PHOENIX (CN) — A federal judge gave victim advocates three weeks on Monday to supplement restitution claims against two former executives of Backpage.com, though advocates say additional documentation will be difficult to gather.
Scott Spear and John Brunst were convicted on various prostitution and money laundering counts in 2023 for their roles in managing Backpage — a classified advertising website through which thousands of women and girls were sex trafficked between 2004 and 2018 — and each sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Now, 11 victims and families of those trafficked on the site are seeking up to millions of dollars in restitution from the two.
Physicians and economists estimated the projected medical expenses and potential loss of income the victims have or will incur due to their trafficking, but U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa says she can’t order restitution based on estimates. Instead, she requested that the victims provide documentation from doctors and counselors detailing the costs of necessary medical treatments and accommodations.
In a hearing Monday morning in federal court, victim advocate and attorney John Montgomery said that may prove to be a tall task.
“Our clients fight every day just to get by,” Montgomery said of two women who were sold on Backpage as teenagers. “Both of these young women suffer from debilitating depression.”
Because his clients have struggled to maintain both housing and custody of their children, they haven’t yet had the time or ability to seek the care they need and receive more specific cost estimates. Montgomery said he understands Humetewa’s concern, and that he’ll do what he can in three weeks to provide either more documentation or a more detailed explanation of why he can’t do so.
Gopi Panchapakesan, representing Brunst, argued that the victims have had since the case began in 2018 to provide victim impact statements and medical costs, and therefore shouldn’t be given additional time.
He also argued that certain claimants should be disqualified from requesting restitution — specifically, those not named in the indictment and those who committed prostitution acts as adults, and therefore, in Panchapakesan’s view, were conspirators rather than victims.
Chris Parente, representing the estate of a then-16-year-old girl who was sold on Backpage and murdered by a john in 2016, countered that her family should still be given restitution because she is a victim regardless of whether the indictment includes her name.
But the girl was murdered more than a year after Humetewa found the conspiracy to have ended, and murder was never a part of the conspiracy, Panchapakesan countered. A state judge in Illinois already issued a restitution order against the girl’s murderer as well.
Humetewa asked for briefing on the issue within the next two weeks.
Panchapakesan told Humetewa that restitution is inappropriate in this case because causation between the victimization and the conditions like PTSD, depression and anxiety suffered by the victims is too difficult to prove.
“There’s a constellation of competing causes,” of the victims’ conditions, he added, including history of mental and physical health issues and previous sexual assaults suffered before the trafficking occurred.
Recently, the Department of Justice announced the creation of a Backpage victims’ fund made up of $215 million in seized assets from the two former executives and two other defendants in the case. Victims can apply for a piece of those funds through a process known as remission, similar to one joining a class action. Panchapakesan asked why these 11 victims would be given preferential treatment to any who come forward in the future.
He argued that the government should use the $215 million already in its possession to pay out these 11 and any more who come forward, but federal prosecutors say these proceedings and potential restitution payments should be kept separate from the civil victims fund, and the payments can be made with the $40 million that the government has since returned to the defendants.
Spear and Brunst were given back less than $3 million combined. The majority of the returned funds went to the estate of James Larkin — a co-founder of Backpage who died by suicide just days before trial was set to begin in 2023. Both Spear and Brunst are in prison.
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