Craigslist Adult Services Asked to Close Worldwide

Craigslist announced on Monday that it is shutting down its ‘Adult Services’ here in the States.  In a statement on Tuesday, a group of four human rights groups admired that the site has dropped the section in the U.S., but said it needs to go much further and close the adult or “erotic” pages available on the site outside the countries. While Craigslist renamed the section in U.S. to adult services, it still keeps the former name of erotic services in other countries.

“As the largest classified ads site to have an adult services section, Craigslist has become a major marketplace for buying and selling sex with children and young women,” the statement reads. “An FBI investigation found 2,800 ads selling sex with children in the adult services section in 2008 alone. Closing this section of Craigslist sends a clear signal to sexual predators that it will not stand for them using the site to sexually enslave children and young women.”

The letter further points out that children and young women are still being sold for sex through more than 250 other Craigslist ‘erotic’ pages around the world. The organizations said that Craigslist should have global responsibility, and should shut down both ‘Adult Services’ and ‘Erotic Services’ sections across the globe. The activist groups, that included the Polaris Project, the Rebecca Project for Human Rights, the FAIR Fund and Courtney’s House, said that Craigslist might have closed the section in US as a public relations stunt because of its scheduled testimony Sept. 15 before a Congressional committee for sex trafficking.

Craigslist said in the closed section of the “Adult Service” section that it is going to manually review every ad so that it can stop users from publishing nude or graphic images. Additionally, advertisers have to give their work phone number and pay $10 fee through credit card.