COLUMBUS – Some of the 50,000 people expected to converge on Cleveland during the Republican National Convention in July will not be there for political reasons.
They are there to sell — or to be sold — for sex.
Ohio is said to be among the worst states for human trafficking activity, and according to the Ohio Attorney General’s office, every year nearly 1,000 young people are forced into the sex trade.
Theresa Flores was trafficked as a teen, and as a survivor founded SOAP, which stands for Save Our Adolescents from Prostitution. She says there is typically an uptick in prostitution during events like the convention and she wants to reach out to help possible victims when they are most in need, which is in hotels and, specifically, the bathrooms.
She is organizing “S.O.A.P up RNC” July 9 at Case Western Reserve University where volunteers will label bars of soap with a toll-free number where trafficking victims can call for help, package the soap, along with educational materials and missing children posters, and then deliver it to 225 hotels from Lorain to Astabula, and from Cleveland to Akron and Canton.
“Most of those hotels in Cleveland are already booked. So people will be going to farther out hotels, or the traffickers will be staying at hotels in kind of remote areas and then driving the girls into Cleveland where the business is,” Flores said.
The group will also conduct educational training on July 9 to teach people the signs of human trafficking, so they can report any suspicious activity.