There is a serious problem of human trafficking for purposes of sex and labor. Particularly heinous is the trafficking in children. But urban legends that have been promoted by political leaders not withstanding, it does not exist in any greater degree around major sporting events like the Super Bowl than at any other time of year.
A number of media outlets have continued to spread the urban legend -- which was debunked in a 75 page report (PDF) by the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women in 2011. Advocates for sex workers and exploited children say that the claim that the Superbowl attracts unusual amounts of prostitution is still a myth and that politicians, law enforcement and even the New York City area Roman Catholic Church are overreacting.
While there is much more to say about all this, let's take this moment to note that there are voices of the victims and advocates like the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, Christa Brown of StopBaptistPredators, and Dylan Farrow who deserve to be heard when the distractions of the Super Bowl are over. Let's point out that there are prominent religious leaders who have enabled or covered up for perpetrators. Some of these are also leaders of the Christian Right who claim to promote "family values." One culture warring cleric, Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City, has even been convicted of failing to report the suspected crimes of a priest under his supervision who ultimately got 50 years in prison. Finn remains in office.
There are both opportunists and well-meaning people making claims they cannot substantiate, and making calls to action to address a problem that does not really exist. But fortunately not every media outlet is so gullible and there are knowledgeable advocates working hard to correct the record.
Kate Mogulescu, the founder and supervising attorney of the Trafficking Victims Advocacy Project at the Legal Aid Society, published an op-ed in The New York Times to say:
No data actually support the notion that increased sex trafficking accompanies the Super Bowl. The Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women, a network of nongovernmental organizations, published a report in 2011 examining the record on sex trafficking related to World Cup soccer games, the Olympics and the Super Bowl. It found that, “despite massive media attention, law enforcement measures and efforts by prostitution abolitionist groups, there is no empirical evidence that trafficking for prostitution increases around large sporting events.”
Even with this lack of evidence, the myth has taken hold through sheer force of repetition, playing on desires to rescue trafficking victims and appear tough on crime. Whether the game is in Dallas, Indianapolis or New Orleans, the pattern is the same: Each Super Bowl host state forms a trafficking task force to “respond” to the issue; the task force issues a foreboding statement; the National Football League pledges to work with local law enforcement to address trafficking; and news conference after news conference is held. The actual number of traffickers investigated or prosecuted hovers around zero.
Bob Allen at the
Associated Baptist Press authored a
detailed debunking.
Rachel Lloyd, founder of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services [GEMS], says there is scant evidence to back up claims such as the Texas Attorney General who talked about 10,000 to 100,000 victims being trafficked into Dallas for Super Bowl XLV in 2011.
"There is no huge influx of pimps and trafficked women and girls each year into whatever city the Super Bowl is being held,” Lloyd writes in a blog picked up by the Huffington Post. “There is no mass invasion of johns traveling specifically for the purposes of purchasing sex.”
...A 2011 paper by the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women says the first modern event where trafficking was misleadingly linked with a major sporting event appears to be the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, which invoked widespread warnings from Greek politicians about a rise in prostitutes and sex workers, according to the BBC.
Since then, testosterone-driven sporting events like the Olympics, soccer’s World Cup and the Super Bowl routinely get tied to rumors of an influx of prostitutes that for some reason usually is numbered at 40,000. Laura Agustin, a sociologist who studies and blogs about migrant sex workers, calls it “a fantasy number” with no basis in fact.
Allen further
reported, quoting Lloyd from her blog "...there are also three practical reasons why the Super Bowl story harms the work more than it helps.”
For one thing, it undermines the credibility of organizations like hers that fight human trafficking and gives credibility to naysayers who claim the problem doesn’t exist.
Second, she said, continually raising “false alarms” makes it harder to mobilize people to action when an alarm really is required, a time-tested truth illustrated in Aesop’s fable “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.”
Finally, it’s a waste of resources that could be used by agencies like hers in truly effective ways.
“Real change is long-term and systemic,” Lloyd wrote. “It's not about throwing some money at an issue for a few months and then moving on.”
“That may not line up with the current Super Bowl/trafficking narrative, and it's not really what the media wants to hear, but it's the truth,” she said. “What is true, without question, is that commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking will undoubtedly happen in the New York/New Jersey area during the first week of February, and the second and third and fourth week of February and in March and April and every single day and every night throughout the year.”
Crossposted from Talk to Action
