escort section of back page's new york site. one reads you will feel right at home at our place. stress relief by beautiful asian girls. stress relief. or this, seductive, ready to rock your world. call me the ad says to enjoy all you can handle. the advertiser claims to be 19 years old. now those are two of literally thousands of ads that you might find on backpage right now. that company, backpage defends the adult section saying that if pimps are going to advertise it's better to do it some place where authorities can track activity and help women in trouble. keeping them honest, are they? we spoke to backpage and some of the mothers of teen victims. we've changed their names to protect their children. deborah feyerick tonight reports. >> reporter: how would you feel, for example, i mean, as a mother if you saw an ad like this? or an ad like this? or i mean this -- this girl, she says she's 19. if you saw your daughter in this, like this, what -- >> i would be horrified and i'm horrified for those mothers, and my heart goes out to those mothers. and to their daughters who are victims of exploitation. >> reporter: am i wrong? isn't prostitution simply illegal? >> prostitution is illegal. and we don't permit illegal activity. on the website. >> reporter: what are they selling? >> but we have -- there are legal adult entertainment services. >> reporter: you are playing a role in this problem. >> reporter: attorney liz mcdougal is doing at backpage.com which she tried and arguably failed to do as a lawyer for the website craigslist.com, specifically try to convince people what's advertised in the adult section is legal, not only the services for sale, but the ages of girls selling it. it's not an easy job when prosecutors are demanding it be shut down. >> when we get a case involving the trafficking of prostitution, usually the story is going to start on backpage.com. >> the daughter i know is a kid that likes to color. >> reporter: for dawn, that's exactly where the story took her 15-year-old girl. a child who apparently ran away with a man who seduced her online. within days that man had posted pictures of the child on backpage.com. selling the girl into prostitution. allegations detailed in a criminal complaint. >> he officially took her and beat her into submission to raping her, and then held her into prostitution. it totally, totally crushed me to know that somebody actually did this to her. >> reporter: the accused pimp in that case has pleaded not guilty pending trial. it's one of more than 50 cases in 22 states, of people charged with advertising underaged girls for sex on backpage.com. the classified ad website, similar to craigslist, lets people post all kinds of ads in different states. when you look at the escort section, there's little doubt what's for sale. some would say all you're doing is legitimizing prostitution. that you're in the prostitution business. >> we're not in the prostitution business when we're doing everything possible to impede prostitution, to impede the exploitation of women, children, boys, men, laborers, sex trafficking. we're -- the internet is, unfortunately, the vehicle for this. we are trying to be the sheriff. >> reporter: backpage is the leading website for adult service ads in the u.s. mcdougal argues it's better to have these ads on a website that works with law enforcement to stop child exploitation than it is to drive it underground or offshore where u.s. laws don't apply. keeping them honest, we asked backpage if it considers itself part of the problem. >> if we had a silver bullet to eradicate it, we would. but in the meantime what we can do is to be the best allies possible with law enforcement. >> reporter: but isn't the silver bullet shutting it down? >> no. i wish that it were. you -- as you can see, when craigslist shut down, people had said that was the silver bullet and that made no difference. >> reporter: no difference because people simply moved their erotic ads over to backpage.com. and that's meant huge dollars, almost $27 million last year, according to aim, an internet research group. you benefited, you picked up the slack, you filled the void, you made -- >> you're right. a tremendous number of the ads came to us. >> reporter: adult service ad sales were $3 million in march, up more than 30% from a year ago. backpage says they monitor ad content, targeting some 25,000 terms and code words used by traffickers. it then checks ads manually before posting. yet ads like this are not hard to find. i'm having a hard time with this, too. make me beg, smack me, spit on me, degrade me, choke me -- >> but that's online. that's a mistake. that should never be permitted. that violates our terms of use and our policies. >> reporter: the policy prohibits ads selling sex for money. yet ask this mom we'll call violet. what was your initial reaction when you clicked on escorts? >> i was actually disgusted. all i saw was naked behinds. naked breasts. >> reporter: violet's 14-year-old daughter ran away. and police say she was later prostituted by a man she met at a bus stop who advertised her on backpage.com. >> the worst part was the torture i had to hear about. you know, the torture she endured from different people along her way. >> reporter: her daughter was missing for more than three years. it just seems morally wrong to have this as a business model. no? >> to me it would be morally wrong to have the opportunity to rescue women, children, boys, out of exploitation, and to walk away from that opportunity. >> that was deb feyerick reporting. "new york times" columnist nicolas christophe has been on the front lines in the fight against human trafficking and california's attorney general signed that petition calling on backpage to shut down the ads. i spoke to them earlier this week. you've been tireless on shining a light on sex trafficking, and especially of children. it's one thing for it to be overseas somewhere, you know, brothels in cambodia that you follow. but it's another thing for it to be in the united states and to have large corporations profiting off it. >> yeah, i think that i was also struck by the fact that it's not just foreign women being smuggled into the u.s. the great majority of it seems to be local, domestic girls who are being trafficked in every city around the country, and on a website that is run by a substantial company that also owns village voice. and that was, until recently, owned by some major financiers on wall street. >> and they make a lot of money off this thing. assuming -- >> we think that they make around $23 million a year on those online revenues. i