Increased demand for child prostitution: the Super Bowl...

[hlthe2b]

Police watch for sex trafficking ahead of big game

Cities that host the big game often attract a bustling sex trade. This year, Texas authorities and advocacy groups are stepping up their anti-prostitution efforts, especially where young girls are concerned.

--snip--
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.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/7407144.html

Wealthy "boys" just being "boys"-- right? :mad:

[liberal N proud]

1. Where is Limbaugh going to be this weekend?

[RKP5637]

5. LOL, why Texas, of course! n/t

[wilt the stilt]

8. boy's not girls is

limabugh's real interest.

[Horse with no Name]

10. Probably the Maranas Islands

that's where he picks up his little boys.

[musette_sf]

52. a last hurrah for old times sake

with Tom DeLay, before he heads for the slammer. A few drinks and a toast to Abramoff.

[pampango]

2. Also, the worst day for domestic violence every year. n/t

[Hassin Bin Sober]

6. That makes sense.

I have an ER Doc buddy who says the ER fills up with family brawl injuries latter in the day on Christmas, Thanksgiving etc. After all the booze kicks in. I'll have to ask about Super Bowl.

[lazarus]

7. not true

that's a myth, pure and simple.

http://www.snopes.com/crime/statistics/superbowl.asp

[pampango]

12. Thanks. I frequently heard that from the staff at the Domestic Violence Shelter where

my son and I used to volunteer.

[lazarus]

15. these myths crop up

This one is the same as the old "full moon = craziness" myth. People remember the nights of the full moon when it really is crazy, and forget all the nights of the full moon when it isn't crazy.

:hi:

[Renew Deal]

36. That was debunked ages ago.

http://www.snopes.com/crime/statistics/superbowl.asp

[Kievan Rus]

47. That's an urban legend -- there's not one shred of truth to it

http://www.snopes.com/crime/statistics/superbowl.asp

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2011-02-03-sommers04_st_N.htm

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2011/02/04/dispellingmyth-domestic-violence-super-bowl

[RKP5637]

3. No, that would never happen in god fearing Texas. n/t

[seabeyond]

11. what does texas have to do with large groups of men at sporting events buying little girls

to fuck and more?

[RKP5637]

13. Location. n/t

[seabeyond]

18. again, regardless of where super bowl is, men fucking children is an issue. what does the state

have to do with shit.

[RKP5637]

25. All states do! n/t

[RKP5637]

29. It was a bad comment! n/t

[seabeyond]

33. lol lol

:hug:

that is all i was saying.

[RKP5637]

35. Thanks! It was dumb of me!

:hi:

[LiberalLoner]

17. Nothing, really, I think it's common behavior all over America and for

that matter, all over the world. It's been a problem in society forever just about.

That's a big part of the reason I refused to have children. I would prefer to see the human race die off completely.

[seabeyond]

20. the end of your post

got me... lol. i guess that is one way to address the issue.

i hear ya.

but it isnt starting with me.

[LiberalLoner]

22. It's okay. I understand. Not everyone feels as I do. n/t

[cottonseed]

21. Are there any men at sporting events that choose not to rape little girls?

Or do you think it's pretty much the case that they all do?

[LiberalLoner]

23. I won't even get into this. No, all men are saints, these things NEVER happen, it's all lies

made up by hateful women, etc. etc. etc.

[cottonseed]

28. Never said it NEVER happens and I don't think they're all lies.

I just didn't envision the parking lot of a football game as a gathering place for large roving bands of male rapists.

[LiberalLoner]

31. No....I think what happens is some of these guys get worked up, want to

celebrate big-time, maybe away from the wife, and some of them go looking for some tail. Maybe they start out in the bars, don't get lucky, then go driving and looking for some comfort. And the comfort they find is often a 13 or 14 year old. And maybe they really like that, and maybe they weren't looking for that especially but are drunk and want comfort and just don't really care. Or maybe the makeup and everything...they think the girl is 18. I don't know.

But there are some sick men out there, I am telling you, who brag about raping their own daughters or step-daughters or whatever.

If I could press a magic button and chop the penises off all those men in one fell swoop, I swear I would do it.

[seabeyond]

24. no where do i suggest ALL men fuck children. nt

[cottonseed]

26. Thanks for the clarification.

It's just that when I see you refer to "large groups of men" at sporting events I sort of envision roving gangs of men looking to rape just about any women of any age that walks by. I just didn't know if that's how you saw it.

