Editorial: Keep trafficking in mind on Sunday

The Super Bowl is a formalized expression of the triumphs of American society. Our national… The Super Bowl is a formalized expression of the triumphs of American society. Our national unity is patriotically voiced during the “Star-Spangled Banner,” our vibrant diversity is reflected in fans of different colors and creeds who fill the stadium seats, our bountiful prosperity and food supply embossed upon the players’ highly paid, hulking musculature — to any onlooker, the “big game” is an awe-inspiring celebration of Americana, nothing short of a July 4 in February.

But putting the physical and metaphysical fireworks aside, in bringing out all that is the United States, the Super Bowl can also highlight this country’s darker realities. And we’re not talking about beer commercials.

As thousands of Pittsburghers direct their eyes toward Texas on Sunday to watch the Steelers battle the Green Bay Packers, we hope they don’t overlook an issue we normally wouldn’t associate with the Super Bowl — human trafficking.

“The Super Bowl is one of the biggest human trafficking events in the United States,” Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said in an MSNBC article published Tuesday. In the article, the attorney general’s office said that up to 10,000 adults and minors were brought to previous Super Bowls for trafficking purposes, and Deena Graves — executive director of the advocacy group Traffick911 — said that in just the last two Super Bowls, law enforcement agencies and advocacy groups have rescued about 50 girls.

According to the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act, human trafficking is “The recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act where such an act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years.” Underage victims often undergo beatings and psychological manipulation from their pimps and stigmatization from the general public.

The advocates say that many Americans fail to realize the extent of the problem in the United States, or that it even exists, in the first place. Ernie Allen, the president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, said, “The best estimates, the best data, suggests that we have at least have 100,000 American kids a year … victimized through the practice of child prostitution; that number ranges as high as 300,000,” according to a 2007 report by Shared Hope International.

As of press time, a Change.org-sponsored petition to get the Super Bowl Host Committee to publicly rebuke human trafficking garnered 72,000 signatures.

Living amidst the prosperity of Western life — that which allows us to focus on something as nonsubsistence and individually irrelevant as the Super Bowl — we often conveniently delegate to faraway countries the darker shades of human behavior. The thought of children being sold for sex in Pittsburgh, Green Bay or Arlington, Texas, deserves a better word than “unsettling.” Regardless of how difficult mentally handling this issue might be, Steelers fans should at least try to keep it in mind during the Super Bowl revelries that are sure to take place this weekend.