must say that the company itself has been losing money like a lot of newspapers on the rest of the business. >> but for the company, it's a profit center that funds other things that they're losing money on. >> really the prostitution ads is what is keeping the rest of the company going to some degree. >> late last year i interviewed a guy named ed mcnally, i want to play a clip of what he said. you also said your company is committed on the website to quote preventing those who are intent on misusing the site for illegal purposes. isn't prostitution an illegal purpose? >> well, first of all, what we're really focused on more than anything is the protection of the people in our society who are most vulnerable. and most of our filters, most of our mitigation efforts, most of our law enforcement efforts are really focused on preventing human trafficking and especially the most vulnerable, which is children. >> do you buy that? they're painting themselves here as kind of heroes, that they're the ones looking out for the best interests of children, of the most vulnerable in society, and they claim they have all these mitigation efforts and lots of letters from local law enforcement who said they're doing a great job. >> well, they're also in possession of a letter from all of the attorneys general of the united states expressing deep concern about what they have done in terms of facilitating human trafficking, exploitation of children. >> how is what they're doing legal? i mean, if prostitution is illegal, how is what they're doing legal? >> i've heard them make a first amendment argument. but here's the reality of it. this is not just an international issue. this is something that very much is an issue of the kid in kansas who's the runaway, who's trafficked to las vegas and then brought in to be prostituted on hollywood boulevard. it's a very real issue. backpage.com has been proven to be the marketplace with which these illegal transactions occur. and they need to be responsible, they need to be responsible corporate citizens. we have a history of this issue with craigslist, and they did the right thing and i think backpage needs to do it, too. >> nick, backpage says that they're actually being responsible. they have mitigation efforts. they have review efforts. and that they're being responsible on this. >> it's true that backpage does respond very quickly to subpoenas, for example, and they do cooperate with law enforcement. >> they also, supporters of this will say, well, look, you eliminate it from backpage, you eliminate it from craigslist it's going to go elsewhere, some other site that doesn't have, you know -- that doesn't respond to subpoenas, that isn't as public as backpage.com. >> some of it will go elsewhere. i mean, if you arrest ten bank robbers there may well be five more to take their place. but they won't be fully replaced. and backpage right now, as far as we can tell, controls 80% of the prostitution ad market. that's a huge amount. they attract mainstream customers, some of the other websites are really more pornographic. if backpage gets out of the escort ad business that will make a real dent in this trade. >> attorney general harris, you said earlier you, along with others attorneys general have written letters demanding backpage shut down the adult services section. is there anything legally can you do to actually force them to close down? >> we can issue subpoenas. we certainly are, and in fact, have requested a great deal of information from them about what they are seeing in terms of the complaints they've received. what knowledge they have about underage individuals being trafficked on their site. but it doesn't mean that because we are constantly in the pursuit of justice and we are constantly challenged with -- with criminal justice issues that we don't begin and we don't deal with any of them. the reality is backpage has proven to be a thriving marketplace. and the issue of human trafficking is a $32 billion industry in this country -- in the world. and let's be very clear about the underlying issue here. it's not necessarily a vice issue. it's the issue that -- that there are individuals, and companies, and they can be cartels or they can be backpage, who are making a huge amount of money off the trafficking of human beings. many of them who are underage girls. and that should be an issue of concern and therefore priority for all of us. >> craigslist bowed ultimately to public pressure. has backpage so far, nick, has not done that. you say targeting advertisers in the village voice would be most effective. >> yeah. i think that public pressure is helpful on backpage and there is, indeed, a petition on change.org to put pressure on them. ultimately what matters to them is money. i think if they see that they're going to lose more money in advertising in village voice and the other regional newspapers they control, then it's not worth it to them. and then they will exit the -- this prostitution ad market. >> the village voice, nick, as you know, is questioning your reporting, particularly one article about a former prostitute named alisa, who says she was sold on backpage.com at a time when it didn't exist in cities that she was in. how do you respond? >> that's completely false. i applied to them, they said that she had turned 16, and i -- in i think 2003. she turned 16 on december 30th, 2003. and indeed throughout 2004, she was 16 years old. and was being marketed on backpage, in one city after another, and i could show them that backpage was operating, and -- in the course of that throughout that time. and i mean there's no shortage of girls, underage girls, 12, 13, 14-year-old girls who are being marketed on backpage as we speak. i really encourage your viewers to go to backstage in their city and look at it. and i think they'll be horrified by what they see. appreciate it. do you believe that backpage.com when they say they're not running a site for legal prostitution and if they are do you believe shutting them down will make a difference? let me know. we're on facebook, google plus or twitter now @anderson cooper. and up next, not so hot numbers. we'll talk about how they could affect the presidential race and and who's got the right answers for ending the slump. david gergen is with us. so is nobel lawyer yet paul krugman who says we have the knowledge and the tools to fix the economy, not the political will. real politics now. how did i get here? dumb luck? or good decisions? ones i've made. ones we've all made. about marriage. children. money. about tomorrow. here's to good decisions. who