[LiberalLoner]

27. There are some sick men out there. Men who look like family men, men who

look like upstanding citizens and even heroes. That's all I'm going to say. It's not a safe world for women and children, it really is not. Maybe it's not a safe world for men, either, but for sure it isn't for women and children. I hate this world.

[cottonseed]

30. I'm sorry to hear that. I'll stop commenting now.

[seabeyond]

32. wow. really?

any large groups of males at sporting events tend towards escalation of this behavior. nowhere would one assume that is referencing all the men are fucking children. i cant believe that you really got that out of my post, that i thought all the men watching superbowl where going to go out and fuck children. i suppose the ones that go with their wives wont allow those men to go out and fuck children....

[LiberalLoner]

34. I think there does tend to be "mob behavior" - I have read about that..

not necessarily in regards to this crime, but just mob behavior in general, people acting differently in crowds, becoming more violent and aggressive than they would be alone, etc.

[seabeyond]

37. well, hey, party time.... pay for some. that is all

have a group of males on the street and listen to vulgar and crude comments made to women passing by. have one of those men by himself.... and nothing. they have to show off to each other, being all that. when you are lookin to buy something, you have dehumanized. at the point of dehumanizing.... age isnt significant. it is a thing to be used. and available

not long ago there was a big sweep of child prostitution in that area. the kids are out there. the pimps and child sex slaves has escalated. it is as you say, a world problem.

[LiberalLoner]

38. Yes, I've had to endure those comments myself a few times. Don't know

why they do that. Maybe you are right, maybe it's showing off for one another. And I'm sure not all men engage in this behavior, only the immature ones.

[seabeyond]

39. it is absolutely for their buddy

and really has nothing to do with the woman/girl. that is why it is important that the buddies say not cool. cause it is all for them. doesnt matter what women say. as i have taught my boys....

[Rage for Order]

45. Do you have any evidence to back up your claims?

I mean, beyond the article in the OP. As evidence of this vast network of child sex trafficking that follows the Super Bowl the article in the OP gives us:

Before the big game in 2008, Phoenix police broke up a child prostitution ring involving several teenagers. The following year in Tampa, two men were arrested for advertising the services of a 14-year-old as a "Super Bowl special." They were sentenced to federal prison.

Last year, a Hawaii man was sentenced to more than 20 years in federal prison for taking a teenager with him to Miami and forcing her to work as a prostitute.

Oh, they also give us the testimony of a former hooker:

Tekla Roberts, who was a prostitute for nearly 10 years after starting as a teenager, said she raked in the most cash during major golf tournaments, NASCAR races and some pro playoff games in North Texas. She said she met "johns" after advertising her services in publications and online and hanging out in hotels near the venues.

During those sporting events, she remembers seeing an influx of underage girls from out of town being sold for sex by their pimps.




This doesn't exactly sound like an epidemic of child prostitution. Please have a read of the following article for some much-needed perspective on this issue:

http://www.dallasobserver.com/2011-01-27/news/the-super-bowl-prostitute-myth-100-000-hookers-won-t-be-showing-up-in-dallas/

The alarm bells reached peak decibel in November, when Dallas Police Sergeant Louis Felini told the The Dallas Morning News that between 50,000 and 100,000 prostitutes could descend on the metroplex for the Super Bowl. The call to outrage had sounded.

His estimate was astonishing. At the higher figure, it meant that every man, woman and child holding a ticket would have their own personal hooker, from the vice presidential wing of FedEx to Little Timmy from Green Bay.

And if you believed a study commissioned by the Dallas Women's Foundation, the hordes would include 38,000 underage prostitutes. Doe-eyed beauties from the Heartland would be peddled like Jell-O shots at the Delta Phi soiree.

The routine is the same in every Super Bowl city. 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. And they must be stopped.

"This is urban legend that is pure pulp fiction," the NFL's McCarthy says. "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.

[LiberalLoner]

46. I'm confused. Are you trying to say that there isn't a problem with

child sex trafficking in the U.S.? Or are you just saying it is not particularly tied to sports events?

[Rage for Order]

48. Mostly the latter...

Although the former appears to be vastly overstated as well. Granted, there is no level of child sex trafficking which can be deemed to be acceptable. However, did you ever stop to think where the estimates of the number of child prostitutes come from?

