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Bigot Sam Mondros & SF Standard Forever Linked to Backpage Child Sex Trafficking Scandal via Tony Ortega
On July 9, San Francisco Standard culture reporter Sam Mondros launched an attack on a local resident whose sole “offense” was exercising his religious freedom by donating time and resources to the Church of Scientology.
Mondros’ article leaned entirely on the anti-Scientology hate speech of Tony Ortega, a child sex trafficking enabler Mondros attempted to pass off as a credible “source” on the religion.
Ortega, an unemployed hate blogger, has never been a Scientologist, has never set foot inside a Church of Scientology and knows nothing about the religion. Instead, he spends his days stalking Scientologists, trying to “out” them in their personal and professional lives.
Mondros’ prized “source” brings yet more to the table: a long, well-documented history of mocking and shaming survivors of rape, sexual assault and exploitation.
Ortega also spends his time harassing and mocking people of faith, whom he describes as “tithe-making suckers” who subscribe to the “Holey Bible” and are “fair game” for people “to make fun of” because God, in his words, is “a small-minded wanker” and “a conniving, underhanded and petty biatch”—qualifying Ortega, apparently, as an authority on faith by the SF Standard’s “standards.”
Hawking himself as an anti-Scientology “expert” to tabloids is today the only way Ortega can eke out a living after his previous bosses were either sent to prison or committed suicide. Those bosses ran Backpage, the world’s largest online marketplace for child sex trafficking before it was seized by the FBI in 2018.
Ortega so vociferously did their bidding, championing Backpage, that The New York Times dubbed him the sex trafficking site’s “attack dog.” Ortega callously dismissed sex trafficking as “a mass panic,” a “national fantasy,” and a “small problem,” attacking those who exposed what he labeled a “nonexistent epidemic of sexual slavery.” “Underage prostitution,” he insisted, “is nothing like what is being trumpeted.”
During Ortega’s tenure at the Backpage-funded Village Voice Media, girls were murdered after being sold for sex on the site. Backpage executives were convicted in November 2023; co-founder Jim Larkin committed suicide before trial.
Mondros’ prized “source” brings yet more to the table: a long, well-documented history of mocking and shaming survivors of rape, sexual assault and exploitation.
In 2002, after two teenage girls were abducted at gunpoint, raped and narrowly escaped murder, Ortega mocked them—publishing an article fantasizing they’d star in a Hollywood reality show where victims run from sex offenders for the amusement of perverts like Ortega.
Two years later, when a local station aired an exposé on pedophiles, Ortega attacked and ridiculed it, finding “humor,” once again, in child sexual abuse. He sneered that the real value of the exposé was that it proved a pedophile should “never believe a 14-year-old chat room skank,” and that the investigation “has now established beyond a doubt that if your 14-year-old is hankering for oral sex and a six-pack of beer from a flabby geriatric, satisfaction is just a few keystrokes away.”
“We provide San Francisco—one of the most dynamic cities in the world—with the journalism it deserves,” the San Francisco Standard boasts on its website, where it also claims to furnish “smart, insightful, useful coverage that is a cut above traditional outlets.”
But if the SF Standard thinks platforming an unemployed hate troll who calls God a “wanker” and the faithful “fair game” to mock constitutes “the journalism San Francisco deserves,” then—like Backpage before it—the Standard may not be long for this world.
What will endure, however, is Sam Mondros’ legacy. He’ll be remembered in perpetuity as the “reporter” who chose to stake his name and credibility on the hate speech of Backpage’s most notorious child sex trafficking defender—thereby linking himself forever to one of the ugliest, most despicable scandals in American history.
STAND League is the leading global coalition exposing bigotry and championing religious freedom worldwide. Through education, advocacy and partnership, STAND promotes religious literacy, demands corporate accountability, advances honest journalism and safeguards equality, justice and human rights for all.
