Selling Sex at the Super Bowl
-
Everett Piper Everett Piper's Blog
- Updated Feb 21, 2011
Note: If you want to listen to this blog on KWON/KYFM radio go to http://www.bartlesvilleradio.com/caffeine/uploads/files/ON%20Demand/Ideas%20Matter/Ideas_Matter_2-21.mp3
Just a little over a week
ago, as we all hunkered down in the midst of an Oklahoma blizzard, many of us
were also enjoying watching the Super Bowl. But did you know that at the same
time this football game was being played there was also another game in town, one
of the ugliest of all games: the trafficking of underage prostitutes—a game
otherwise known as modern-day slavery.
Each year, 100,000 to
300,000 American kids, some as young as 12 years of age, are exploited in the sex
trade. They are literally bought and sold as property by traffickers who use
the Super Bowl and other large events to "market their wares" to "sports fans."
For example, in 2009
two Florida men were convicted on federal charges for using Craigslist to subject
a 14-year-old girl to prostitution during the Super Bowl in Tampa Bay.
During the 2010 game
in Miami, child advocacy groups identified numerous out-of-town underage
prostitutes working the streets of multiple Miami-area neighborhoods.
A Hawaii man was
convicted of flying in a 17-year-old girl from Hawaii to South Beach for
prostitution during the same Super Bowl festivities.
Miami-Dade police and
federal agents actually organized a Minor Vice Task Force and launched a series of undercover stings targeting underage sex
rings during that Super Bowl week.
And this year the
Texas Attorney General confirmed that agents were monitoring websites for the
trafficking of minors and were also launching undercover investigations in Dallas-Fort
Worth and the border region between Texas and Mexico.
So during the next
Super Bowl if you find yourself callously smiling at the sexual exploitation of
the newest Go Daddy Girl, remember that teenage slaves are being bought and
sold right outside the same stadium and they aren't smiling.