ToT: The Darker Side of the Olympics

We have a new Together on Tuesday blogger! Welcome, Katie, from Fun Home Things!

So, the topic today is the Olympics. My husband LOVES the Olympics, and I enjoy them too. In another life I would have been a gymnast, I know it, and Ben is really hoping for a chance to race Usain Bolt. I thought instead of answering all the ToT topic questions (sorry, guys), I'd take a Just Living perspective about the Olympics.

I could write about Gabby's hair. (Anyone notice that the other girls' hair isn't exactly ready for the red carpet? It's called being an ATHLETE.) I could write about the awkward balance between entertainment that brings people together and the massive amount of money spent or the environmental impact. But again, I'm taking it back to human trafficking. (To read more, click the modern day slavery label in the cloud on the right.)



A bit of background: yes, human trafficking is a trendy issue-du-jour these days, but it's been going on for a long, long time. There are more slaves alive today than there were when slavery was legal. They work in factories, on farms, as domestic help, in strip clubs, in hotels, as prostitutes. These are people who are working under force, fraud, or coercion under circumstances vastly different than they had hoped.

To the concerned public, the most intriguing of these, if you will, has been sex-trafficking of minors. It's shocking and upsetting to think of these sweet young girls (and boys) being forced into the living hell of prostitution. It should be. And big events like the Olympics get people geared up. Conventional wisdom believes major sporting events--like the Olympics, the Super Bowl, the Indy 500, etc--are a sex-trafficking free-for-all. People get in gear and get ready to fight--and that is a good thing.

But the real deal is that law enforcement statistics do not play this out--we don't see the spike in human trafficking arrests at these events that we might expect. Why? Traffickers are smart. They know who the experts are looking for, and they work around it. You might see a spike in raids, and then you would see a spike in prostitution arrests, but not in human trafficking. That's what reportedly happened in London.

This is a double-edged sword to me. When people get geared up about an issue, they want to see results and they want to say they made a difference. If they don't see what they expected, they might get discouraged. They might lose their fire and move on to the next issue-du-jour. But with something as complicated as human trafficking, that would be a loss. Results do not come quickly. Some might not realize how integrated 'prostitution' is with true human trafficking. For example--did you know in the US, the average age of entry into prostitution is 12-14 years old? REALLY. This, my friends, is not OK. It's called child abuse. But these young ladies are brought into this life, and this becomes what they know, and then they turn 18 and become criminals. Who knows how many of those arrests were, either now or at some point, truly human trafficking cases? The statistics say most of them. And that says nothing about the laborers potentially trafficked for street vendors, etc.

I think the best thing that can happen when events like the Olympics get people focused on human trafficking is increase awareness. These guys need to know that the women who are "working" in the sex industry have full, rich stories that likely don't match the ones the men have imagined. Is she really 22, like she says? Are you sure? Where did she come from? What does she want out of life? Is she safe? Has she been drugged? Who is watching her? What kind of trouble will she get in if she doesn't earn enough tonight? Does she even know what it means to be treasured, valued, loved for who she is, and not for what her body can earn?

Beyond the Olympics, this issue persists, and it happens everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Don't believe me? Atlanta. Florida. Chicago. Ohio. I could go on. And yes, Indiana, though it looks different here. I could write more, more, more on this issue . . . but I won't. I do encourage you to learn more about it. (NY Times has a LOT of good writing on this issue. And believe it or not, this Vanity Fair article is pretty solid. Horrifying and definitely upsetting--be warned--but solid.)

I also encourage you to learn about ways to fight this at home. First and foremost: men have to stop buying. (That's another topic altogether.) No demand means no supply, this is basic economics. If everyone knew the real deal, I believe things would be SO different. And I encourage you to pay attention to organizations who fight this issue, whether at home or abroad. (I'm partial to Doma International, doing good work in Ohio.)

Not to be a Debbie Downer about the Olympics, which really are awesome. It sounds like London worked pretty hard to be ready for this issue and be sure it didn't taint the games. Good thing. Now if all of us could work that hard everywhere, all the time. Me and my big ideas. :)

For a likely more light-hearted discussion of the Olympics, check out the links on the right!