While the Super Bowl is a glamorous and beloved game, there is another highly dangerous game in the works at the championship and other similar sporting events.
Tattoo artist Chirs Baker is headed to the Super Bowl again this year, but just like last year, he likely won’t see much of the action.
“This is our ninth year going to the Super Bowl. Never been to the game,” Baker said.
Instead of the game, Baker plans to set up shop outside the stadium to remove tattoos.
“Pimps, traffickers and gangs who traffic often force tattoos on their victims to mark them as property,” Baker said.
It is known as “branding.” The sign of possession can be a name or symbol that is tattooed on individuals sold for sexual acts by their traffickers.
In New Orleans, 200+ survivors are signed up for Chris’ services, with the youngest being only 12 years old.
“If we’re doing a cover-up, we always do things that are very positive or something that symbolizes something beautiful coming out of something ugly like trafficking,” Baker said.
It is the ugly side of daily life, not just at large-scale sporting events, where there may be more demand for commercial sex workers, with many of them under the control of a trafficker.
“What we do know is sex trafficking and labor trafficking is happening 365 days a year,” Anna Pastor said.
Pastor is the director of the Cook County Human Trafficking Task Force, which is part of the Salvation Army’s “STOP-IT” program, which offers direct services to survivors of sex and labor trafficking.
Pastor said a trafficker is often a known and trusted person in an individual’s life,” and that was just the case for Taylor Holm.
“I really believed this was someone who was looking out for me at a time when I didn’t have anybody in my life,” Holm said.
The now 29-year-old was under the control of her trafficker for five years and was often deployed to large sporting events.
“Women that they are trafficking, they are going to have them set up at local hotels around any major events. In my case it was a lot to do with the NASCAR races that went on,” Holm said. “And they are utilizing this as an opportunity to buy and sell people.”
The most vulnerable are often targeted.
“Traffickers use any form of coercion or fraud it could be the ‘I love you’ thing it could be fear-based I’m going to kill your family, I’m going to harm you,” Holm said. “The reality of it is it happens to anyone who is facing vulnerabilities. Economic loss, loss of family, if you have no education, immigration status, all of these things would be factors into someone being susceptible to trafficking.”
The effects of extreme psychological manipulation aren’t as obvious as the tattoos to mark possession. Taylor had hers transformed.
“In that moment, I realized I was finally free,” Holm said.
Holm is now program director at Salt and Light Coalition, an organization that helps human trafficking survivors learn critical life skills to help set them on a path to safety and independence.
“Having support and being empowered it was simple not to go back,” Holm said.
If you suspect, you or someone else is being exploited or abused visit the National Human Trafficking Hotline website, call the hotline at 1-888-373-7888 or text “BE FREE” to 233733 to report anonymously.
