Gather a large group of men together (Super Bowl, All-Star games, oil fields, political and other conventions) and you will tend to see a spike in trafficking activity, as traffickers transport girls in order to meet high demand for sex.
The Super Bowl has the country’s highest incidences of trafficking. According to Forbes magazine, 10,000 sex workers were brought to the 2010 Super Bowl in Miami. At the 2014 Super Bowl in New Jersey, FBI managed to arrest 359 johns, release 50 victims (16 of them teenagers) and round up 45 traffickers, including a Florida woman who was selling her 15-year-old daughter.
But every day is “the Super Bowl” for victims of the trafficking industry. They have quotas to meet daily.
- One pimp estimated his girls were each generating at least a thousand dollars a day. His friends were allowed to gang-rape them for free.
- A girl who resisted was beaten for several hours with a baseball bat.
- A woman who escaped was sent a photo of the trafficker holding a gun to her mother’s head, threatening to shoot if she didn’t return in four hours.
- A teenager was told that if she didn’t comply, he would go after her 7-year-old sister next.
This is how trafficking changes the face and well-being of its victims in a short period of time
Mug shots of a young woman, taken each time she was arrested for prostitution. Despite obvious beatings and addictions, she was held accountable as a criminal. “Safe Harbor” legislation is in the process of making trafficking victims under the age of 18 not responsible for being sold to buyers — getting them services and advocates instead. Many states have not yet enacted this law. Ideally, someday anyone sold for sex, regardless of age, will be helped in the same way — and traffickers and buyers will be held responsible instead.