Amber Lyon and Her BIG Moment.

The layers upon layers of BULLSHIT surrounding this Craigslist thing are so thick and SOOO enraging I thought I knew where to begin but I was wrong!

This blog post is a deconstruction of the followup story Amber Lyon did after Craigslist had been effectively shut down called

"Underage Sex for Sale on the Internet."

I may embed this video here as it becomes available later.




The story begins with Amber following a mother up a flight of stairs to the bedroom of her 12-year-old daughter that has been kidnapped by a pimp. Only someone with a heart of stone could resist feeling for this woman which is what makes this such an effective opening. As friend and fellow blogger Julie Meadows stated in a recent blog post she did about Shelly Lubben

"A good clue towards identifying someone who’s performing magic tricks with your mind is how quickly they are to engage your emotions. Emotions are the easiest of human faculties to engage because they are closer to our baser nature than the intellect."

What betrays the disingenuous nature of Ms. Lyon is the constant Paris Hilton semi-smile she wears as the mother explains why she sleeps in the little girls be at night.




-@34 seconds:

The mother explains how a friend of hers told her to look on Criagslist for the missing girl and low-and-behold she was there.

Of COURSE Miss Amber doesn't acknowledge that this validates every Sex Workers Advocates position that though craiglist can be used to find johns for missing children it can ALSO be used by police and family members to find those missing children as is proven later in the story.




-@58 seconds

Ernie Allen, President and CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children states:

"Nobody knows what the real numbers are."

Then he says:

"We have been able to find, locate and return home 54 missing kids on craigslist. Now that is a tiny fraction of what the total scope of the problem is."

My question for Mr. Allen is "If nobody knows what the real numbers are then how do you know that saving 54 kids that were found on craigslist is a tiny fraction of what the problem is?" I'll hold my breath for the answer but I suspect it has to do with a little "scientific study" I will discus at the end of this post. Just a side note, they also located 12 children due to backpage.



-@1:45

Here Amber discusses 52 missing persons posters of children that are all being sold for sex. On all these posters read the words

"MAY be in the company of an adult male"

obviously a pimp, right?

Amber honey...if those children are missing how exactly do you know what all of them are doing? AND How do you know that the men they are with are pimps?

I have NO love for pimps but I think making this blanket assumption is a bit of a stretch. It is not unheard of for a father who is denied visitation rights with his child do something desperate. I am just speculating of course, but then again sweetie...so are you.



-@3:20

She admits craigslist DID report 132 children to The Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 15 months. But earlier that Centers CEO said they only rescued 52.

It seems to me that if craigslist is reporting MORE missing children then are being rescued that the fault is not with craigslist.



-@3:40

Amber's BIG FINISH!

"And that 12-year-old girl we told you about at the beginning...By CHANCE, she called home just as we were speaking with her mother."

OK, maybe I'm just nitpicking here but I don't buy this for one instant! Not only did they have a lead as to her whereabouts because of craigslist but (keeping that in mind) what are the chances of the daughter calling home just as all the cameras from the big, well funded news station are on her?

ALMOST NONE!


(play clip below for effect)




-@2:28 The Pièce de résistance

A group out of Georgia called A Future Not a Past commissioned a "scientific study" from The Schapiro Group on which this witch hunt was waged. Now, I'll be the first to admit that numbers are not my friend. That said, even I can see that this thing is just riddled with holes and misrepresentations of their "findings." I suspect this to be a group that is in the business of producing "findings" that best suit their clients. Of course, I am only speculating again but that seems to be what everyone is doing nowadays.

I challenge ANYONE who is capable of being objective about this issue to read this study and tell me it is not full of shit.

I am in the process of doing some deconstructing of this skientifakical study myself but so far some of my favorite parts of it are:

-Under methodology:

"...we decided to develop a methodological approach where participants would voluntarily contact us without suspecting that they are participating in a research study. To do this, we placed advertisements on Craigslist.com, Backpage.com, and other Internet sites commonly used for
advertising paid sex services. Our advertisements mimicked other ads on these sites; the text content crudely described paid sex services with a young female for anyone who called the advertised phone number. In addition, we included a picture of a young female in the advertisement — just as nearly all other internet advertisements do.

Why “young” instead of underage? Any advertisement that explicitly mentions paid sex with an adolescent is removed by these internet sites instantly and/or automatically. Advertisements featuring adolescents are rarely labeled in text as such. Instead, advertisement creators rely on pictures of the females and young text descriptors to convey her approximate age to prospective customers."

So...what they're saying is the whole study hinges on these uninformed mens subjective understanding of the word "YOUNG" as it relates to sexual activity! Not only that but @2:48 Amber states that

"There's no legal obligation for websites to report ads that might involve underage prostitution."

so the fact is that craigslist DID NOT BREAK THE LAW! If there is a problem why not put all that money and effort into changing the law instead of going on witch hunts to make yourselves look during election time?



Figure 5: How Men Who Respond to Advertisements for Sex with Young Females Refer to Preferred Age (with my small commentary at the end...hey if they can do it so can I)





-Oh but it gets better. Under the obviously objective part of this unbiased "scientific study" titled "How men buy sex with adolescent females you'll find this:

"...we devised a 3-step “escalated warning” procedure that we initiated at the end of the phone call (so that it did not interfere with any other data collected from the participant). The three warnings issued by the operator, in order, are as follows:

1. We’re talking about the really young girl, right?

2. She doesn’t look like she’s 18.

3. I don’t believe this girl is actually 18, and I have no reason to believe she is.

So, they went from saying "young" to "really, REALLY young?" Ok, fair enough. But what they purposely UNDERemphasis is that MOST of the men became disinterested in the interaction after these warnings; 65% to be as exact as I can given the skewed stats that proceed this figure.




Figure 6 with ending commentary again: Results of the “Escalated Warning” Mini-Experiment





MY conclusions:

1. Amber Lyon is an opportunistic disinformationist who cares nothing about journalistic integrity OR the lives & safety of the many sex workers who will now have to chance the dangerous streets for work. She also cares nothing for the children that could have been found because of craigslist because she is a blood sucking famepire devouring whatever she needs to to get what she craves...celebrity status!

2. CNN was once my favorite 24 hour news channel but if they are going to let the likes of Amber Lying exploit a families pain so she can make a name for herself on their station I think they may as well buy the rights to "The Bad Girls Club" and call it a day.

3. The Schapiro Group are in business...that's that. You pay them enough and they will fabricate what you need with no concern for the truth and that's all their is to it. What pisses me off is that nobody without a vested interest will probably look closely at that study because people are usually lazy and only care about what directly effects them in the here and now IF THEY CARE AT ALL! The Schapiro Group knows this. The Schapiro Group exploits this for a buck and don't give a fuck who it hurts.

FUCK THEM!


FUCK AMBER LYING!


AND FUCK CNN!