A Milbank pro bono effort, in coordination with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), helped survivors of the Backpage and CityXGuide sex-trafficking networks apply for compensation for their past and future monetary losses, including those related to medical and behavioral health.
Nearly 100 Milbank lawyers and support staff contributed 2,200 hours to assist victims in petitioning for economic redress through the Department of Justice’s Backpage and CityXGuide Remission Program, which ran from July 2025 to March 2026. The Department received more than 10,000 petitions.
According to the Department of Justice, from 2004 to 2018, criminals used Backpage (and later CityXGuide) as an online platform to facilitate commercial sex and sex trafficking, including trafficking of minors. In April 2018, the government seized Backpage. To date, Backpage, its owners and key executives, and businesses related to the platform have been found guilty of criminal offenses, including conspiring to facilitate unlawful commercial sex using a facility in interstate or foreign commerce and money laundering, and have been sentenced to federal terms of imprisonment.
“We want to thank you for all of the support that Milbank provided,” noted an NCMEC representative. “The hard work that you put into this project is truly appreciated and life changing to the survivors that you assisted.”
This pro bono project builds on other important pro bono work Milbank has done to help survivors trafficked on Backpage. In 2017, a Milbank team led by Litigation partner Stacey J. Rappaport represented a number of organizations — including Sanctuary for Families, Covenant House, Demand Abolition, Human Rights Project for Girls, and others – that submitted amici briefs in two cases where child sex-trafficking victims sued Backpage for damages, Does v. Backpage (1st Circuit and petition to US Supreme Court) and J.S. v. Village Voice (Washington State Supreme Court). The briefs described how Backpage facilitated the sex trafficking of children, how children are victimized by sex trafficking, and the devastating impact of such victimization. Although the First Circuit affirmed the dismissal of the plaintiffs’ case based on immunity under the federal Communications Decency Act, the Washington Supreme Court allowed the plaintiffs’ case to proceed to trial; before trial, the parties reached a settlement. The Washington case featured prominently in the documentary I Am Jane Doe (2017).
