Maggy Krell's "Taking Down Backpage"

Maggy Krell is a legal trailblazer who has taken on impactful cases as a criminal prosecutor and human rights lawyer.

Krell was a prosecutor for 15 years, serving as Supervising Deputy Attorney General in California and cross-designated as a Special Assistant United States Attorney. Krell prosecuted high-profile cases including murder, organized crime, human trafficking, domestic violence and white-collar crime. Krell’s most notable accomplishments stem from her tireless efforts to combat human trafficking and protect and empower survivors, including her ground-breaking prosecution of the sex-trafficking website, Backpage.com.

Krell also served as Chief Legal Counsel for Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California where she fought to protect and expand reproductive rights and access to healthcare.

Krell currently runs her own practice providing legal support and impact strategy for survivors and non-profit organizations.

She applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, Taking Down Backpage: Fighting the World’s Largest Sex Trafficker, and reported the following:

Page 99 in my book is almost completely free of text. It shows two photographs (with captions): one of Carl Ferrer, the CEO of Backpage.com when he was arrested, and one of his boarding pass for the flight from Texas to California when he was extradited (which took place the day after his arrest).

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and page 99 is one of a very few pages in this book that contains pictures. Page 99 is an inflection point in the story. The main “bad guy” is arrested in an airport following an international flight, a moment that should be satisfying for readers who have read 98 pages leading up to this crucial operation. But the story is about a lot more than catching bad guys, which is why the Page 99 Test ultimately doesn’t do it justice. Taking Down Backpage is a nonfiction look into how sex trafficking occurs in America, who it impacts most, and how we should go about preventing it. Through a combination of memoir and legal insight, the book tells the story of building a case against a website that was used to facilitate sex trafficking throughout the world. The book seeks to provide a roadmap on how to combat sex trafficking systematically, and how to create a more just world for survivors.

Visit Maggy Krell's website.

--Marshal Zeringue