sex on a site that draws 9 billion page views per month and that generated an estimated $80 million in revenue last year, according to a report by the Web consultant Classified Intelligence. Most of that revenue is generated by fees from job and apartment listings.

In March, the Cook County, Ill., sheriff filed a lawsuit against Craigslist in U.S. district court calling for the company to discontinue the erotic services section and to reimburse police for more than $100,000 spent to arrest 156 people via Craigslist between January and November 2008. "Craigslist is the single largest source of prostitution in the nation," said Sheriff Thomas Dart at a press conference in Chicago. "Missing children, runaways, abused women and women trafficked in from foreign countries are routinely forced to have sex with strangers because they're being pimped on Craigslist."

In Kent, Wash., last month, King County prosecutors filed attempted-murder charges against a 24-year-old laborer named Shawn Tyler Skelton after he allegedly posted an advertisement seeking a woman he could have sex with, and then murder. The ad said "serious inquiries only." Detectives responded and learned that their suspect was also "willing to kill an unwitting person, but that he wanted to be paid" $2,000, according to court documents. Skelton agreed upon the terms, police say, and then showed up at a Seattle motel to an arranged meeting with a knife, a length of heavy chain and two long shoelaces. Skelton has pleaded not guilty.

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Posted By: Dolmance @ 05/17/2009 4:33:41 PM

Well, of course we all know prostitution didn't exist before Craigslist, so I have every expectation that it will magically disappear now that they're not going to run those ads anymore.

Fact is, if it wasn't for Craigslist, they'd never have caught that miscreant freak just starting out on his career of being a serial killer. And stopping the erotic services ads will simply drive the sex workers even more underground, and increase their susceptibility to vicious predators.
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Posted By: very old man 0838 @ 05/16/2009 10:58:35 AM

Everybody pay for sex. The cost of bringing another human being to our world is so great if God did not create climax with sex, nobody with the right mind will ever do it.
Less than 1% of us ever get paid to have sex. 99% of us pay through our teeth for the rest of our life just to enjoy a few seconds of the greatest pleasure God ever granted us. Can we blame those who are jealous of the prostitutes and the johns?
We are so unwilling to confront the true criminals, the pimps, the mentally ill murderers/abusers we will rather assert our value on ordinary people who are doing a natural thing in a way we disagree with.
Getting paid for sex is a risky business and requires extraordinary will power to execute it successfully. This is extreme high wire walking. We are so jealous of those who practice it we will use those who tried and died to disallow anybody from doing it so nobody will say we are not able to participate in that game.
That???s human nature.
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Posted By: pandahays @ 05/15/2009 10:23:37 AM

Now I'm a fairly conservative gal. I believe in monogamous sex within a married relationship, but even I find it a little confusing that so many things are legal, that the government talks endlessly about rights (including right to do with your body what you please i.e. abortion), yet they outlaw paying for a sexual act?

I would never condone prostitution because I find it morally reprehensible, and I think its a dangerous game. However, I do wonder if legalizing it and putting restrictions on it (regular STD testing, some kind of taxing, registering prostitutes) would make it safer and keep the underage girls at bay. I don't know, just a thought. I guess we could say the same thing about marijuana, but maybe I'm a hypocrit in that way. I just don't think the government has the right to tell us how to behave morally, unless we are forcing someone else to suffer from that immorality.