Brazil hopes to attract more than half a million fans for this summer’s World Cup and take in billions of tourism dollars.
Sex traffickers are also planning to take an already profitable market there and make it even more lucrative this year. Their perverse business model links world class soccer with child sexual exploitation.
“You can go online and see $12,000, $10,000 for the flight, the hotel, the game—and the girl,” Diego Traverso, Latin America anti-trafficking programs manager for Operation Blessing, told CBN News.
Many believe that showing just how trafficking affects children to both tourists and Brazilians before the games even start is the best way to fight it.
That’s the idea behind a documentary that CBN’s Operation Blessing will release next month in Brazil.
“We’re trying to raise the stigma against this and educate the people coming in for the World Cup that this isn’t just a service you can buy without consequences, that these are children trapped in a hell,” David Darg, vice president of International Operations for Operation Blessing, explained.
“We see kids, talking 12 or 11 if you haven’t lost your virginity at 11 you’re wrong—something’s wrong with you,” he continued. “I see many, many cases of mothers selling their daughters like to neighbors, on the street, taking them to the street, teaching them kind of the business, to survive.”
Traverso said this twisted mindset combined with poverty created the perfect storm in Brazil, which now carries an international reputation for child sex trafficking.
Operation Blessing hopes to air its documentary on Brazilian national television, and will also produce a short video for airlines bringing World Cup fans to the games.
The aid group is also working with other ministries to reach fans directly at the venues and speak out against the tragedy of trafficking.
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