Super Bowl LIV: Miami Braces For Surge In Human Trafficking Cases

MIAMI, FL — With Super Bowl LIV less than a year away, Miami is bracing for a surge in the number of human trafficking cases.

"Obviously, with an event as large as the Super Bowl, we know unfortunately one of the not so great things, is that it is a magnet for human trafficking," Miami Mayor Francis Suarez shared in an interview with Patch. "We know that nationally, so we have to ramp up our efforts."

Dozens of trafficking experts, law enforcement officials, federal and local prosecutors as well as representatives of support groups gathered in Miami Thursday for the 8th Annual Human Trafficking Forum sponsored by the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office and Saint Thomas University School of Law.

Speakers included the chairman of the Super Bowl LIV Host Committee, a survivor of human trafficking who now helps others and a former New York City police official, who helped change the way America's largest police force conducts interviews with victims of sexual assault and trafficking.

Miami becomes the only city to host the Super Bowl a record 11 times times but it's been nearly a decade since it last hosted the big game in 2010 — two years before the first trafficking forum was held here — and before Miami area law enforcement agencies began to understand the complexity of human trafficking issues around such large events.

"When the Super Bowl comes here we know that all eyes are going to be upon us," Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle told Patch. "We know that we have to stay very diligent."

Prior to holding the first forum, Fernandez Rundle recalled that misconceptions abounded with respect to human trafficking, even within her own office.

"In the past seven years all of our eyes have been opened," she told forum attendees. "We've since learned that it's not some far away place. It's kids, girls, boys in our own backyard. They're in our schools. They're in our neighborhoods. They're in our parks."

One startling fact that law enforcement officials have learned since the last time the Super Bowl was played here is that the average sex trafficking victim is forced to have sex up to 20 times a day, every day of the week, in what has become a $32 billion industry across the United States.

Fernandez Rundle said her office has already been planning how to manage the scourge ahead of the influx of Super Bowl crowds. She is regularly in touch with her federal counterpart, U.S. Attorney Ariana Fajardo Orshan, who brought a team of her prosecutors to Thursday's event.

"We have big events coming up with the Super Bowl this year," acknowledged Fajardo Orshan at the forum. "We are going to work with each one of you to make sure that men, women, young adults are safe in our community. We need to push forward."

There is also a greater emphasis on helping to educate first responders, law enforcement personnel, school workers and medical professionals on how to spot possible victims and stronger laws on the books to prosecute those who prey on them.

"We've been meeting. We've been talking to New York," Fernandez Rundle said of the Super Bowl initiatives in an interview with Patch. "Any major event in a destination city like Miami or Las Vegas really attracts the bad elements and the bad elements unfortunately bring victims with them. So we can expect the criminality to increase. We can expect the victimization of the trafficking to increase. We want to be ready for when they come."

In contrast to the Hollywood portrayal of trafficking, victims are not generally kidnapped and brought to the United States in large container ships. The reality is that they are recruited on American soil as early as age 12 and 13. They are enslaved to a life of prostitution, working in unscrupulous massage parlors, strip clubs and various forms of adult entertainment.

"Contrary to prior belief, traffickers not only seek out victims in our foster care system, they actually recruit them," Fernandez Rundle said. "They recruit them in our schools and they recruit them in our neighborhoods. Now, they are also recruiting in our homes thanks to the Internet and social media."

The issue is particularly relevant in Florida, which has the third highest number of human trafficking victims anywhere in the United states. That's actually an improvement from when the state had the second highest number of cases.

Rodney Barreto, who chars Miami's Super Bowl host committee, assured forum attendees that officials are aware of the human trafficking issues and plans to share the information with his counterparts working on Super Bowl LV in Tampa ahead of the 2021 game.

"We do have sex trafficking that occurs," acknowledged Barreto, who is three-time host committee chair. "We recognize that it is a problem and now we are actively standing up and giving a bigger voice to the problem."

Most human trafficking and sexual assault cases go unreported, according to Retired Deputy Chief Michael J. Osgood of the New York Police Department. Addressing the forum, he said he believes such offenses are two of the least reported crimes, based on his 35 years of experience in some 100,000 criminal cases that he has either actively investigated or overseen.

Moreover, he said victims of such crimes are often so traumatized that their accounts may seem fragmented, out of sequence and containing gaps that raise doubt among even experienced investigators.

"They are unable to provide details in the order in which they happened," Osgood said. He trained his investigators to pose questions in different ways that are less threatening.

Rather than asking what the assailant was wearing. He trained his investigators to ask more open-ended questions like whether the victim can recall something about their attacker. If the victim doesn't come forward immediately following an incident, investigators are trained to ask victims to share what's been going on in their lives since the attack.

"Most people have a very simple view of what the victim should be able to tell them," he said of investigators. But many victims walk away if they feel they are being challenged.

"They think if they don’t remember something, that you think they are lying," he said.

Osgood shared one case where an elderly sexual assault victim could recall only certain aspects of the man who attacked her, but not others. She failed to remember that her assailant had a prominent New York Yankees tattoo on his face, leading investigators to question whether the suspect was the attacker at all.

"You are focusing on the what are the details central to your survival," he said of the mindset of victims. "The Yankee tattoo was not central to her survival."

Survivor Brook Bello, who has been honored by President Obama for her work with human trafficking victims and offenders, created the RJEDE program that has been used in Miami-Dade, Sarasota and Manatee counties.

The program stands for Restorative Justice End Demand Education and is aimed at changing the behaviors of violators around cases of sexual violence, prostitution and human trafficking.

As a young girl, Bello was the victim of sexual abuse by a close relative. She was later targeted by a trafficker after running away from home, a common experience among victims. About a third of victims report being recruited within the first 48 hours of running away from their homes.

"You cannot be a survivor unless you know that you are a victim," said Bello, who worked as an actress after surviving her ordeal, but still suffered residual effects, including an addiction to cocaine.

She found an unlikely ally in actor John Voight, who happened to be a regular at a restaurant where she was working as a waitress. One day Voight took her to meet Whoopi Goldberg and the experience helped her along her journey to move forward with her life.

Mayor Suarez said that his city has been working collaboratively with the State Attorney's Office to combat human trafficking for a number of years already. The city has helped place retired police officers in the State Attorney's Office to investigate complaints concerning human trafficking.

"We're doing everything that we can potentially do, to provide additional resources to the State Attorney's Office to fund some additional positions, to give her the resources that she needs to make sure that we combat this, which is something that unfortunately preys on the most vulnerable in our society," the mayor added.