In preparation for Super Bowl LI next February in Houston, the Montgomery County Coalition Against Human Trafficking is working to train and educate county officials for the anticipated increase in human trafficking activity in the Greater Houston area.

Human trafficking is defined as the illegal movement of people, typically for the purposes of forced labor or commercial sexual exploitation. Statistics indicate year after year that the Super Bowl host city experiences a significant increase in human trafficking activity before, during and after the game, Montgomery County Chief Prosecutor Tyler Dunman said.

“You have a lot of money, international travel and events coming into one area for the Super Bowl, so traffickers play upon that and begin prostituting out their victims in that area to make as much money as they can,” Dunman said. “So you’ll have traffickers that literally will come from all around the country to infiltrate the city where the Super Bowl is happening and try to capitalize on it.”

Trafficking task forces

A countywide coalition consisting of 28 governmental and nongovernmental entities, MCCAHT formed in 2015 following a large-scale human trafficking case that developed within the county.

“I think it’s one of those things that the public, in general, just doesn’t believe happens,” Dunman said. “It’s kind of where we used to be with sexual assault of children—the general public just couldn’t wrap their minds around that sort of thing. But unfortunately, the demand that exists for individuals who are seeking to have sex with children or even adults is so high that it pushes this kind of criminal behavior.”

One of the organizations in MCCAHT is the Breaking the Chains human trafficking awareness ministry at The Woodlands United Methodist Church. The ministry first began in 2013 after Rev. Susan Kent led a four-week study with church members on the subject in 2012.

“Once we became aware of the types of human trafficking and the prevalence in our own country, we could not turn away,” Kent said. “Human trafficking does not have geographic boundaries. Many believe that it occurs only in poor, developing countries, but that is simply not the case. Trafficking can and does occur in our own community.”

Human trafficking victims can be any gender, any age, a U.S. native or international citizen and are most often forced into the labor or sex industries, statistics indicate.

Dunman said the most common victims identified in Montgomery County have been domestic and international adult females who are forced into sexual exploitation.

Dunman said there is no identifiable area of Montgomery County that is more prone to human trafficking than others.

Breaking the Chains supports survivors by providing volunteers, care bags and financial support to survivor care facilities, hosting educational events and weekly prayer group meetings. 

“While we want to support survivor care, our ultimate desire is to work our way upstream to stop the problem before it begins,” Kent said. “We can all work together to end human trafficking.”

One of those survivor care facilities is Redeemed Ministries, which opened in The Woodlands in 2005 and serves as a short- and long-term restoration facility for adult women who are human trafficking survivors. The rehabilitation process often includes addressing medical issues as well as mental illness and addiction problems, said Shani Bacy, director of Redeemed Ministries’ Assessment Center and Emergency Shelter.

“Healing can take a very, very long time,” Bacy said. “Most of these women’s trauma began when they were children, so they have complex trauma that has lasted years and years of their lives. It’s a very long process.”

Bacy said two months ago the organization assisted a 20-year-old woman who was a human trafficking victim pulled from the home of a gated community in The Woodlands.

“It reaches all areas of society,” Bacy said. “This issue has no boundaries, so we’ve had women [who] have come into our care from homes you wouldn’t expect. We’ve had people who are millionaires whose children have been trafficked. Many people think that it’s a poverty issue or only affects members of a certain race or socio-economic background, but it affects all of these groups.”

Super Bowl strategy

MCCAHT meets roughly four times a year to educate and discuss strategy for tackling the problem. Montgomery County law enforcement officers are also trained on what to look for in recognizing a human trafficker or a potential trafficking victim.

“When you have a young victim in human trafficking who not only gets sexually assaulted once, but also gets moved around, kept from their family, not given food, water ... the impact on that victim is just unreal,” Dunman said. “It’s something that they can’t recover from; it’s something that no one should have to go through.”

At the coalition’s next meeting Aug. 18, the entities will focus exclusively on human trafficking surrounding February’s Super Bowl. The group will train law enforcement and others on what areas and websites may be used to traffic victims as well as what plans will be in place to enforce state and federal law during the event.

In Texas, human trafficking is considered a first-degree felony, punishable from five years up to life in prison.

“Our Legislature in Texas over the past five to 10 years has done a great job of increasing the penalties for human trafficking and seeing it as a problem so that we as the prosecutors have good tools to use when we get these types of cases,” Dunman said. “We can seek maximum punishments for these types of offenders, and that is very productive and powerful.”

Between the strength of Texas legislation and the partnerships of the MCCAHT, Dunman said human trafficking can become obsolete in Montgomery County if everyone works together.

“It’s absolutely necessary that we are as aggressive as we can possibly be with human traffickers and that we try to rescue as many victims as we can because everyone is a valued person and deserves to be treated as such,” he said. “In Montgomery County, we have a great deal of agencies committed to doing that, and now they’re partnered with law enforcement ... That will be key for us to be successful in keeping human trafficking out of the county.”