While Scripture forbids us from spreading a false report…sometimes, because of lack of information, we unintentionally pass along false reports in the form of myths and urban legends. – Joe Carter of The Gospel Coalition
Every year since I’ve been writing this blog, the “sex trafficking” fanatics have hyped the Super Bowl as “the biggest human trafficking event of the year”, and every year I and other activists have worked to debunk that ridiculous lie. Though such tall tales had been told about large international events like the Olympics and World Cup since the advent of “trafficking” hysteria in 2004, they first became attached to the Super Bowl in 2008 and didn’t blossom into a full-fledged media circus until 2010, when were told that “‘tens of thousands of people‘—most of them young girls—[were] sold into the sex trade during Miami’s Super Bowl” (presumably while the halftime show was going on). Later that year, Texas attorney general Greg Abbot got the propaganda machine running in full force by November, and virtually the only dissenting voice outside the sex worker rights movement was a Village Voice reporter who interviewed me a few weeks before the Dallas game. In October 2011, however, the venerable Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women released a thorough debunking entitled “What’s the Cost of a Rumour?”, and a few “trafficking” opportunists began to see the writing on the wall. While the hysteria spun on for the 2012 Indianapolis Super Bowl (the first one which saw the bizarre spectacle of nuns and “trafficking” fetishists harassing hoteliers into accepting creepy bars of “sex trafficking” soap), a few of the wiser rescue industry groups began to distance themselves from it and Snopes officially labeled it an urban legend.
Since then, we’ve begun to see a split in both political and journalistic treatment of the myth. While New Orleans’ response was even less extreme than Tampa’s in 2009, New Jersey has gone completely off the deep end, New York has horned in on New Jersey’s glory by performing mass arrests of sex workers in the name of “fighting trafficking”, and Cindy McCain, angry that the hysteria had not started in earnest the last time the game was in Phoenix (2008), has already started trying to hog the spotlight for next year. While some media outlets published the usual outlandish poppycock, others are trying to hedge their bets: Jezebel was as credulous as one would expect, but its readers were not (see comment thread), and NBC News took the precaution of inserting a couple of disclaimers in an otherwise-typical “Trafficking Bowl” feature starring SOAP’s Theresa Flores (who was magically “trafficked” out of her suburban home every night for two years without anyone ever noticing). And like rats deserting a sinking ship, Rachel Lloyd and Polaris are now denying the myth in hopes of keeping the broader “sex trafficking” mythology (and their profits) afloat just a little longer.
Nor is it just a few lonely voices doing the debunking any more, as it was for the past three years. My article in Reason was quoted and linked in articles on Hot Air, Cracked and The Federalist, and Lenore Skenazy interviewed me for her syndicated newspaper column and Huffington Post. Susan Shepard of Tits and Sass exploded the myth in Sports on Earth, Tracy Clark-Flory did in Salon, Dr. Marty Klein did on his own blog, and Kate Mogulescu of the Legal Aid Society did in the New York Times; other writers attacked it in The Wire and the National Post. But the most pleasant surprises for me were two refutations in The Gospel Coalition and Religious Herald; the latter one even quoted Laura Agustín! Given all this support to what once felt like tilting at windmills, I think it’s safe to say that the next iteration of the myth (which as mentioned above, Cuckoo Clock McCain has already launched) will be its swan song. And that will only be one of a series of implosions which will rock the “sex trafficking” cult over the next three years, resulting in the eventual collapse of the whole moral panic.
Ho Maggie. What’s the position of the public authorities in the USA about this topic? Do politicians and police support or debunk the traffick vision? In Spain the highest policial chiefs have made a huge campaign showing that behind prostitutes there are always victims of traffick.
The “Human Trafficking” meme is the biggest money-making self-licking ice cream cone to come along in a long while. It’s a gravy train – so of course most all politicians and police support it. I can’t think of one that doesn’t support it – maybe Republican Rand Paul – I dunno.
Politicians everywhere will always flock to any agenda which pretends that some group of people is “helpless” or “voiceless” because they can then speak and act (supposedly) in those people’s behalf. If the people are women, even better; if “children”, better still. And if sex is involved (or can be pretended to be involved), they’ve hit the jackpot.