And if you believed a study commissioned by the Dallas Women's Foundation, the hordes would include 38,000 underage prostitutes. Doe-eyed beauties from the Heartland would be peddled like Jell-O shots at the Delta Phi soiree.

The study by the Dallas Women's Foundation shows how the numbers are baked. It hired a company to gauge the percentage of juvenile hookers in Dallas. Its scientific method: Look at online escort ads and guess the ages of the women pictured!

Never mind that escort services often yank said photos from the Internet to put their most sultry visual forward. And never mind that such methodology wouldn't pass muster at Mert's Discount Community College & Small Engine Repair.

The company still decreed that 38 percent of Dallas hookers were underage!

[LiberalLoner]

55. I don't really know how many there are...I have watched police shows

where they show sting operations and they find underage prostitutes. Like you said, even if there aren't that many who are under 18, one is too many.

[LiberalLoner]

56. I always wonder about the motivations behind a person who tries to

say that underage prostitutes don't exist...or sex trafficking doesn't exist...or children don't get raped, or women don't get raped, etc...

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[lpbk2713]

9. ATTN: Local Law Enforcement.

Let me make your job easier for you when it comes time to look for suspects ...


{Click}

[glowing]

14. Is there any wonder some reps in congress don't think rape is real?

Sickos and we let these people tell us what to do and how we should live?

[CoffeeCat]

16. As our society continues to devolve...

...and people become more greedy, selfish and callous--child abuse will continue to be
at epidemic levels.

The fact that it is wealthy men who engage in this is also very troubling. There is a sense
of entitlement and narcissism in the upper echelons today--that is very pathological. Some
of them think that they are entitled to whoever or whatever they want. And many of them
get off on exploiting vulnerable women and children.

This is really sick. It sickens me.

What have we become as a species?

[LiberalLoner]

19. I think fascism tends to up the levels of exploitation of women and children, and also

raise the abuse levels.

It sickens me too. Enough so that I decided very early on never to have children. I will be honest in saying, I hope the human race dies off. I really do. I hate humanity enough to truly wish for that.

You want to get really sickened, do a search for "boycott Thailand" and read why boycotts of Thailand are suggested.

[RKP5637]

40. Your comment that fascism tends to up the levels of

exploitation of women and children, and also raise the abuse levels, makes sense to me. I would add men to that list too as sometimes abused. Fascism IMO is really all about exploitation and it seems to me many things like sex and abuse would go along with that exploitation.

IMO a lot of human kindness has gone away over my decades of life. I think if humans remain on the current course humans will be an extinct species. To prevent this something has got to happen big time and I just don't see the trends for that happening, maybe others do, but I don't because the net entropy is ever increasing.

[LiberalLoner]

41. When I came back to the States from living in Egypt for a year...I was so depressed.

I did not want to come back here. I felt so much more human connection and food for the soul in Egypt. People looked one another in the eyes there and even smiled sometimes.

I saw so much more happiness there, even in the midst of such terrible poverty.

There is something very wrong with our culture. Something is wrong here that is soul-killing. I wish I could escape to some other country, some other world, just anything. I stay to myself. I just withdraw. I wish I were still in Egypt - even with everything going on there now.

[RKP5637]

42. I think what I've seen here is growing unbridled capitalism that attracts and rewards

sociopaths and sociopathic like behavior. Not in all cases, but IMO many. Combined with that is the worshiping of money and obsessively greedy behavior. It's one of the pitfalls of a capitalistic economy IMO. I think capitalism can work just fine, but it requires strong regulation, and our checks/balances/regulations have been hollowed out over the past decades.

Anyway, that's my short analysis of what's happened. Now, we have runaway wealth in a few percent of our society and others climbing all over each other to give their lives some semblance of meaning. On top of that, we have a layer of strange religious behavior and RW antics. Plus, many now worshiping ignorance.

When you add it all up IMO it leads to a pretty hollowed out place. Certainly not the worse, but we could be doing much better.

[CoffeeCat]

43. Oh believe me, I know...

I'm in my own private hell. I was abused as a child in horrible ways. I've probably
read more than 100 books on child abuse, pedophiles, sociopaths/psychopaths, and healing from
child abuse--in an attempt to understand my own situation and heal.

