As tens of thousands of fans gather in the Bay Area for the Super Bowl this weekend, outreach volunteers are warning that large-scale events often bring an increase in human trafficking, and they are working to give victims a discreet way out, Newsmax crime correspondent Jason Mattera reported Friday.
"Super Bowl LX will be a hub of huge crowds and nonstop activity, but where there are big events, traffickers often lurk in the shadows," Mattera told Newsmax's "Wake Up America."
One organization combating the problem is The Soap Project, which places bars of soap and hygiene products in hotel and motel bathrooms, each labeled with the National Human Trafficking Hotline number.
"We have 14,000 bars of soap and makeup remover wipes," Soap Project founder Theresa Flores commented. "We go to any hotel or motel. It doesn't matter if it's $10 a night or $1,000 a night."
Flores said the goal is to offer help without alerting a trafficker.
"The Soap Project labels soap bars and other hygiene products with the human trafficking hotline and works with hotel staff to place them discreetly in bathrooms, offering victims a lifeline without drawing the attention of a trafficker," Mattera reported.
Flores said the effort is deeply personal, because as a teenager, she was trafficked for two years.
"I just wanted to be a normal teenager, and I was living a double life," Flores said. "Nobody knew."
Her trafficking ended when her family moved, but Flores said resources for victims were scarce at the time.
"I started to have flashbacks of all the places that my traffickers had taken me to," she said. "I remembered, you know, when I woke up in that motel, there wasn't a phone number, there wasn't anybody to call."
That realization led to what she described as a simple solution.
"So I decided to mobilize communities and to help me put stickers on soaps," Flores said.
The project has already led to rescues, according to Flores, describing one woman's escape.
"The buyer was beating her, and she ran to the bathroom and locked the door," Flores said. "And she said, 'I saw a bar of soap with a red label and a phone number.'
"She called the number, and they came and got her," Flores said.
For the Super Bowl outreach, Flores was joined by her brother Patrick, who said he had no idea what his sister was experiencing when she was younger.
"I don't know, honestly don't know, how she does it because having to relive that part of your life over and over and over for the rest of your life," he said.
"But to save one person, to save multiple people, we just need the victim to realize that there is hope, and there is a better way of life," her brother added.
According to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, nearly 22,000 potential trafficking victims were identified in 2024, the most recent data available.
Mattera said Soap Project volunteers are not limiting their efforts to the Super Bowl.
"They'll also be at the Kentucky Derby in May and at Mardi Gras in New Orleans, delivering those bars of soap to hotels and motels, and just hoping to reach someone who may need a way out," he reported.
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