A nationwide billboard campaign aimed at curbing sex trafficking during the NCAA’s March Madness tournament has arrived in Atlanta as the city prepares to host two days of games next week.
A digital billboard downtown near the intersection of Marietta Street and Ivan Allen Jr. Boulevard cycles through several messages cautioning passersby.
“IT’S MADNESS to think sex buying is just a game,” one slide reads, alongside an animation of a frowning basketball.
Similar billboards have been leased out in seven other cities hosting the men’s basketball tournament, said Yasmin Vafa, co-founder and executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based organization Rights4Girls.
Whether major sporting events actually increase demand for sex trafficking remains a matter of debate, but in the past, federal law enforcement agencies have launched trafficking crackdowns coinciding with high-profile games that draw large crowds to Atlanta, including the Super Bowl.
Vafa, an attorney whose group aims to combat gender-based violence against women and girls, said the demand for commercial sex is what drives human trafficking.
“It’s not so much that sex trafficking skyrockets during the tournament,” she said, “but any time there’s a large-scale event that draws people to one city, sex traffickers will seek to capitalize on that potential for increased demand.”
She said those who exploit vulnerable people for sex often flock to cities during major sporting events in the hope of increasing their revenue.
An FBI spokesman in Atlanta said while the demand for commercial sex may increase during large events, there is little data to support an actual increase in human trafficking cases.
“Part of the perception of an increase may be because of a higher number of law enforcement actions concentrating on human sex trafficking during high-profile events,” the agency said Friday in a statement, referring to the trafficking operations often associated with major events.
As of July 2024, the FBI had more than 1,660 pending human trafficking investigations across each of its 56 field offices. An FBI spokesperson declined to say whether the agency is preparing for next week’s influx of visitors to the city, but Atlanta police have no plans to take part in any type of trafficking operation during the tournament, the department said.
Hannah Palmquist, who heads the state’s Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit, said sex trafficking isn’t limited to major cities.
”It’s in every city, but it’s also in rural areas,” said Palmquist, whose team has secured more than 50 sex trafficking convictions across Georgia since the unit was formed by Attorney General Chris Carr in 2019. “When there are sporting events there are certainly more opportunities, statistically speaking, for buyers to be exploiting these victims.”
Palmquist said in most cases, sex trafficking doesn’t begin with an abduction or kidnapping, but the exploitation of a person’s basic needs such as food, housing or even a drug addiction.
”A trafficker will target that vulnerability and try to fill that need for the victim in order to manipulate them into coming with them voluntarily,” she said. “There are a couple thousand missing kids at any given time in the state of Georgia. And the reality is those missing kids are very likely to be approached by traffickers.”
The unit said it has rescued nearly 200 minors who were being trafficked for sex in Georgia but fears there are likely many more. Palmquist’s team is expanding next month thanks to additional funding in the state budget for a trafficking prosecutor and two investigators in both Macon and Augusta.
Atlanta will host three NCAA men’s tournament games at State Farm Arena this year, two Sweet 16 games on March 28 and one Elite Eight game on March 30.
Vafa said the goal of her organization’s billboard campaign is to encourage spectators across eight cities to remain vigilant.
“Sex buying and sex trafficking is something that happens year-round, but it’s important just to be aware of it,” she said. “When these things happen, there can be a really dark underbelly of exploitation that happens as well.”
Aside from Atlanta, other cities with billboards include Cleveland, Milwaukee, Providence, Indianapolis, Newark, Denver and San Antonio, where this year’s Final Four will be held.
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