Exploitation of the vulnerable is a sad fact of life at major events
New Brunswick, N.J. – The Super Bowl is the pinnacle of pro football competition. But it is also the largest human trafficking event in the United States, with an estimated 10,000 sex trafficking victims brought in to work. Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., co-chair of the House anti-human trafficking caucus, reported that sex trafficking occurs during the event and for weeks after the Super Bowl.
“New Jersey law enforcement and our educators have used this major sporting event as an opportunity to educate communities about how to identify and how to prevent this horrible crime and injustice against young women and children,” says Sharon Zucker, instructor and program coordinator for the Rutgers Center on Violence Against Women and Children.
The Rutgers center offers classes that cover trafficking in multiple ways so all students learn about trafficking during their time in the Rutgers MSW program. The classes cover violence and abuse at all stages of human development, as well as social policy and the clinical perspective of working with traumatized and abused victims.
“Most people think of trafficking as an international issue, but it is very much a national problem as well, says Rutgers School of Social Work doctoral student Laura Johnson, who attended the Rutgers center program and selected trafficking as the topic of her policy paper. “I am glad to see that the focus has become more national in the fight to end this enslavement and trafficking of women and children.”
The Department of Justice estimates that the most frequent age of entry into the commercial sex industry in the U.S. is 12-14 years old. Almost 1.6 million children run away from home each year in the U.S. and the average time it takes before a runaway is approached by a trafficker is 48 hours, as reported by the National Runaway Switchboard.
“We know that about 70 to 90 percent of commercially sexually exploited children have a history of child sexual abuse. These women and children have experienced trauma both in the home and on the streets. And these large sporting events can expose the dark nature of the human trafficking business,” says Zucker.
Zucker says those who know of or are victims of human trafficking can call the National Human Trafficking Resource Center Hotline at 1-888-373-7888.