Super Bowl brings flow of human traffic to North Texas United Methodists
Based on figures from previous Super Bowls, many of those flocking to North Texas are not coming to watch the game. Rather they are sex peddlers who will come to sell women and young girls. It is anticipated that some 15,000 women and girls will be brought to the area as prostitutes by their pimps for the 2011 Super Bowl. This is known as human trafficking, which is the illegal trade in human beings for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation or forced labor. It is a modern-day form of slavery. There are two national groups poised to act during the Super Bowl.
Love146.org reaches out to girls who may become victims of the human traffic and helps them through the “It’s not my fault” campaign.
Traffick911.org reaches out to men, who may be buyers in the human traffic with the “I Am Not Buying It” campaign. Please visit both sites for more information.
Katie Perigo, executive director of Dallas-based New Friends New Life (NFNL), a rehabilitation program for women leaving prostitution, is pleased with the awareness that the Super Bowl has provided this tragic subject.
“The Super Bowl is helping us,” she said. “I see God pushing the issue of human traffic sex to the forefront and I am so excited. The stories we hear from women and girls is sadly the same. They are abused at home, they run away from home and unknowingly run into the arms of a pimp. They go from being human beings to property overnight. They are bought and sold. I have met some who have been branded on their necks by their pimps.
“NFNL has been operating in the Dallas area for 13 years, and we offer hope, counseling, support and love. Judgment and condemnation do not work,” she said. “We truly engage the issue of ending the sexual exploitation of women and girls.”
Among the churches involved are Lovers Lane UMC and Highland Park UMC. For more information on New Friends New Lives, please call 214 965-0935 or visit www.newfriendsnewlife.org.
Ms. Perigo urges people to: become aware of the staggering numbers of young women affected by human trafficking in the United States; care about the lives being destroyed; pray that society not glamorize the pimp lifestyle; and get engaged in an ongoing program.
