Sex trafficking is not a new issue for the people – it has been happening every year since a long time. Then why is the light shed on it only when Super Bowl is in full swing? It is a question of considerable concern, as Amy Farrell decided to get the answer for it. Farrell is an associate professor of criminology and criminal justice. She also studies about human trafficking the Northeastern University.
This year, the Superbowl in Atlanta saw arrests of almost 33 people. Super Bowl makes it all easy, as there is a huge and favorable crowd. There are the parties, people coming from outside the city and a large number of men who will be willing to have commercial sex and pay for it. This makes the much-liked sport as a quintessential place for the traffickers.
“There is plenty of evidence to show that exploiters—pimps or people who exploit humans in other ways—from outside markets bring people into the city where the Super Bowl is,” says Farrell. It’s not only the Super Bowl – there’s the World Cup, the Olympics, professional conferences. These places not only attracts crowd from all over the place but also is susceptible to chaos. It makes it a piece of cake for the exploiters to do their jobs.
Farrell goes on to say that human trafficking is not a big-event-issue, as is usually perceived. Rather, it is a vicious cycle, which takes place every 364 days even after the Super Bowl is over. Along with sex trafficking, there is also a greater risk of labor trafficking. The much bigger story of sex trafficking covers this issue, but it is there, lurking at the edges. Such huge events have food and product vendors coming out of their invisibility. It leads to them becoming the ultimate targets. The easiest targets for labor exploitation are the contract workers, according to Farrell.
“I would say that wherever you see a rise in sex trafficking, there’s an equal or greater rise in labor trafficking”. Both of them are real-world issues, with effective measures essential for their banishment.
Pranjali Wakde.
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