Missing children rescued from Super Bowl sex trade in FBI sting
Published February 04, 2014/
FoxNews.com
Sixteen children as young as 13, and some of whom had been reported missing by their families, were rescued from the sex trade in a law enforcement sting operation that targeted alleged pimps who brought the victims to New Jersey for Super Bowl weekend, FBI officials said.
More than 45 pimps and their associates were arrested in the operation conducted by law enforcement, the FBI announced Tuesday. Some admitted traveling to New Jersey from other states for the purpose of forcing women and children to have sex with Super Bowl tourists for money, according to federal investigators.
“High-profile special events . . . have become lucrative opportunities for child prostitution criminal enterprises.”
– Ron Hosko, FBI
“High-profile special events, which draw large crowds, have become lucrative opportunities for child prostitution criminal enterprises,” Ron Hosko, assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division, said in a statement. “The FBI and our partners remain committed to stopping this cycle of victimization and putting those who try to profit from this type of criminal activity behind bars.”
The victims rescued during the sting operation range in age from 13 to 17 years old, the FBI said. Some of the minors include children previously reported missing by their families; others are foreign nationals.
The FBI worked with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies over a six-month period leading up the Super Bowl. The operation is part of the Innocence Lost National Initiative, established in 2003 by the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division, in partnership with the Department of Justice and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, to combat child prostitution.
Authorities had made contact with more than 20 hotels in the New York City area on how to identify victims of sex trafficking, Special Agent in Charge James T. Hayes of Homeland Security in New York told FoxNews.com last week.
Hayes described human trafficking as an ongoing problem that law enforcement continually strives to eradicate and said many of the victims are foreign nationals, who are often from countries “where law enforcement isn’t trusted.”
FoxNews.com’s Cristina Corbin contributed to this report.
And if you believe this report is factual and “unspun”, I have a Giant’s stadium to sell you.
There was no “trafficking” at the Super Bowl this year.
Hell – Denver even forgot to “traffic” in a team to play for them.
Old myths die hard–several commenters on Mogulescu’s column trotted out the old “Superbowl of wife abuse” myth.
Someone started talking about the trafficking stuff on an NFL thread of a message board I often visit. I grumbled to myself, but I was too chicken to post Maggie’s link—I did not want to start trouble with the others.
Fortunately, somebody else did it for me. 🙂
I think they get enough press throughout the year that they don’t have to use high-profile events anymore, which also could dilute the message that sex slavery is everywhere. Also it seems feminist operatives are going to have good results discrediting male sports by pushing the brain injury issue
Part of the “hotwash” after Super Bowl should be a briefing by state, local, and federal police that outlines TWO facts …
1. How much money was spent to round up slaves and their masters.
2. How many slaves and masters were actually rounded up.
Then we can get an idea of how efficiently our money is being spent. And, they need to be real numbers – not faux ones.
OK……i looked up how meny could fit in Metlife stad. 82,566………..now if 100,000 women and chrildren were brought in that would mean every man in the stad would be buying one of these trafficed folks…………….. so why not just build a fence around the stad and call it a prison………………of course let the Broncos out ………they paid for there sins. Sam
Two (somewhat) Super Bowl related stories in today’s Daily Mail.
This appears to explain why Seattle won so easily.
This, from local police, says they rescued 16 “trafficked” children. I wonder who they really are and who convinced them to tell that tale.
My letter to BBC News
Dear Sirs:
I was disappointed to see your internet coverage of the supposed “influx of sex trafficking” during the Super Bowl. Your followed the “party line” of the politicians and law enforcement personnel with their self-serving propaganda. The only evidence supporting what has become an American myth in your story was an interview with a former trafficked woman who had no connection to this or apparently any other American sporting event.
Some basic research might have been in order before airing your story:
What happens when tens of thousands of football fans, 3,000 members of media, and untold numbers of corporate executives descend on one little city for the Super Bowl? Stories about an explosion in sex work, naturally. With Super Bowl XLVIII on the horizon, it’s now time for the annual “here come the prostitutes” story, an annual exercise is fear-mongering over a threat that never materializes.
