A group called Texas911 is raising the red flag on human trafficking for prostitution in advance of the Super Bowl. The same thing occurred during the Vancouver Olympics and World Cup.
Women's advocacy groups claim that thousands of underage girls will be imported by pimps to service the needs of morally bankrupt attendees. However, no positive proof has ever been shown. The Dallas Observer even went so far as to interview police and they analyzed real data from other events.
"The routine is the same in every Super Bowl city," an NFL spokesman told the Dallas Observer. "The media beats the drum of impending invasion, warning that anywhere from 15,000 to 100,000 hookers will soon arrive. Politicians lather on their special sauce of manufactured outrage. Cops and prosecutors vow stings and beefed up manpower. By implication, the NFL's wealthiest and most connected fans -- captains of industry and senators from Utah -- will be plotting a week of sexual rampage not seen since the Vikings sailed on Scotland. They must be stopped. This is urban legend that is pure pulp fiction...I would refer you to your local law enforcement officials."
So that's what we did. Meet police Sergeant Tommy Thompson of Phoenix, which hosted the 2008 Super Bowl. "We may have had certain precincts that were going gangbusters looking for prostitutes, but they were picking up your everyday street prostitutes," Thompson says of his vice cops. "They didn't notice any sort of glitch in the number of prostitution arrests leading up to the Super Bowl." Conspicuously noted, he doesn't recall a single arrest of an underage girl.
So why do they sound the trumpet every year prior to these major events? Follow the Money!
Many of the advocacy groups and charities that make these claims depend on government grants and donations for their funding. In the absence of a bit of hysteria, those who write checks might not feel so good about donating. More importantly, the groups might not be able to convince legislators to come up with millions in funding for the "epidemic" they claim exists but for which they have no real proof.
Jerry Markon, a staffer at the Washington Post wrote an eye-opening piece in September 2007 about how these false claims have been used to pass legislation and secure funding. Outrage was mounting at the 1999 hearing in the Rayburn House Office Building, where congressmen were learning about human trafficking. A woman from Nepal testified...that she had been drugged, abducted and forced to work at a brothel in Bombay. A Christian activist recounted tales of women overseas being beaten with electrical cords and raped. A State Department official said Congress must act [because] 50,000 slaves were pouring into the United States every year . Furious about the "tidal wave of victims", Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-NJ) vowed to crack down on so-called modern-day slavery.
The next year, Congress passed a law, triggering a little-noticed worldwide war on human trafficking that began at the end of the Clinton administration and [became] a top Bush administration priority. As part of the fight, President Bush blanketed the nation with 42 Justice Department task forces and has spent more than $150 million to find and help the estimated hundreds of thousands of victims of forced prostitution or labor in the United States. But the government couldn't find them. Not in this country.
Evidence and testimony presented to Congress pointed to a problem overseas. But in the decade since the law was passed, human trafficking has not become a major domestic issue, according to the government's figures. Only 1,362 victims of human trafficking brought into the United States since 2000 have been identified, nowhere near the 50,000 per year that the government had originally estimated. In addition, only 148 federal cases have been brought nationwide, some by the DOJ task forces, which are composed of prosecutors, agents from the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and local law enforcement officials in areas thought to be hubs of trafficking. In the Washington, DC region there have been about 15 federal cases this decade.
In the Washington Post piece Mr. Markon also quoted several experts. Ronald Weitzer, a criminologist at George Washington University and an expert on sex trafficking, said that "...trafficking is a hidden crime whose victims often fear coming forward,” suggesting that this might account for some of the disparity in the numbers. But he also acknowledged that there would be only a small amount of correction.
Steven Wagner, former head of HHS's anti-trafficking program who helped HHS distribute millions of dollars in grants to community groups to find and assist victims, said: "Those funds were wasted. Many of the organizations that received grants didn't really have to do anything. They were available to help victims [but] there weren't any victims."
My point, again, is that we need to follow the money. Every year more sob stories and over-inflated media pieces come along to create the need for money and legislation. As it has always turned out in the past, subsequent funding turns out to be a big waste. If audits of wasteful funding were conducted one can only wonder how much we could shave off the budget. Millions? Billions?
The last paragraph of the aforementioned Washington Post story says it all:
HHS is still paying people to find victims. Last fall, the agency announced $3.4 million in new street outreach awards to 22 groups nationwide. Nearly $125,000 went to Mosaic Family Services, a nonprofit agency in Dallas. For the past year, its employees have put out the word to hospitals, police stations, domestic violence shelters -- any organization that might come into contact with a victim. "They're doing about a thousand different things," said Bill Bernstein, Mosaic's deputy director. "Three victims were found.
Michael Dehart, 41, is a 10-year Army veteran who currently works as a Senior Systems Admistrator/Electronic Medical Record Specialist for a major US defense contractor.
Originally from Louisiana, Mike now lives in Texas.
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