(UTV|COLOMBO) – Facebook said on Wednesday(03) in response to a lawsuit accusing it of not doing enough to protect users from human traffickers that it works internally and externally to thwart such predators.
“Human trafficking is abhorrent and is not allowed on Facebook. We use technology to thwart this kind of abuse and we encourage people to use the reporting links found across our site so that our team of experts can review the content swiftly,” a spokeswoman for Facebook said in a written statement.
Nine men arrested after police launch raids in sex trafficking crackdown
Police have arrested nine people following a series of raids involving 150 officers aimed at tackling human trafficking for sex. The simultaneous raids took place in Stockton-on-Tees and Sheffield.
A Texas woman, identified in court documents as Jane Doe, sued Facebook in Harris County District Court in Houston this week, claiming that she was lured into the sex trade at age 15 by a man who “friended” her and that Facebook did not do enough to verify the user’s identity or warn her that sex traffickers were lurking on the platform.
“Facebook also works closely with anti-trafficking organizations and other technology companies, and we report all apparent instances of child sexual exploitation to NCMEC (the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children),” the company’s spokeswoman said.
Jane Doe claimed in the lawsuit that she was fooled by the sex trafficker who messaged her on Facebook in 2012 because he appeared to know several of her real-life friends.
She said she agreed to meet him when he offered to console her after a fight with her mother, but instead he beat and raped her, then posted her picture on the now-shuttered classified ads website Backpage.com to be prostituted.