I know way more than I want to know. The reality of childhood abuse and childhood exploitation
is a dark, seedy topic. Yet, it is so common, at epidemic levels.

It is comforting to hear someone else share their outrage. I remember ten years ago, asking
my therapist why these horrible things happen to children, and she said, "We're still
evolving as a species and things are better."

I thought she was correct at the time. I could see how there is more awareness of child
abuse and people are trying to educate children. We are more AWARE, however, I don't
see any serious effort to acknowledge or end the epidemic. There are good people working
in these fields (heroes really), but their programs are cut or they are underpaid and
overworked. We also fail to acknowledge and deal with the reality that most children
who are sexually abused, are victimized by a relative--usually a father or stepfather.

I don't have to tell you these things...I'm sure you understand. But others may not.

Like you, I agree that Fascism increases all kinds of abuse, and makes women and children
more vulnerable to exploitation. When our leaders are corrupt and pathological, people
heed those cues. Even if they are unspoken. People get that our society is sick. So,
the sickos take that as a dog whistle that they can also abuse without accountability.

I am losing hope for the human race, as you are. It's not a very comfortable feeling. :hug:

[LiberalLoner]

44. Thank you for this. I know you understand where I am coming from and

there is real comfort in just being understood.

I'm sorry for what you went through, and for what I went through.

You know, there was this scene in Battlestar Galactica. It was where the blonde robot-girl (Xylon?)was being kept in a room and abused horribly sexually and physically and emotionally.

I was able to handle all the scenes where she was screaming while being raped and kicked and spit on. I was okay throughout that.

I lost it when the guy came in and started being nice to her because he loved her, or loved another model of her. He was kind to her and as soon as she was able to collect herself and talk, she said "kill me." "Please, I want to die."

I burst out crying. I mean I had a real episode, ended up curled up on the floor not able to breathe because I was sobbing so hard and I was biting my own arm (leaving marks, too) trying to calm myself down.

My husband knew my history so he "got it." He just held me and tried to calm me down some. Took awhile but I got calmed down.

That scene still stays with me. It hit way too damn close to home. You know what I mean?

[CoffeeCat]

49. I do know what you mean...

healing from abuse and feeling all of that pain--is truly the worst
kind of hell that I have ever experienced.

Kudos to you for allowing yourself to go to that scary place and to feel
those feelings. It hurts so much. The pain is indescribable to people
who haven't experienced it. It's as if all of the feelings from the
past come up--as well as all of the fear, helplessness and horror
that you felt as a child. Plus, as children--we learned to stuff down
our emotions, and to numb out. We learned that feeling was hell, so
we grow up being unable to handle emotions.

So really--it's amazing that you were able to allow yourself to "go there".

And I can understand why you could handle the abuse, but the feelings
of the victim got to you. She described how you felt. That's very hard
to hear and it sounds like Battlestar Galactic really triggered you. Big
hugs to you. It's so hard when that happens...just excruciating.

I'm glad that you have a supportive husband. Your strength and his support
are probably why you were able to feel those painful feelings. I have a supportive
husband too, and I know he has been helpful in my healing. So many people have no
support system, or even the basic necessities. They can't afford to fall apart.

And hey, I understand your attitude toward humanity. I feel the same, though I do
understand that my abusers are a special breed of inhuman scum, and that not everyone
is the same. Although, it is scary how narcissistic and abusive our society is becoming.
It would be odd, if we had endured what we did--and grew up to be Pollyanna princesses
with rose-colored glasses, right? That would probably mean we were in severe denial!
It's normal to feel down on humanity after enduring so much.

I wish you the BEST. I'm so glad you spoke up about all of this. I think far too many
of us hide in shame. We feel that no one will understand. We should not be hiding.
WE did nothing WRONG. And there are plenty of others who understand. I do. :hug:

[LiberalLoner]

54. Thank you. I wish you the best, too :) n/t

[Odin2005]

51. OMG, I never knew that happened to you!

:hug:

But I must disagree that the occurrence of child abuse is increasing. I think it has dropped substantially over the last 100 years, but an increasing % of the abuse cases have become known to authorities.

[Odin2005]

50. People that pimp kids make me wish there were a Hell!

:grr:

[cherokeeprogressive]

53. I bet the same could be said for political conventions. n/t

:shrug: