TRI In The News
Game Day's Dark Side
From The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star
Original article available here.
SUNDAY'S Big Game evokes certain images: chips, dips, beer, a gridiron clash, a spectacular halftime show, and creative ads among them. But there's a dark side to the NFL's signature event, a side most don't like to acknowledge: "The Super Bowl," says Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, "is a magnet for child sex traffickers."
"People are thinking of the Packers and the Steelers and the game on the field, having a good time, and Super Bowl commercials. Most don't think about a 12-year-old being forced to dance naked," Mr. Abbott told ABC News. But that's just what's bound to happen--and worse.
A hundred thousand to 150,000 underage prostitutes are "working" in the United States right now. Many are runaways or castaways: One of every three children who become homeless is prostituted within 48 hours of hitting the streets, experts say. The typical age of these kids? 12 to 14.
Some, reports the Rutherford Institute, are kidnapping victims: One daughter from a close-knit Phoenix family was grabbed by an acquaintance, transported to an unknown location, gang raped repeatedly, and kept in a dog cage until she was rescued 40 days into her ordeal. Her "services" were advertised on Craigslist.
Pimps see major sporting events as lucrative opportunities. FBI Special Agent Joseph Ullmann called the scale of prostitution at the last couple of Super Bowls "incredible." At least 10,000 prostitutes, many underage, were trafficked into Miami for last year's game. Before the 2009 Tampa event, a pimp advertised a 14-year-old girl on Craigslist as a "Super Bowl Special." He's now serving 20 years in federal prison.
Sexual trafficking is already a $9.5 billion-per-year business in this country; one expert believes it will, within two years, overtake the drug trade as a source of ill-gotten gains. The cost in lost lives and in mental and physical trauma is inestimable.
Dallas Cowboys nose tackle Jay Ratliff, a spokesman for the advocacy group Traffick911.org, says: "As a man and as a father of two beautiful girls, I'm not buying it--and neither should you. I'm telling you that real men don't buy children. They don't buy sex."
That there's a need for such a message is a horror and a shame--of super proportions.
