It is not hard to guess why you did not want anybody to know about that.

These individuals must be held accountable. These allegations must be given voice.

Is the reason you needed to 'stay away from the very idea of `editing' the posts' that you knew that editing posts means that you really do not have this protection under the Communications Decency Act?

Let us talk about the role that you and Mr. Lacey have played in the concealment practices we have reported on this morning.

The answer is, of course, no. The fact that these terms were stripped out through this screening process does not mean that that girl's age was magically changed.

We as a civil society protect always the most vulnerable among us and not take advantage of them.

It is a crime that is rightly punishable by incarceration in prison because of the nature of the harm to the victims and the outrageousness of the conduct that is predatory in nature.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children tells us that Backpage is linked to nearly three-quarters of all suspected child sex trafficking reports.

This crime has increasingly moved from the street to the smartphone.

Backpage.com sits at the center of that online black market.

We are here this morning to address a very serious topic. It is about sex trafficking. It is about selling children online.