Maggy Krell: A fighter for justice
who doesn’t back down
Maggy Krell has dedicated her entire career to fighting for justice, equity, and access to healthcare. With distinction, she served as deputy for four Attorney Generals, taking on high impact cases against predatory lenders who took advantage of struggling homeowners, sex traffickers that preyed on vulnerable teenagers, and attorneys that used their position of trust to exploit immigrant families.
Maggy earned a reputation as a top prosecutor in the California Department of Justice, bringing innovative strategies to prevent and combat violent and serious crime and heading the office’s first-ever human trafficking task force. In addition to filing multiple ground-breaking cases, Maggy has worked tirelessly to protect and empower victims, bringing a survivor-centered approach to investigations, and broadly advocating for human trafficking prevention training and education.
Connect with Maggy:
Maggy describes the pervasive and horrific nature of human trafficking, legal strategies for bringing traffickers to justice in the digital age, and the story of how she and her team battled against a corporate sex trafficking monolith in her book: Taking Down Backpage, which will be published January 11, 2022 by New York University Press.
Taking Down Backpage
Insider details from the takedown of Backpage, the world’s largest sex trafficker, by the prosecutor who led the charge
For almost a decade, Backpage.com was the world’s largest sex trafficking operation. Seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, in 800 cities throughout the world, Backpage ran thousands of listings advertising the sale of vulnerable young people for sex. Reaping a cut off every transaction, the owners of the website raked in millions of dollars. But many of the people in the advertisements were children, as young as 12, and forced into the commercial sex trade through fear, violence and coercion.
In Taking Down Backpage, veteran California prosecutor Maggy Krell tells the story of how she and her team prevailed against this sex trafficking monolith. Beginning with her early career as a young DA, she shares the evolution of the anti-human trafficking movement. Through a fascinating combination of memoir and legal insight, Krell reveals how she and her team started with the prosecution of street pimps and ultimately ended with the takedown of the largest purveyor of human trafficking in the world. She shares powerful stories of interviews with victims, sting operations, court cases, and the personal struggles that were necessary to bring Backpage executives to justice. Finally, Krell examines the state of sex trafficking after Backpage and the crucial work that still remains.