The
countdown to February 5 for the Super Bowl is on! While football enthusiasts
will gather in New Orleans and in front of 72-inch TV’s to watch the Baltimore
Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers settle the game on the gridiron, there is to
be another kind of settling done in the city – the exchange of commercial sex.
According to some reports from previous Super Bowls, large scale sporting
events become attractive venues for human trafficking activities, given the
presence of thousands of spectators and easy access to these major cities.
During the 2009 Super Bowl in
Tampa, a trafficker
was sentenced to 20 years in prison for offering the “Super Bowl Special” on
Craigslist in the form commercial sex with a 14-year old girl. Some reports highlighted
the increased number of prostitutes or trafficked victims brought into host
cities during the Super Bowl season. In 2011, Texas Attorney General, Greg
Abbott, declared the Super Bowl “one
of the biggest human trafficking events in the United States”. With this
statement, his human trafficking task force worked in partnership with law
enforcement and local anti-trafficking organizations to crack down on
trafficking activities during the 2011 Super Bowl in Dallas. During that same
time, the Women’s Funding Network reported an 80% increase in Craigslist sex
ads. Even the Indiana Attorney General, Greg Zoeller, prepared
for the 2012 Super Bowl in Indianapolis by supporting training for prosecutors,
law enforcement, and advocates around this issue.
The draw of sex traffickers to
highly populated cities and events make logical sense; however, some of the
estimated numbers have been unfounded. For example, the Tampa Bay police
department saw no
increase in prostitution or sex trafficking cases during the 2009 Super
Bowl. Even the FBI’s Dallas office reported saw no
evidence of unusual increases in child sex trafficking cases as the host
city in 2010.
The media and various
anti-trafficking and human rights organizations have been called out for hyping
up the incidence of trafficking during the Super Bowl. Their intentions were
probably genuine – they wanted to bring attention to a serious issue in the
U.S. that is destroying the lives of many young people, although their methods
and strategies might have been misplaced by predicting an outlandish influx of
trafficked persons into the cities. The media and such organizations have the
power to rally and create fervent advocates out of previously uninformed
people. Such topics that are easily sensationalized and that appeal to the
human pathos need to be approached with caution. Check your facts!
I do have another point to make. In
light of January as Human Trafficking Awareness Month and the Super
Bowl-trafficking dispute, consider yourself at least a little more educated
about human trafficking. Please do read more about it – both international and
domestic, sex and labor – then educate others about it, too! Human trafficking
happens every day, most likely in your city or surrounding regions, urban and
rural. You might be surprised.
For more educational reading, here
is a publication from the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women about the
connection between sporting events and human trafficking.
