They traveled to the super bowl with no intention of watching the game to have their bodies sold for sexual pleasure.
While media airways pre-Super Bowl echoed with disgust over the #DeflateGate controversy, the post-Super Bowl hot topic will no doubt be the Seahawks’ final play call that resulted in the game-losing interception.
But the story most likely to be absent from the headlines, are the stories of those men, women, and children who traveled to the Super Bowl with no intention of watching the game. They came to have their bodies sold for sexual pleasure. Each year, thousands of girls, boys, and adults are bussed into the hosting Super Bowl city and sold for sex like part of the festivities. Experts say the Super Bowl is one of the most popular events for sex trafficking with an estimated 10,000 women, men and children trafficked into Miami for the 2011 Super Bowl alone.
Girls and boys are kidnapped from their homes around the world or are lured in with lies and forced into sex slavery. According to the FBI, approximately 293,000 children are forced into sex slavery in the United States. The average age a child enters the sex industry is 12-14 years old. The victims are expected by their pimp to have sex with between 10 – 30 tricks (people who pay for sex) per day.
“Modern [sex] slavery has reached historic levels,” said Liz Yore, an expert on rescuing sex-trafficked children and an international child advocate who formerly worked for Oprah Winfrey at Harpo Studios.
Yore spoke Super Bowl Saturday at an educational conference called SpeakOut Illinois, which is hosted by 43 Illinois pro-life organizations. Yore attributed a main factor in sex trafficking’s thriving business to legalized abortion. “200,000 million baby girls are missing in Asia due to sex-selective abortion,” she said. As a result of the rapidly declining female population, girls, boys, and adults are sex trafficked into Asia and forced into sexual slavery. “Abortion becomes the one-size-fits-all solution. It creates the demand and then eliminates the evidence of the crime. The younger the child, the higher the price….Abortion on demand has…hardened hearts,” Yore continued.
The sex trafficking industry makes approximately $87 million per day. The average pimp makes between $150,000 and $200,000 per year off of selling 3-4 victims. Yore says Chicago is ranked 10th as a hub for sex-trafficked children with approximately 27,854 registered sex offenders in Illinois. Chicago, a city plagued by a robust abortion industry as well as easily accessible public and interstate transportation has approximately 16,000 – 25,000 sex trafficked victims every year.
Four years ago yesterday, Planned Parenthood – the largest abortion provider in the United States – was caught on tape aiding and abetting sex-traffickers in an undercover investigation conducted by Live Action. The investigation was organized much like police stings and 60 Minutes investigations.
The Live Action videos were profoundly disturbing: Planned Parenthood was caught advising pimps on how to secretly obtain abortions even though the staff knew the prospective patients were involved in sex work. Three years later, former Boston Planned Parenthood staffer Catherine Adair came forward to affirm what Live Action’s undercover investigations found:
“I was present when young girls came in with their abusers and Planned Parenthood performed their abortions,” said Adair. “When Live Action came out with their videos, I felt vindicated. I knew it to be true, and they showed it to be true. That allowed me, for the first time, to tell others what I had experienced.”
According to the International Labor Organization, there are 20.9 million victims of human trafficking globally – 55% of them are female and 5.5 million of them children.
Sex trafficked girls, boys, women and men are hidden in plain sight and, for this reason, Yore implored the public to remember missing children crimes are most often solved only with the help of the public. She said you identify victims by noticing signs of depression, avoiding eye contact, and very submissive personalities. If you notice a neighborhood girl or boy with bruises, working long unusual hours, or can’t freely come then say something. You can make an anonymous tip to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center by calling 1-888-373-7888 or by calling 911. If you see something, say something. You just may save someone’s life.
As the Patriots continue to celebrate their world championship, don’t be too distracted by stories of the mechanical tiger and dancing sharks to notice the children and adults who are hidden in plain sight being forced into sex slavery. They silently scream for your help. In our work to end legalized abortion, let us remember our efforts are not only for the child abortion eliminates and the parents abortion scars for life. Let us also work to make abortion illegal by remembering the monsters abortion protects and the girls and women abortion forces back into sex slavery after permanently destroying the evidence.