In our continuing efforts to expand awareness and educate others about commercial sexual exploitation, we are occasionally compelled to respond to misrepresentations of CSE in the media. On January 27, 2017, just shy of one week away from Super Bowl 51, Sports Illustrated published an article by Jon Wertheim titled The Super Bowl Sex-Trafficking Myth: Is it the crisis it’s cracked up to be?
The article, which considers the effect major sporting events -like the Super Bowl- can have on the underground commercial sex industry, began by describing an incident involving former Denver Bronco’s safety Ryan Murphy. Wertheim’s depiction of this incident, the surrounding circumstances, and the aftermath relies heavily on Murphy’s anecdote without giving a voice to the exploited victim involved. In response, CSE Institute Director Shea Rhodes and Spring 2017 externs Marie Bussey-Garza and Brittany Saxton wrote an open letter to Sports Illustrated managing editor Chris Stone, which you can read in full below.
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18 April 2017
Dear Mr. Stone,
The CSE Institute at Villanova Law was disappointed to read Jon Wertheim’s recent Sports Illustrated article titled, The Super Bowl Sex-Trafficking Myth: Is it the crisis it’s cracked up to be?[1] Unfortunately, this article took a stance on sex trafficking that is erroneous and reflects inadequate research on the issue. As experts in the field of commercial sexual exploitation, we would like to offer some facts to correct the errors made by the author. We respectfully request that you retract this article, which stands to harm victims of commercial sexual exploitation, and share with your readers this important information about the true state of commercial sexual exploitation in America.
The article begins by painting a picture of the incident involving former Denver Broncos’ safety, Ryan Murphy, as a “mistake.” Murphy is depicted not only as a sweet, endearing son—returning to his hometown to surprise his mother and grandmother with tickets to the Super Bowl—but also as a victim who was merely in the wrong place at the wrong time. While we do not question that Murphy is a good son and grandson, the CSE Institute takes issue with the author’s portrayal of Murphy as the “victim” of “a messed up situation,” caught up in an overreaction to a “non-existent problem”—the Super Bowl sex-trafficking “myth.” The author explains, “when [Murphy’s] teammate from high school, Greg Peirson, picked him up at the Santa Clara Marriott, Murphy noticed a woman in the backseat. Murphy says they didn’t speak, deciding that the less he knew, the better.” Soon after, Peirson let the unidentified woman out of the car at a gas station adjoined to a budget motel. Police officers responding to a sexually-suggestive ad on Backpage.com were waiting for the woman there, and she identified the vehicle with Peirson and Murphy as the car that had brought her to the motel.
In their commendable efforts to target demand,[2] police briefly detained Murphy for questioning, a consequence characterized in the article as “collateral damage.” However, it was Murphy’s own refusal to ask questions in this suspicious situation that entangled him in “one of the world’s most shameful crimes”: sex trafficking.[3] Ironically, the very campaigns the author appears to denounce—campaigns that teach citizens to watch for and report signs of sex trafficking—could have saved Murphy from embarrassment and rendered him a hero if he had only paid attention to them. If Murphy had heeded the Super Bowl anti-trafficking ads, he might have questioned the woman’s strange behavior—such as her decision to exit Peirson’s car at a gas station adjoined to a cheap motel—and could have taken appropriate action to assist the victim.[4] Education and awareness campaigns targeted at communities across the U.S. year-round and in Super Bowl cities annually are designed to help the public to spot and report sex trafficking when they see it.
By not only downplaying the significance of these campaigns, but also suggesting such campaigns are unnecessary or misplaced, the article does a huge disservice to the unidentified trafficking victim at the center of this story and to victims of sex trafficking everywhere.
Throughout the article, the author relies heavily on the narrative of Murphy’s isolated, anecdotal experience, yet takes issue with the minimal “empirical” evidence available to link the Super Bowl to an increase in sex trafficking. But unlike an NFL football game—which is played on a field in front of tens of thousands of spectators with numerous cameras filming and plenty of individuals tasked with keeping track of the most minute statistics—commercial sexual exploitation occurs largely out of sight, and trafficking often goes unreported. As stated in the June 2016 U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report, “given the complex nature of human trafficking, it is difficult to amass reliable data to document local, regional, and global prevalence.”[5] So, “[w]hy, with such scant evidence, does the Super Bowl Sex Trafficking narrative persist?” Because the on-the-ground evidence collected by experts shows that not only does it “[i]ntuitively . . . make[] sense that” the Super Bowl “could lead to an influx of sex trafficking”; rather, this event actually does lead to an influx of sex trafficking.[6]
To take a play from Wertheim’s book, allow us to offer an anecdote in support of the previous statement. As victimized as Murphy may have felt for having been sent home from the Super Bowl after being caught in an alleged trafficker’s vehicle, consider how victimized a 21-year-old intellectually-disabled woman felt when she was kidnapped in Ohio and brought to Houston specifically to be sold for sex to men in town for Super Bowl LI.[7] The story of this young woman being forced to perform sex acts in exchange for candy and being repeatedly raped is simply unconscionable. By disparaging the very efforts that recovered this young lady, this article belittles not only her unthinkable experience, but also the experience of every single victim who has been recovered and received services because of Super Bowl anti-trafficking efforts.
