“Late night cravings special,” promises the Craigslist ad in the “erotic services” category. “My exotic mix makes me an intoxicating and sensual treat.”
The “treat” runs a discreet 100 “rose petals” for 15 minutes, 130 rose petals for a half-hour and 160 for an hour.
Prostitution persists on Craigslist even as attorneys general pressure the online classified service to stamp it out, experts say. Those efforts are intensifying after the killing of a Boston masseuse hired through the site.
“It is clear that Craigslist is the new frontier,” said Mark Lagon, executive director of the Polaris Project, an anti-slavery group.
Many of the victims who come to Polaris can point to a Craigslist posting used by a trafficker to market their bodies against their will, Lagon said in an April 6 letter to the site.
“Ultimately, the ‘erotic services’ section must be shut down,” Lagon wrote, noting that a study last year found that Craigslist was the site used most frequently by johns seeking prostitutes.
The recent arrest of Boston University medical student Philip Markoff, charged with murder, armed robbery and kidnapping for the killing of a 25-year-old masseuse he met through Craigslist and the robbery of another, has intensified long-standing concerns about the ads.
In Illinois, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart sued Craigslist last month, saying the site not only allows the solicitation of prostitution, but also has actively created “the largest source of prostitution in America.”
Craigslist rejected the sheriff’s contentions, saying the company cooperates with law enforcement, has taken several steps to prevent illegal use of the site and pulls inappropriate ads.
“The Internet is still fairly new, and there’s a tendency to focus on any crime story that has a connection to the Internet, as I suspect was done in the early days of the telephone as well,” Jim Buckmaster, Craigslist’s CEO, told The Associated…