MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. (B) — Sex trafficking demand increases when large crowds gather for such events as the Super Bowl, an advocacy group said in launching a Feb. 4 Twitter campaign to spread awareness of sexual exploitation.
While sex trafficking remains a crime that must be tackled all year round, the demand has been proven to increase at previous Super Bowls, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) said in launching #TackleDemand.
“Every year some people make hyperbolic claims that the Super Bowl is the largest sex trafficking event in the country, and others claim that sex trafficking at the Super Bowl is a complete myth,” NCOSE Senior Vice President and Executive Director Dawn Hawkins said in a Feb. 1 press release. “The reality is that sex trafficking does occur at the Super Bowl, and at most large events, due to increased demand of people looking to buy sex in a concentrated area around a celebratory experience.”
At the 2017 Super Bowl in Houston, 183 buyers of sex and nine sex traffickers were arrested, NCOSE said on its #TackleDemand website, endsexualexploitation.org/tackledemand/.
The campaign will amplify its message through a Twitter Thunderclap, allowing participants to preschedule tweets to coincide with messages from other activists across the U.S., creating a “virtual flashmob.”
Campaign participant Raleigh Sadler, a Southern Baptist who fights sex trafficking and human slavery, said the crime is a year-round concern.
