Sex workers often harmed by Super Bowl sex trafficking narrative, advocates say
Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts faces cameras on the field inside the Caesars Superdome during the Super Bowl Opening Night on Feb. 3, 2025, in New Orleans. (Michael DeMocker/Getty Images)
NEW ORLEANS – As tourists flooded the streets of New Orleans throughout the week leading up to Super Bowl LIX, local law enforcement prepared for another large event — combatting and raising awareness around the supposed increase in sex trafficking.
Media outlets, anti-trafficking groups, law enforcement and other officials often talk about the supposed increased risk of trafficking before the Super Bowl, and the narrative was no different before this year’s game.
In August, officials from the Department of Homeland Security held a three-day human trafficking training workshop with local and state police, service and hospitality workers and more to prepare for this year’s Super Bowl.
And last month, the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s office held a two-day training to teach law enforcement officers, prosecutors and anti-trafficking advocates about the best and latest ways to fight trafficking.
But a number of academic studies have raised questions about the narrative of Super Bowls as major draws for sex traffickers. While there may be an increase in sex work activity around major events like the Super Bowl, the studies found little evidence of an increase in trafficking — where people are coerced into participating in sex acts for money — as opposed to consensual sex work. Law enforcement often conflate the two, said Alex Andrews, co-founder of the group Sex Worker Outreach Project (SWOP) Behind Bars.
“What they end up doing is they come in and they end up arresting a lot of local adult, consensual workers who are living very close to the street, or in some cases on the street itself,” Andrews said.
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The New Orleans Police Department, which has in recent years pivoted away from targeting sex workers and their clients for arrest, did not immediately answer questions about prostitution arrests during Super Bowl week. As of Friday (Feb. 14), however, a city crime database shows no prostitution arrests so far this year.
SWOP Behind Bars has been doing bailout outreach — bailing out adult, consensual sex workers who’ve been arrested for prostitution — at every Super Bowl since 2019. They also do community outreach and try to deepen relationships with local groups and public officials to influence policy around sex work.
The group was in New Orleans in the week leading up to the Super Bowl, meeting with people at places like bars, strip clubs, gay clubs and massage parlors.
“If you can get people to a place where they are willing to engage with you about what the facts are around sexual labor exploitation and what that actually looks like … then you have the opportunity to move the conversation towards solutions for the root problems, as opposed to the criminal narrative, which is generally just that sex work is the problem,” SWOP Behind Bars Executive Director Blair Hopkins said.
Operation Restoration, a New Orleans organization that helps women who have found themselves entangled in the criminal justice system, was one of the other organizations that helped with the sex worker bailout. They helped track prostitution arrests during the time and offered transportation, phone access and other resources for sex workers if they were arrested. (SWOP Behind Bars members said they were happy to report that zero calls were made to their hotline this year and no arrests made during the days they were out.)
In a Jan. 8 Zoom call hosted by the National Coalition for the Prevention of Human Sex Trafficking, a police detective from Skull Games, a group that tracks sexual predators, presented data showing that during recent Super Bowls held over the past years in Miami, Tampa, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas, most of the arrestees in trafficking stings have been women involved in commercial sex work, as opposed to actual traffickers.
Allie Beth Rose, a New Orleans-based researcher on sex work, said that arresting sex workers under the banner of sex trafficking unnecessarily traumatizes those who are arrested and makes opportunities such as getting future employment or housing more difficult in the future.
Rose said that Black and transgender sex workers are subject to heightened discrimination and harassment. If they work on the street, they’re at even greater risk because they are more visible to law enforcement than sex workers in hotels or strip clubs.
Maxine Doogan, an organizer with the sex worker advocacy group Stop the Raids, said that a central issue in the conversation is the criminalization of prostitution. She said it can take away from actual public safety because resources are being used against consensual, adult sex workers that could be used elsewhere.
“[Criminalization] diverts important public resources away from actual public safety, and the public is less safe,” Doogan said.
She said anti-prostitution laws should be repealed.
Ashley Crawford, policy and legal associate for Operation Restoration, said several steps can be taken to decriminalize sex work. One is to stop arresting people who sell sex, another is banning law enforcement from having sexual contact with sex workers and offering immunity to sex workers who report violence.
“They are engaging in consensual, erotic labor and we can stop arresting them,” Crawford said.
Rose said sex workers could be potential allies in preventing or ending sex trafficking if they knew that they would not be criminalized for their work.
“We don’t have sex worker amnesty laws in Louisiana,” Rose said. “So a person doing sex work who witnesses trafficking is putting themselves at risk of arrest for reporting that. So overall, this criminalization of consensual sex work really undermines anti-trafficking efforts.”
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This article first appeared on Verite News New Orleans and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
