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The NCAA March Madness men's basketball tournament comes to San Antonio on April 5.
Advocacy group Rights4Girls is using a billboard campaign in the Alamo City and other game-hosting cities to expose the realities of the sex trade and the potential harm to women and girls by sex buyers.
TPR’s Jerry Clayton recently spoke with Yasmin Vafa, the group's executive director.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Clayton: Tell us about the billboard campaign.
Vafa: So, Rights for Girls has launched a nationwide billboard campaign in conjunction with the March Madness NCAA basketball tournament to really raise awareness around the issues of sex tourism and sex trafficking that happen all across the country year-round, and we really want to challenge the public to interrogate some of the common misconceptions, particularly around sex buyers.
We know that when it comes to issues of sex trafficking, people always think about the trafficker, they always think about the victim, but we don't often think about the role of the sex buyer. And that's what the goal of this campaign really is. We want them to, really dispel some of the myths around ... sex buying, and we want them to really look at the messages around this campaign and think twice about the nature of sex buying.
Clayton: Rights for Girls, your organization, released a study back in January of this year. What were the main takeaways from that study?
Vafa: Yeah, so we released a report called Buyers Unmasked, exposing the men who buy Sex and Solutions to End Exploitation, where we looked at quotes from sex buyers all across the country on what are known as hobby boards. And so, for folks who don't know, those function as a sort of Yelp for prostitution, where sex buyers go online, and they rate and review the individuals that they purchase for sex.
And so in viewing close to 100 of these conversations all across the country, we were able to determine that sex buyers are largely aware and indifferent to overt signs of coercion, trafficking, violence, desperation, and even severe substance abuse in the people that they're purchasing for sex. And so we make sure that these individuals ought to be held accountable.
And it's really important to realize that these demand reduction strategies of which we've lifted up all over the country, are important sex trafficking prevention strategies. And so, we lift up several innovative models from different jurisdictions all over the U.S. and make clear that, you know, these aren't just shy guys who can't get a date. These are often very violent and sexually coercive individuals.
Clayton: Texas recently made sex buying a felony. And are you seeing progress on this issue nationwide?
Vafa: Yeah, it's actually one of the things that we're hoping that the public will see if they see some of these billboards is that they'll go to our website and realize that there are several jurisdictions Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, and several others that are considering pretty significant legislative penalties, significant and hefty fines.
Some will even require men to register on the sex offender registry and other pretty significant penalties for soliciting sex, and, and certainly for soliciting sex with minors, we're seeing, pretty significant, sanctions all across the country. And so one of the messages on the billboard says, "it's madness to think that sex buying won't land you a penalty."
And it's, it's pretty important for people to realize this can lead to loss of employment, loss of professional license. It can even cause interruption and child visitation, child custody, and adoption rights.
The San Antonio Billboard will be placed near I-10 and Crossroads beginning Monday, March 31.
