By Edward Smith
Cindy McCain may not be a 6-foot-2-inch, 220-pound linebacker, but she slammed the NFL to the turf this week in Minneapolis.
Before appearing onstage at NCSL’s Legislative Summit in Minneapolis with U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D), the humanitarian and wife of Arizona U.S. Senator John McCain (R) dished out some choice words to the world of professional football.
“I have met with (NFL representatives) on two occasions now, and they absolutely have done nothing,” McCain told the St. Paul Pioneer Press. “They've given us great lip service, but they've done nothing.”
The issue is an old one involving sex traffickers who bring young women forced into the sex trade to cities hosting the Super Bowl or other major sporting events. The Super Bowl will be in Arizona in 2013.
“It’s not just the NFL and the Super Bowl,” McCain said during a discussion onstage with Klobuchar on Wednesday morning. “It’s all major sporting events. If just a few prominent athletes would come forward and say, ‘Real men don’t buy little girls.’ ”
Klobuchar and McCain have a long history working on the issue.
“What drew us together was a passion for doing something,” Klobuchar said. “This really started at a grassroots level. As a former prosecutor, I really saw the damage the pimps and traffickers were doing to these young women.”
She said while many people may think sex trafficking is a problem of young women brought here from other countries, 80 percent of the girls and young women trafficked in the U.S. are Americans.
“We have it everywhere. The average victim is 13. We have to get our act together.“
Klobuchar introduced legislation in the Senate in 2013 based on Minnesota’s Safe Harbor law that aims to ensure that kids sold for sex are not treated as criminals and that they receive help. It would also provide funding and training to states that pass similar legislation.
“It basically says why we are prosecuting the victims of these crimes. We should be prosecuting the pimps and the johns.”
State and local officials can help, she added, by supporting efforts to change both laws and attitudes about sex trafficking.
“Make no mistake,” McCain said. “This is organized crime.”
Edward Smith is the director of digital communications for NCSL.
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NCSL Human Trafficking Overview