Fighting the World's Largest Sex Trafficker
October 18, 2021
Krell, a former deputy attorney general in the California Department of Justice, debuts with a brisk recap of her efforts to prosecute the owners of Backpage.com for sex trafficking. Inspired by her successful prosecution of a motel owner for knowingly renting his rooms for commercial sex acts, Krell formed a statewide human trafficking unit in the attorney general’s office and busted a network of brothels where women lured from Asia with promises of good jobs were forced to prostitute themselves to pay off their travel costs. In 2013, Krell, at the urging of victim’s rights advocates, turned her attention to Backpage, where girls as young as 12 were advertised in the “Escort” and “Erotic Services” sections. Krell explains how the Communications Decency Act complicated efforts to prosecute Backpage, where teenagers were “the most lucrative product” and staff were trained “to assist traffickers in posting ads of victims without alerting law enforcement.” Though Krell’s initial case against Backpage was dismissed by a California judge in 2016, her investigation helped lead to the website’s shuttering by the FBI in 2018 and company CEO Carl Ferrer’s guilty plea to charges of money laundering and conspiracy. Details of Krell’s personal life and career trajectory feel superfluous, but she lucidly explains how criminal cases are built. The result is an informative account of justice served.