Super Bowl Sunday: It's Not All About Beating Your Wife

Hopefully you've already been disabused of the false notion that domestic violence peaks on Super Bowl Sunday. This spectacular event is about all the great things that America has to offer: chicken wings, beer, 17 hour pre-game show, more beer, pizza, more beer, patriotic ritual and glorification of military, more beer, potato chips, more beer, kick off, more beer, (mostly not very) funny commercials, more beer, deep-fried Oreos, more beer, lame half-time show, more beer, score getting lopsided by the middle of the 3rd quarter, more beer, nachos, more beer, long visit to the bathroom, more beer, game's outcome decided by beginning of 4th quarter, more beer, tequila shots, more beer, ranch dressing flavored pretzels, more beer, tequila's gone so open another bottle of whatever you've got, more beer, game over, more beer, more booze, and finish it all off with sex with a prostitute in her early teens. If you harbor any doubt that God loves America best, then why did He bestow upon us and no one else this greatest of all events?

ARLINGTON, Texas —
As thousands of football fans descend on Texas for Sunday's Super Bowl, law enforcement agencies are keeping watch for a different kind of out-of-town visitor: pimps selling children for sex.

[...]

Pimps hawking young girls see the thousands of men who travel to the Super Bowl each year as a gold mine of potential clients. Police in and around host cities have tried for years to crack down on prostitution by conducting stings or increasing patrols during Super Bowl week. Only in recent years have underage girls come to light in increasing numbers.

"This is a very large issue. We want people to know what human trafficking looks like," said Thomas Lawrence, an assistant Dallas police chief. Last year's Super Bowl in Miami drew as many as 10,000 prostitutes, including children and human trafficking victims, police said.

[...]

Advocacy groups and the North Texas Trafficking Task Force are focused on underage victims coming to Dallas ahead of Sunday's game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers. They say pimps who engage in human trafficking place ads for escorts with out-of-town contact numbers and rent houses or buses for parties featuring underage girls.

Advocates say many Americans do not realize child sex trafficking happens in the United States, not just overseas. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children estimates that at least 100,000 children in the U.S. are victims of prostitution each year.

[Seattle Times]