(AFP) - Child prostitution networks are exploiting sporting events like next weekend's Super Bowl, US lawmakers and rights groups warned Monday as they addressed ways to mitigate sex trafficking that abuses countless children each year.
"In less than a week, New Jersey will be hosting the Super Bowl, and along with welcoming enthusiastic fans, the state also is preparing for a likely influx of both domestic and international traffickers," congressman Christopher Smith told a House of Representatives hearing.
"We know from the past, any sports venue -- especially the Super Bowl -- acts as a sex trafficking magnet."
Smith, a longtime human rights defender, cited figures from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children which reported that more than 10,000 women and girls were trafficked to Miami for the 2010 Super Bowl.
The annual American football championship game is among the largest sporting events in the United States. On Sunday across the river from New York City, some 82,500 people will pack into MetLife stadium, with thousands more heading to the metropolis for related parties and events.
The US government and anti-trafficking groups were using the Super Bowl to raise awareness in the public as well as for stakeholders in the tourism sector including airlines, bus and rail companies, and hotel chains.
A new government-driven program, Blue Lightning, has begun training employees of several companies, including Delta Airlines, in how to identify and protect trafficking victims.
"Until someone brings it to their attention, it is hiding in plain sight," congresswoman Ann Wagner told the hearing.
Smith said flight attendants in particular "are in the unique position to observe a potential trafficking in progress and then call a trafficking hotline or inform the pilot to radio ahead so that the proper authorities can intervene."
Such action by an alert flight attendant, Nancy Rivard, led to the break-up of a criminal ring that had trafficked 80 children to the United States. Rivard is now president of the Airlines Ambassadors International.
Carol Smolenski, who heads the non-profit End Child Prostitution and Trafficking-USA, testified that about 100,000 children are trafficked into the US sex trade every year.
The problem is also acute elsewhere particularly at major global sporting events, and the underground nature of the industry makes it difficult to estimate how many children are exploited.
But Smolenski acknowledged that fears of vast numbers of women and children being trafficked to the World Cup in South Africa and the London Olympics were overblown.
She said Brazil, which hosts the World Cup this year and the Olympics in 2016 and must be on heightened alert for sexual exploitation, is taking appropriate steps to beef up security to prevent trafficking and to train staff in the hospitality and tourism industries.
Copyright © 2014 AFP. All rights reserved
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hAeBKrbO47mp37IwN16ZVH70bZCQ?docId=9e463381-fd79-4afb-88a6-da4d238012ec&hl=en