matters most to you says the most about you. massmutual is owned by our policyholders so they matter most to us. massmutual. we'll help you get there. highway maintenance is underfunded, costing drivers $67 billion a year, and countless tires. which drivers never actually check because they're busy, checking email. this is why we engineered a car that makes 2,000 decisions every second. the new audi a6 is here. the road is now an intelligent place. ♪ or creates another laptop bag or hires another employee, it's not just good for business, it's good for the entire community. at bank of america, we know the impact that local businesses have on communities. that's why we extended $6.4 billion in new credit to small businesses across the country last year. because the more we help them, the more we help make opportunity possible. real politics now. new jobless numbers and how they might affect who would be president this time next year. the economy gained 115,000 jobs last month. far fewer than expected. however today's report also revised the march and february job gains upward and the nation's unemployment rate ticked down a tenth of a point to 8.1%, though that is not necessarily good news. >> our businesses have now created more than 4.2 million new jobs over the last 26 months. more than 1 million jobs in the last six months alone. so that's the good news. but, there's still a lot of folks out of work. which means that we've got to do more. >> a lot more, says challenger mitt romney. >> we seem to be slowing down, not speeding up. this is not progress. this is very, very disappointing. >> governor romney also points out that the jobless rate fell because a lot of americans simply stopped looking for work. he's right about that. though he doesn't mention that that's been a national trend for more than a decade. the fact still is this is a weak recovery. there's no doubt about it. the question is will it be enough to let president obama keep his job? recent cnn/orc polling shows that 24% of americans now think the economy is starting to recover. 42% say it's stabilized but fully one-third believe it is still in a downturn. "new york times" columnist and nobel laureate paul krugman, his new book called "end this depression now" argues that this did not have to happen. he's with us along with political analyst david gergen. paul, if today's jobs numbers are any indication of what's to come it does not seem to be good news for president obama at this point. >> i guess not. we were hoping, he was hoping certainly for an economy that would be clearly making progress. what you've got instead is an economy that's moving sideways. it's not getting worse. the job market is more or less stable. >> and why do you think that is? >> biggest thing is that our policies are wrong. not so much the thing that are under the president's control but the thing that are going on because he hasn't been able to provide enough aid. private sector employment is back above the level when he took office. so we've had a recovery of the private sector. but, keep on laying off people at the state and local level because there's budget shortages and because the aid that was provided to state and local governments during the first year and a half of this administration has been phasing out. so what we have is a recovery that is being dragged down by fiscal policies, by inadequate government spending, basically. and that's -- that's the reason we don't have a full recovery at this point. >> david, do you agree with that? and, i mean the president and his team are clearly trying to put a positive spin on this. but, it's certainly an uphill battle. >> this jobs report is unadulterated bad news for american workers, anderson. "the new york times" reported today that if you go back from the beginning of the recession until today, the economy is back to where it was before, but we have 5 million fewer jobs than we had when the recession started. but you look at that, the unemployment numbers are down slightly. but that's because so many people are leaving the workforce. the male participation rate now in this will economy is down to the lowest level since 1948. that's over 60 years since we've had an economy where so few men of working age were actually in the workforce. the real issue to me now is, given these -- the fact that we're drifting, we have no policy and everybody's sort of waiting until after the elections to deal with anything, wonder if there's not a moral imperative for the politicians in washington to begin reaching agreement now -- >> but david, some sort of compromise, and paul compromise has become a dirty word. >> we have the problem. and this is obama's problem. it's the country's problem. which is that the other party is firmly committed to a view of economics, to a view of what we should do that is exactly wrong. i mean we basically had, to a large extent, we've had policies that the republicans wanted, not the policies that the president wanted. it's made the economy worse. if we couldn't reach a grand bargain on the budget deficit, it's even worse to imagine that we could reach a grand bargain on job creation because the other side of the political divide is completely committed to a fantasy view about how the economy works. >> david, do you think that's something the american public would abide? >> well, with all due respect, president obama had a democratic congress when he arrived in washington. he passed a stimulus bill which is a bill he and nancy pelosi and the democrats agreed on. and they promised that unemployment would not go above 8%. >> they didn't, actually. that's not true. that is not true. they issued a forecast. >> it's what -- >> it's what christina roamer herself said. >> but it -- >> that's what they told us, that's what christina roamer -- >> i just think -- >> let david finish. don't talk over each other. we'll finish, then paul. >> a degree that the republicans have been very difficult to work with in the last two years. i think paul is right about that point. but to say that everything we're now facing is a result of republican intransigence and to ignore the fact that the president had a democratic majority, he did get the stimulus bill he wanted, he got a lot of things he wanted, he's going around touting that for a long time, i think it's just -- you know, i think it's all very one-sided. but the larger point is not how we got here. the larger point is how we get out of here. >> just want to play what mitt romney said today and have you respond. >> just this morning there was some news that came across the wire that said