{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.heitkamp.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ContentRecord_id=F8FF6341-A46F-4418-8332-D6EEBB6F11F5", "U.S. Senate Committee Passes Bipartisan Bill Heitkamp Helped Write & Introduce to Hold Websites like Backpage.com Accountable for their Role in Facilitating Sex Trafficking", "2017-11-09", "2017", "2017-11", "Democrat", "House", "ND", "Heidi Heitkamp", "H001069", "www.heitkamp.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp today announced that the legislation she helped draft and introduce with a group of Republican and Democratic senators to hold websites accountable for their role in knowingly facilitating sex trafficking online overwhelmingly passed in the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.\r\nIn September, Heitkamp joined members of the Committee for a hearing to consider the legislation. At the hearing, Heitkamp sat alongside Cindy McCain, an international leader in the global fight against human trafficking, to underscore to her Senate colleagues that this legislation is necessary to immediately provide victims an avenue to seek justice for their exploitation \u2013 and make sure that companies will be held liable to the fullest extent of the law for profiting from this form of modern-day slavery.\r\nThe Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act \u2013 which now has 44 bipartisan cosponsors \u2013 would make sure websites would no longer be able to exploit a loophole in the Communications Decency Act that has allowed them to serve as a platform for sex trafficking crimes. The legislation was crafted following a comprehensive investigation and report by the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations regarding ads placed on Backpage.com of victims of sex trafficking. As a member of the subcommittee, Heitkamp has played a key part in holding leadership of Backpage.com accountable for their role \u2013 detailed in the report \u2013 in deliberately facilitating human trafficking on its site, particularly of children.\r\n\u201cWhen I heard the ugly details clearly laid out in the report we put together on how Backpage.com worked to facilitate the sale of young children for sex online \u2013 it truly made me sick to watch leaders of the site hide behind their First Amendment rights,\u201d said Heitkamp. \u201cWe can stop websites from providing a platform for \u2013 and profiting from \u2013 this modern form of slavery by making sure victims of this hideous form of exploitation can seek justice. That\u2019s what our bipartisan bill would do. Working with a group of Republican and Democratic senators, we negotiated a bill that clarifies the law and no longer shields cowardly criminals like Backpage.com that make money from child sex slavery. Now we are one step closer to bringing justice to the mothers I heard from that begged Backpage.com to take down postings that advertised their children for sex but were denied because they had not purchased the ad and to those children who were callously sold online.\u201d\r\nHeitkamp helped negotiate with Republican and Democratic members of the Senate, anti-trafficking advocates and tech companies to make critical clarifications to the bill to gain the support of additional senators and the Internet Association \u2013 a trade association that includes Google, Twitter, Facebook, and many of the other major U.S. tech companies. Additionally, many companies, including Hewlett-Packard, and websites are joining the call to protect human trafficking victims from being bought and sold online.\r\nClick here to read a summary of the bill.\r\nHeitkamp helped write and introduce the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act with U.S. Senators Rob Portman (R-OH), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), John McCain (R-AZ), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), and John Cornyn (R-TX). The narrowly crafted legislation that would clarify that Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act does not protect websites that knowingly \u2013 as Backpage.com did \u2013 or facilitate online sex trafficking, therefore allowing victims to seek justice. Specifically, the bill would:\r\n \r\nAllow victims of sex trafficking to seek justice against websites that knowingly or recklessly facilitated the crimes against them.\r\nEliminate federal liability protections for websites that assist, support, or facilitate a violation of federal sex trafficking laws.\r\nEnable state law enforcement officials, not just the federal Department of Justice, to take action against individuals or businesses that violate federal sex trafficking laws.\r\n \r\nHeitkamp has been working to help the Subcommittee gain information on how websites such as Backpage contribute to human trafficking and allow perpetrators to advertise their victims. In November 2015, Heitkamp blasted the CEO of Backpage.com for refusing the Subcommittee\u2019s subpoena to testify and for his company\u2019s refusal to provide information on its purported use of safeguards to prevent human traffickers from using the site as a platform. She then voted unanimously along with the full Committee to hold the CEO and Backpage in civil contempt of Congress. That vote preceded the U.S. Senate\u2019s unanimous vote in March 2016, which Heitkamp joined, to launch civil contempt proceedings against site \u2013 the first time in 20 years the U.S. Senate has held anyone in contempt of Congress.\r\nLast October, Heitkamp called the arrest of Backpage.com CEO Carl Ferrer a needed step in halting his website\u2019s role in providing a platform for human trafficking. At the hearing on the Committee\u2019s report on Backpage.com, leadership of the company refused to testify, invoking their First and Fifth Amendment rights. Backpage.com also successfully hid behind the First Amendment when a minor, who was sold online on Backpage.com and raped repeatedly, sought to hold the site accountable. During that case, the courts made clear that for victims to seek justice, Congress needs to act. Long an advocate against human trafficking, Heitkamp led an initial hearing in September 2013 to sound the alarm on the prevalence of human trafficking right in our own backyard, including in North Dakota. Since then, Heitkamp has pushed for legislative action to fight human trafficking, playing a key role in introducing and passing bipartisan legislation on the issue in 2015 in the U.S. Senate, which included her Safe Harbor bill to make sure victims are not treated as criminals. She has continued to introduce more bills on the issue to provide resources for health care providers to stop human trafficking and protect runaway and homeless youth from trafficking. She successfully secured landmark anti-human trafficking protections for children in schools in the No Child Left Behind reform legislation. Building on that legislation, Heitkamp helped introduce a bill, which passed this fall in the U.S. Senate to boost assistance to victims of human trafficking, strengthen law enforcement and victims services organizations, and make sure perpetrators of these crimes are subject to harsher punishments.\r\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.heitkamp.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ContentRecord_id=F8FF6341-A46F-4418-8332-D6EEBB6F11F5"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.962241716682911, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}