But Silverstein’s household finances point in the opposite direction. She supports her husband, Tony Ortega, an unemployed blogger whose record includes sustained, highly public defenses of Backpage.com, the online classified site that the FBI shut down in 2018, describing it as the world’s dominant online marketplace for child sex trafficking.
The role Ortega played in normalizing and defending Backpage echoes, in its real-world impact, the kind of large-scale facilitation of abuse associated with Jeffrey Epstein.
As the UN promotes victim-centered anti-trafficking initiatives, Silverstein’s six-figure salary has thus underwritten and enabled her husband’s continued platform. His published work minimizing trafficking, deriding those exposing it, and attacking advocates seeking accountability for the exploitation of children occurred largely through 2012, by which point he had already begun dating Silverstein.
The significance of that relationship is both personal morality and institutional credibility. The UN’s human rights architecture depends on public trust that its staff uphold and respect the organization’s mission and do not materially enable conduct antithetical to its principles. But when the salary of a UN lawyer underwrites advocacy dismissing child sex trafficking as a “national fantasy” and a “mass panic,” the question becomes whether the organization enforces its own standards at all.
Why does the UN fail to act?
Ortega’s history of minimizing trafficking and defending Backpage is extensive and well documented. He served as editor-in-chief of The Village Voice under Village Voice Media, the corporate owner of Backpage. During that same period, and in the years that followed, Backpage.com was linked to 73 percent of all suspected child sex trafficking reports that the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children received through its CyberTipline, according to a US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations staff report on online sex trafficking.
Federal prosecutors later described the site as knowingly facilitating prostitution and laundering proceeds derived from sexual exploitation. The role Ortega played in normalizing and defending Backpage echoes, in its real-world impact, the kind of large-scale facilitation of abuse associated with Jeffrey Epstein.
Ortega didn’t merely work for Backpage’s parent company. He actively and publicly championed the site. In columns and blog posts, he derided anti-trafficking advocates, dismissed concern over exploited minors and characterized the exposure of Backpage as an assault on free speech. The New York Times famously labeled him Backpage’s “attack dog” for his aggressive targeting of journalists and advocates documenting the site’s role in trafficking.
The legal outcomes now stand in stark contrast to Ortega’s published defense of the classified advertising site and its owners—men he praised as “smart enough to start Backpage.” Those owners, Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, have since been criminally charged. Larkin died by suicide before trial, and Lacey was later sentenced to prison. Two senior executives, Scott Spear and Jed Brunst, received 10-year sentences in August 2024 for prostitution-related and financial crimes. And in 2024, the Department of Justice finalized a $215 million victim compensation fund drawn from seized Backpage assets—an amount reflecting the scale of harm inflicted on women and children trafficked on the site.
Long before Backpage’s collapse, Ortega displayed a pattern of ridiculing victims of sexual violence. In 2002, after two teenage girls were abducted, raped and narrowly escaped being murdered, Ortega published a fabricated story claiming they would appear in a reality television show featuring victims pursued by rapists—a hoax later debunked by Snopes, a fact checking and investigative reporting site, prompting widespread condemnation. He later mocked investigative reporting on online predators, cynically summarizing the “lesson” of the case: that a pedophile should “never believe a 14-year-old chat room skank,” language that drew sharp criticism for trivializing abuse.
Independent media watchdogs have condemned Ortega’s history of false reporting, establishing a clear record of malevolence and deception. After he authored a fabricated article alleging the discovery of a nonexistent Confederate gravesite during arena construction in Kansas City, Columbia Journalism Review issued a scathing critique. “Let us count the ways in which this is wrong,” the publication wrote, concluding that Ortega had “betrayed readers’ trust at a time when the media’s credibility is at an ebb.” The episode cemented a pattern of conduct that subverts public trust and the ethical mission of the UN.
Silverstein has never publicly repudiated Ortega’s defenses of Backpage or distanced herself from his characterization of child sex trafficking as a “mass panic.”
Ortega’s hostility toward religious communities follows the same pattern: a readiness to mock, dismiss and target those he treats as unworthy of protection or respect. Today, he operates as a full-time anti-religious agitator, focusing heavily on Scientology while also mocking Christianity, Islam and Latter-day Saints. His writings describe religious adherents as “tithe-making suckers,” deride scripture as the “Holey Bible,” and openly encourage ridicule of believers as fair targets for harassment. He has celebrated violent incidents directed at religious institutions and has engaged in online campaigns aimed at exposing the personal and professional lives of people of faith.
Silverstein’s role in this ecosystem is both strategic and financial. As Freedom has previously reported, Ortega’s own attorney described Silverstein as “a power behind the throne … his tireless researcher and significant other.” Silverstein herself has defended prostitution in online forums, writing that it “should be legal,” and has dismissed moral objections to Backpage-style business models as misplaced. Meanwhile, her UN salary has sustained Ortega’s full-time campaign of malicious online attacks when he was otherwise unemployed, including a years-long campaign of harassment against the Church of Scientology, itself an outspoken defender of trafficking victims and among the earliest critics of Backpage. That record also extends to Silverstein’s own documented online campaigns targeting religious communities.
The UN maintains extensive policies governing staff conduct and obligations, emphasizing integrity and impartiality, not to mention the avoidance of conflicts that could damage public trust. Employees are required to uphold the principles of the UN Charter and to refrain from conduct that adversely reflects on the organization’s independence or moral standing. While the UN cannot dictate personal relationships, it retains discretion over whether staff actions—including financial support of harmful advocacy—are compatible with its mission. Notably, Silverstein has never publicly repudiated Ortega’s defenses of Backpage or distanced herself from his characterization of child sex trafficking as a “mass panic,” even after the site’s role in exploitation was confirmed both by the US Senate and established in court.
The tension is particularly acute given the UN’s anti-trafficking posture. Through the OHCHR and the UNODC, the organization promotes survivor-centered justice, identifies patterns and warning signs of trafficking, and leads multilateral initiatives such as Alliance 8.7 to eradicate modern slavery. These efforts rest on the premise that trafficking is not a moral panic, but a systemic crime requiring decisive institutional opposition.
That premise is undermined when a UN attorney’s income finances rhetoric that denies the very existence of child sex trafficking and attacks those seeking accountability for its perpetrators. Anti-trafficking advocates have argued that Ortega’s role has never been fully examined, despite evidence that he actively discouraged efforts to assist victims—including refusing to publish ads offering help to individuals trafficked on Backpage. For survivors, such actions represent real-world obstruction.
The question now confronting the UN is neither hypothetical nor symbolic: It is whether an institution that demands ethical rigor from member states applies the same scrutiny inward, particularly when its own employees’ financial choices subsidize conduct antithetical to human rights.
Ultimately, commitments to those rights are tested not by proclamations but by action—even, or especially, when accountability is uncomfortable. As the UN continues to position itself as a global leader against trafficking, the unresolved case of Arielle Silverstein raises a stark question: Can the United Nations credibly fight modern-day slavery while its own attorney bankrolls the loudest defender of the most notorious child sex trafficking marketplace the world has ever known?
The United Nations was contacted for comment regarding the matters discussed in this article. As of publication, the organization had not provided a response. Freedom will update this article should a statement be received.
