Uncensored
The Show

The Dark Side of the Internet

Dr. Phil explores a new, dangerous trend affecting your honor student. No longer needing to walk the streets to exchange sex for money, young women are turning to the reputable Web site craigslist.com to sell their bodies.

Cracking Down


 

 

Young women offering sex for money no longer needing to walk the streets. Instead, they offer their services on the reputable Web site craigslist.com. Next to the area on the site where you can buy a jungle gym for your child, you can access erotic ads, where young women post sexy photos and advertise sex for money. Cheerleaders, honor students and college graduates are drawn to the relative anonymity of this money-making option, and law enforcement agencies across the country are up in arms.

Sheriff of Cook County, Illinois Tom Dart joins the show via satellite. Tom recently made headlines for filing a lawsuit against craigslist and says the site is the largest source of prostitution in the United States.

Dr. Phil explains that he went on the Web site craigslist.com and the only restriction seemed to be that you had to click a button to prove you were 18 or older " which any child could do. That one click opened up ads with highly provocative, pornographic images.

"See, Dr. Phil, that has been our whole point. They will tell you that they're monitoring the site, that they have all these safeguards, and there are absolutely no safeguards," Tom says. "There is no way they are attempting to check that you are, in fact, over 18. But they also say that they have some flagging that they do on the site to take certain sites down. We decided, 'OK, we'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Let's test that.' We put up one ad that said, ‘14-year-old looking for male companionship.' They never took that down. We put another one up that said, ‘15-year-old looking for sex.' And, not only did they not take it down, but we had a child sex offender hit on it and want to make a date with us, and then we ended up taking it down. So, they claim that they are monitoring it but as you said, Dr. Phil, when you look at the site, this is so blatant, this is so obvious what is going on, and it's troubling that a company does not see that they're facilitating a crime, and doesn't step up and say, ‘We're going to take this down.'"

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