“Nobody had any idea that something like this was happening to a kid like me.”
Retelling the harrowing experience of being trafficked when she was 16 years old, Theresa Flores captivated participants in a joint webinar that examined the traps, coercion, risks and trauma of human trafficking and the legislation and local efforts to prevent it, fight it and assist survivors.
In partnership with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the New Jersey and Pennsylvania Catholic Conferences, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul USA and the SOAP Project, the webinar explored the dramatic increase of human trafficking surrounding major sporting events.
Flores opened her presentation with some sobering statistics about human trafficking.
An estimated 60-80 percent of its victims are women, 50 percent children and 20-40 percent men and boys.
It’s not the tale of someone being kidnapped at the mall or from the neighborhood corner, Flores said, noting that three percent of victims are from kidnapping. Rather, 40 percent of victims are trafficked by a family member and 57 percent lured by someone they know.
That was Flores’ case as a 16-year-old in a middle class, Catholic family living in a Detroit suburb.
Her stable home life and loving parents “did not exempt me from anything bad happening to me,” she said.
She met a boy in high school who told her everything she wanted to hear, walked her to class, carried her books. After six months of grooming her, he offered her a ride home from school and took her to his house, where she was drugged and raped.
“I went home but didn’t tell my parents about it because of the shame I felt. I thought it was my fault,” Flores said.
A few days later, the boy came forth with photos of Flores from the rape and told her she’d have to earn them back. The boy and his friends blackmailed her for months, driving her to various locations in the middle of the night where she was forced to have sex with numerous men.
It culminated with her being taken to a hotel room where more than two dozen men placed bids for her. At the end of the night, she was left alone with no ID, no money and no idea where she was.
“As I laid in the bathroom with my head on the cold toilet seat, I asked myself, ‘Well, Theresa, what are you going to do now?’ I was at the lowest of lows but I hung on to just an ounce of hope,” she recalled.
She walked into a local diner, where an elderly waitress asked, “Can I help you?”
“She was my angel in disguise,” Flores said.
The waitress called the police and Flores’ parents and it began the process of her escape. She was 17.
“From the time I was 17 until I was 40 years old sitting in a conference in Ohio and learning for the first time about what human trafficking is, I didn’t know that those two words meant me,” she said.
It opened her eyes and changed her trajectory. She established the The SOAP Project (Save Our Adolescents from Prostitution), a community outreach that places bars of soap labeled with the national human trafficking hotline in hotels and motels near large sporting events like the Super Bowl, the Kentucky Derby, the World Cup and auto shows.
The SOAP Project also assists trafficking survivors with therapeutic weekends, support groups, retreats and emergency financial assistance.
“There are 1.3 million missing and runaway kids in the United States,” Flores said. “If traffickers are going to use these big events to take our kids, then so are we.”
‘The Church Brings Hope’
Super Bowl LX is set for February 8 in San Jose, Bishop Oscar Cantú’s Diocese.
Offering a reflection during the webinar, he said, “The Super Bowl is a wonderful community affair with close friends and good cheer…. As much as I have enjoyed watching the event, when I learned many years ago that Super Bowl weekend is the most trafficked event throughout the world, that changed my perspective.”
“I still watch the game, but certainly never without prayer for the victims and the consciousness of human trafficking,” he said.
When we fail to see someone’s humanity, we are tempted to look at them as objects that can be pawns for our own gain, said Bishop Cantú, the former Chair of the USCCB Committee on International Justice and Peace.
Quoting Pope’s Francis’ address to participants in the International Conference on Combating Human Trafficking on April 10, 2014, the bishop remarked, “Human trafficking is an open wound on the body of Christ and a scourge upon the body of all humanity.”
“But there is hope. The Church brings hope,” Bishop Cantú said. “Healing can happen by encountering the person of Jesus Christ.”
The webinar was hosted by the Diocesan Office for Life and Dignity and moderated by Felicitas Brugo Onetti, Human Trafficking Education and Outreach Coordinator for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. It was a sobering and timely reminder of modern-day slavery during Human Trafficking Awareness Month.
Eric Failing, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference, presented information on recent and upcoming legislation in the Keystone State and New Jersey aimed at increasing penalties on traffickers, identifying and supporting victims and increasing awareness among the general public.
Pennsylvania recently passed legislation to increase jail time for traffickers, mandate training for imprisoned traffickers on why the crime is so harmful and establish a state-wide human trafficking task force, Failing said.
He also pointed to more than a handful of bills being introduced this session that would protect victims from being prosecuted, train hotel and motel staff on how to identify victims, require anti-trafficking hotline information in public restrooms, and educate teachers and college students on the dangers and signs of trafficking.
“People aren’t surprised to hear about human trafficking; they’re surprised to learn how prolific and close to home it is. A lot of education still needs to occur,” Failing said, urging constituents to contact their legislators on the issue.
Ingrid Delgado, National Director of Public Policy and Advocacy for the Society of St. Vincent de Paul USA, closed the webinar with a presentation on the organization’s efforts to raise awareness on issues to protect the most vulnerable.
“Catholic social teaching calls us to both charity and justice,” she said. “We do in-home visits to see where we can meet the needs people have…and offer special housing and workforce development programs for trafficking victims and survivors.”
“We are also involved in forming good policymaking so that we can create a more just society. Beyond the work of charity, we want to address the systemic issues that allow things like trafficking to continue,” Delgado said.
She encouraged concerned citizens to stay connected and get involved in advocacy efforts through www.pacatholic.org, www.catholiccharitiesusa.org, www.usccb.org and https://ssvpusa.org/.
“This month serves as a reminder that human trafficking is not a distant or isolated issue but one that exists within our own communities and requires collective responsibility,” Onetti said. “For Catholics, this call to prevention resonates deeply with our faith, the Church’s commitment to human dignity, solidarity and the protection of the most vulnerable.”
“As people of faith, we are called to ensure our celebrations do not overlook the suffering of others. Instead, we are invited to respond with vigilance, solidarity and hope,” she said.
The webinar was a third in a series of Diocesan events since the January 2025 release of Bishop Timothy Senior’s pastoral letter, “Setting Captives Free.” Earlier this week, the bishop also released an op-ed on the issue and our call to continued resolve to end human trafficking.
By Jen Reed, The Catholic Witness
