If we’re to buy into the authority of Cindy McCain, wife of Arizona senator John McCain, then we’re to believe that the Super Bowl is the “largest human trafficking venue on the planet.”

McCain’s statement is just one of the strong and unfounded assertions that winds itself into pre-Super Bowl buzz, shaping the way media and society view the relationship between the biggest annual sporting event in the U.S. and forced prostitution.

But no real evidence supports this claim. Several organizations that advocate for trafficking victims actually deny a link between trafficked sex workers and the influx of testosterone-filled sports fans.

In a conversation as serious as sex trafficking, it is imperative that the truth not be sidelined.

But contention around the facts does not devalue the increased visibility that the Super Bowl has prompted for human trafficking this year and in past years.

The challenge now is to shift the focus of these campaigns away from one individual event. Media and society should work to channel the attention that the Super Bowl has garnered into a more significant and long-term campaign against domestic human trafficking.

For example, responding to assertions that major events such as the Super Bowl spell attractive client pools for sex traffickers, authorities in New York and New Jersey ratcheted up efforts against traffickers prior to the Feb. 2 game. This included training law enforcement, hotel personnel, airport staff and others on how to identify a trafficking victim. Such measures have become common practice for Super Bowl host cities.

But while organizations such as the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women argue that such measures are a waste of resources through disproportionate prevention efforts, I don’t see the training as negative. It’s just too narrow.

Service workers should certainly be trained to identify trafficking victims, as they were in New York and New Jersey in anticipation of the Super Bowl. But this training should stretch across the U.S. and emphasize the fact that this human trafficking is not catalyzed by any single event.

Despite the spike in media coverage around the Super Bowl, sex trafficking continues throughout the calendar year. Through manipulation by significant others or false job offers, for example, vulnerable men and women are forced into prostitution in cities and suburbs across the U.S.

Between 2007 and 2012, the Polaris Project tallied 9,298 individual cases of human trafficking within the U.S., according to the NGO’s 2012 report. Of these, 64 percent involved sex trafficking. While 85 percent of these sex trafficking victims were female, Polaris notes that cases involving male or transgender victims were also reported.

The Super Bowl, the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women says, does not prompt a major spike in activity at all.

Between 10,000 and 100,000 sex workers were expected to flood past Super Bowl host cities in anticipation of the game, the organization noted in a 2011 report. But in reality, local law enforcement authorities reported no spikes in illegal sexual activity.

Activity around MetLife Stadium this year also seemed disproportionately low when compared to media hyperbole. Police arrested 18 people on allegations related to prostitution and cocaine sales the Thursday before the game, but NBC New York reported the Manhattan-based operation had already been under investigation for 11 months.

The value of bringing conversations about sex and human trafficking into the mainstream should not be lost in debates about whether or not the facts support overblown and sensationalist assertions.

The momentum that the Super Bowl has built up for the issue just needs to be redirected — away from contention and toward consistent anti-trafficking efforts that claim mainstream attention far beyond one Sunday in February.

Nicki Gorny is a junior newspaper and online journalism and Spanish major. Her column appears weekly. She can reached at nagorny@syr.edu and followed on Twitter @Nicki_Gorny.

 

 

Published on February 4, 2014 at 2:24 am