Stop us if you’ve heard this one before. Because you probably have. The same story was written about the Super Bowl host city in 2011 and again 2010 and again 2009 … and again before basically every Super Bowl in living memory. (The Super Bowl has even been called the single largest human trafficking incident in the United States.) Every city that hosts the NFL title game goes through this, but there’s one problem with the narrative. It isn’t exactly true.
In 2012, The Houston Press’s Peter Kotz thoroughly tore apart that story, explaining that law enforcement officials in the cities where past Super Bowls occurred never actually saw increases in prostitution busts or the number of trafficked prostitutes, even despite increased efforts to catch johns, pimps, and traffickers.
Further, the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW) — which has a vested interest in promoting this topic — said in a report that there’s no correlation between sporting events and a rise in prostitution. “There is no evidence that large sporting events cause an increase in trafficking for prostitution,” the organization concluded. They also included this table which looked at the world’s biggest sporting events, and the lack of evidence to back what they essentially say is a “myth.”
The Wire: Jan 6 2014
The issue of “human trafficking” itself in this country is controversial, despite the assertions made by law enforcement and politicians.
According to a 2007 Washington Post expose entitled “Human Trafficking Evokes Outrage, Little Evidence”, human trafficking into the United States is essentially nonexistent.
… the number of identified victims (or convicted traffickers) is far less than the official claim (by the U.S. State Department) that as many 14,500-17,500 individuals are trafficked into the United States every year. A recent analysis by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics showed a huge gap between the claimed number of victims and the number of confirmed cases of victimization. (Duren Banks and Tracey Kyckelhahn. Characteristics of Suspected Human Trafficking Incidents, 2008–2010. Washington, DC: BJS, 2011.)
Wikipedia
A more fundamental issue is identifying “prostitution” with “trafficking.” As anyone with a passing acquaintance with this world is aware, the typical prostitute is an independent woman working for herself, practicing the “oldest profession” to support herself and often her children.
So, to conflate the typical American practice of sex for money and human trafficking is in fact absurd. Prostitution is legal in most parts of the world, as it is on a de facto basis in most parts of the U.S. Where I live, in Austin, there are many large international events, such as South by Southwest and the new Formula One race. Here there is most certainly no outcry about “human trafficking” and vast influxes of “sex slaves” during these events…because it simply doesn’t happen. Nor does it happen at the Super Bowl. Yes there are likely more prostitutes available, naturally; but that is a completely different matter.
I admire and generally prefer news from the BBC, which I consider vastly superior to most other news organizations. A critical view and a fresh perspective would have been welcome in this case. However, with this fact-free story I believe you have fallen far short of your own standards, both by promoting this “trafficking myth” as I have described, and in effect displaying a kind of Victorian hypocrisy towards prostitution, which as you should realize is both common and widely accepted in large segments of society today…as, in fact, it has always been.
Lucius Ripley, M.D.
I am heartened to see that Snopes has added this to its website. Snopes is pretty much the gold standard on cataloging urban legends and I think this will elevate this story from merely questionable to a definite myth in many people’s eyes… Hopefully enough so that any media outlet or political figure parroting this story going forward should be embarrassed and shamed into issuing a retraction. Or at least we can try. 😉
Thanks should go to Maggie, Pete Kotz and everyone else who has raised awareness of the mythical nature of this story over the last few years.
“Before we begin this final round of games in the 2132 Zero-G Soccer Off-World Cup, I’d like to take a moment to set something straight. For the last three Off-World Cups, there has been a great hue and cry about sex slaves, many of them underage, being transported to the location of the Cup. The numbers of supposed sex slaves have grown each year, to the point where even the nearest habitat wouldn’t be able to hold them all, and each year, exactly zero sex slaves are rescued. It is time to put this myth to bed, alone and without paid company. The Off-World Cup does not attract sex slaves and their masters.”
— Anzu James, Sports Commentator for SolSys Sports Channel, remarks from March 16, 2132