In fact, considering that, this year alone, ninety-two victims of commercial sexual exploitation were recovered in connection with the Super Bowl sex-trafficking crackdown,[8] one must wonder why anyone would call the efforts to help these women a “hoax.” But there is a dollars-and-cents reason why The Village Voice was “an early skeptic” of what it calls the “Super Bowl hooker myth,” and while the author relied heavily on this source, he failed to disclose The Village Voice’s monumental conflict of interest. Up until late 2012, The Village Voice owned Backpage.com, an online marketplace used by pimps and traffickers to sale women—both adult and children—for sex. The Village Voice has allegedly made hundreds of millions of dollars from the commercial sexual exploitation of women and children and has every reason to perpetuate the myth that Super Bowl sex trafficking is a myth.
Murphy’s story caught the attention of news sources nationwide, not because his situation was rare—unfortunately, this situation is all too common—but because police discovered a public figure in the middle of an illegal sex trafficking transaction. Imagine how different this story would have been if, rather than silently acquiescing in a strange situation, Murphy had been vigilant, had recognized the signs of human trafficking, and had reported this suspected trafficking to the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 888-373-7888.[9] Rather than criticizing community and law enforcement efforts to end commercial sexual exploitation, Sports Illustrated should encourage its millions of readers to learn from Murphy’s experience. Imagine how many more victims could be recovered if the writers of Sports Illustrated used their enormous voices to advocate for these victims instead of questioning their plight.
We, at the CSE Institute, stand ready to engage in an open dialogue with Sports Illustrated and would be happy to provide Wertheim and other interested SI employees with education on commercial sexual exploitation. Whether or not our invitation is accepted, we sincerely hope that you will right the harm that has been done with this misinformed article, and we encourage SI to join us in advocating to end commercial sex trafficking in America and across the globe.
Sincerely,
The CSE Institute
Shea M. Rhodes, Esq., Director
Marie Bussey-Garza, J.D. Candidate 2017
Brittany Saxton, J.D. Candidate 2018
All views expressed herein are personal to the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law or of Villanova University.
[1] Jon Wertheim, The Super Bowl Sex-Trafficking Myth: Is It the Crisis It’s Cracked up to Be?, Sports Illustrated (Jan. 27, 2017), http://www.si.com/nfl/2017/01/27/super-bowl-prostitution-sex-trafficking-ryan-murphy-broncos.
[2] In this situation, not only were the police doing their job, and doing it effectively, they were targeting demand—buyers of sex. Rather than being criticized for detaining a professional football player who was present during the facilitation of illegal activity, the police should be commended for using an effective method to target the widespread issue of sex trafficking. See Why Focusing on Demand for Commercial Sex is an Effective Means to Deter Commercial Sexual Exploitation, The Villanova Law Institute to Adddress Commercial Sexual Exploitation, http://cseinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Why-Focusing-on-Demand-for-Commercial-Sex-is-an-Effective-Means-to-Deter-Commercial-Sexual-Exploitation.pdf.
[3] Human Trafficking: People for Sale, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, https://www.unodc.org/toc/en/crimes/human-trafficking.html (last visited Feb. 19, 2017).
[4] Ironically, the article notes that Murphy called upon his upbringing in Oakland to explain why he thought he was “about to get robbed” when “two sedans ominously pulled up.” Yet, despite Murphy’s upbringing in a city with a longstanding sex-trafficking epidemic, seeing the trafficking victim in the car’s backseat apparently raised no red flags. See Tammerlin Drummond, Spotlight: Oakland’s Child Sex Trafficking Epidemic, East Bay Times (Jan 10, 2017, 12:48 PM), http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/01/10/spotlight-oaklands-child-sex-trafficking-epidemic.
[5] U.S. Dep’t of State, Trafficking in Persons Report 10 (2016), https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/258876.pdf.
[6] See The FBI Announces New, Victim-Centered Approach to Combat Sex Trafficking Surrounding Super Bowl 50, The Villanova Law Institute to Address Commercial Sexual Exploitation (Jan. 20, 2016), https://cseinstitute.org/fbi-announces-new-victim-centered-approach-combat-sex-trafficking-surrounding-super-bowl-50 (“The evidence is unclear as to whether additional victims are trafficked to serve the market of demand created by the Super Bowl, but individuals already trafficked may be moved to the game’s location by traffickers seeking to profit from the city’s influx of people.”); see also Sex Trafficking Victim Says She Was in Houston for Super Bowl, ABC News (Jan. 25, 2017), http://abc7chicago.com/news/sex-trafficking-victim-says-she-was-in-houston-for-super-bowl/1720148.
[7] See Sex Trafficking Victim Says She Was in Houston for Super Bowl, supra note 6.
[8] See Sebastien Malo, U.S. Police Arrest Record 750 Suspects in Super Bowl Sex-Trafficking Stings, Reuters (Feb. 9, 2017, 2:14 PM), http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trafficking-super-bowl-idUSKBN15O2MU.
[9] Human Trafficking: Recognize the Signs, Polaris, https://polarisproject.org/recognize-signs (last visited Feb. 19, 2017).
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All views expressed herein are personal to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law or of Villanova University.