Pucking Sports

(Huffington Post) Soraya Chemaly - Is the Super Bowl the largest child sex trafficking event in the U.S.?

The Big Game is known for the bacchanalia that surrounds it. However, we don’t typically think of the illegal prostitution of minors at the same time. It’s a buzz kill if ever there was one. But, the Super Bowl probably has a “demand effect” surrounding large events, often sports related, worldwide.

Last year Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, preparing for what he understood to be a major increase in forced, underage commercialized sex (these would be child sex slaves) called the Super Bowl “the single largest human trafficking incident in the United States.”

Here’s an example from a previous year: A trafficker was arrested and imprisoned for selling two girls, 14 and 18, as “a Super Bowl special.” Or there’s the story of A.H., who was involuntarily taken to Dallas/Ft. Worth last year where she was beaten, raped and enslaved not far from Dallas Cowboys stadium. Bluntly speaking, these are lost and broken children whose profit value is magnified this week by the Super Bowl.

There is debate among organizations involved in stopping trafficking over the accuracy of claims that the “demand effect” is real. In 2011, the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW) concluded in it’s, report that “an increase in trafficking for prostitution during large sporting events is unlikely” and that a mythologizing of the issue actually distracts from legitimate and thoughtful consideration of other types of trafficking. Rachel Lloyd echoed this concern earlier this week, when she asked whether it matters if trafficking increases during the Super Bowl — isn’t the truth about trafficking bad enough?

Yet studies of events surrounding past Super Bowls, the Olympics and two World Cup games do show increases in both prostitution and trafficking.

We don’t get a lot of information about domestic slavery — even calling it “trafficking” tampens the impact of the words. We would rather think of slavery as something strictly relegated to our past. It is not. The U.S. Department of State estimates that more than 50,000 men, women and children are trafficked into the United States every year (600,000 to 800,000 worldwide.) Of these, 80 percent are girls and women, 70 percent into the sex trade. Those numbers represent the number of people imported. Domestically, at least 100,000 people, mostly girls, are trafficked, mostly for sex, every year. Although there is no clear consensus on the numbers of children, or of girls versus boys, exploited through prostitution nationwide there is consensus that the numbers are large and growing.

the one thing that stuck out to me was what it would’ve felt like as parents in that moment to hear your child say “dad I can’t feel anything” … “mom I can’t move” … I can’t even imagine

what a fucking stud…#jabs

“Impossible is nothing”

if you haven’t seen it already, check out this story of how the kid who checked him threw the winning “Chuck-A-Puck” and it was #13 Jack Jablonski Miracle on Ice: Winning Chuck-a-Puck #13 thrown by player who hit him

-kinger