The woman, who resides in the US, alleges that she was befriended by a Facebook user when she was just 16 years old. The same person who later beat and raped her, and then proceeded to take photos of her post-rape which were then posted on the now defunct ad listing site, Backpage.com. Before ultimately forcing her into sex trafficking.
The lawsuit accuses Facebook of continually facilitating human trafficking by “allowing sex traffickers an unrestricted platform to stalk, exploit, recruit, groom, recruit, and extort children in the sex trade”. It also blames the social network for not doing enough to verify the identity of the suspect, and that it should’ve warned its users that traffickers were active on its app. Facebook has since responded to the lawsuit with the following statement below: “Human trafficking is abhorrent and is not allowed on Facebook. We use technology to thwart this kind of abuse and we encourage people to use the reporting links found across our site so that our team of experts can review the content swiftly. Facebook also works closely with anti-trafficking organization and other technology companies, and we report all apparent instances of child sexual exploitation to NCMEC.” (Source: Engadget)
