When Kubiiki Pride’s 14-year-old daughter went missing in 2009, she did what any mother would do. She exhausted her resources, trying to find her daughter.
The teen had been missing for nine months, and not a second had gone by that Pride wasn’t thinking about her daughter and doing everything in her power to find her.
It was in the early hours of the morning, around 4:30 a.m., when Pride had finally discovered a recently-taken photo of her daughter.
Months of sleepless nights found her scowering the Internet for anything that might be a sign of her baby girl, and she’d found her.
It was in an ad for “escorts” on the adult page of a classifieds website called Backpage.com.
The St. Louis mother told the Chicago Tribune what went through her mind when she first saw the ad:
“My first emotion was complete happiness. Just seeing my child alive made me so happy.
When I took the whole picture in, that’s when I noticed the nakedness, the tattoos and the other woman in the pictures.”
The moments of joy in finding her daughter were immediately replaced by sorrow. It was then that Pride realized her daughter was being sex trafficked.
She said coming to the realization was “one of the most painful experiences” she’s ever had.
Pride reported her findings to police, who told her they’d execute a “sting” operation in which they’d lure her in and retrieve her safely.
But the mama bear inside of her couldn’t let her daughter endure that life for another second.
Pride dialed the number on the disgusting ad she’d found and “ordered” her daughter.
To her surprise, it worked.
Her daughter was returned home and for the first time in nine months, she was safe again.
But Pride’s journey was far from over. In fact, getting her daughter back was only the beginning.
She refused to let Backpage.com, which remains one of the world’s largest classified ad websites—second only to Craigslist, continue to promote and profit from victims of sex trafficking.
The Chicago Tribune reported that in one 24-hour period, Backpage.com had approximately 400 published ads for “female escorts.”
Backpage.com makes money by charging users for each “ad” they post, which can cost anywhere from $5-$10 per ad.
Pride filed a civil suit against Backpage.com, accusing the site of “knowingly facilitating” prostitution and child sex-trafficking.
Unfortunately she lost the case because federal law prevents web operators from being held responsible for posts on their websites, as it would be an infringement on their freedom of speech and the “healthy exchange of ideas.”