The Seedy Underside to Austin’s F1 Race Event
It may have been the largest event to hit Austin in my lifetime. Somewhere around 300,000 visitors descended on the Austin area for the first-ever Formula 1 Series race to be held here. Austin now boasts the only F1 track in North America, and thus people from all over the world landed here to be part of the event. And from all indications it was a huge success.
But with such large numbers of people comes the dark side of organized crime. And this weekend in Austin, we played host to some very bad people. Did you know that somewhere between 400-1000 teenage girls were brought to Austin just for the event? Their purpose? Provide a sexual service for those Johns who were willing to pay for it. But these girls aren’t prostitutes, they’re slaves. Sex slaves, and most of them are under 15 years of age.
So let me take all of the spin off of it: This weekend in my hometown thousands of rapes took place, and all in the name of commerce. I don’t fault anyone officially associated with the race series. But we have to start being more honest about these types of events–Super Bowls, the World Series, NCAA and NBA Championships, Bowl games, and here in my city, the Austin City Limits Music Festival and South by Southwest. Somewhere in the long shadows cast by these events young girls cry out as some stranger has his way with her.
I hope reading this makes you as sick as it made me when I first learned of it a few weeks ago. I’m a Christian and a pastor in Austin and I was completely powerless to stop it.
That’s going to change. Non-profits like Restore a Voice are helping to shed light on the problem of sex trafficking in Austin and the US and are offering real solutions, real hope and real healing for those victims of it. I’m grateful to a friend here in Austin for telling me about the trafficking problem and the work being do to shut it down.
What about you? If you live in a major US city there’s a good possibility that the sex trade is much closer than you think. Don’t look the other way. Find a non-profit that is fighting to free and protect these girls and support them vigorously. When large events come to your city, call your local police department and ask what you can do to help expose and fight the sex trade that will inevitably come with them. And pray for the salvation of the Johns who pay for the girls and the thugs who enslave them. Jesus had harsh words for such men, frighteningly harsh. Pray that these men will embrace Christ, repent of their evil, free the girls and not spend eternity under the fierce wrath of the holy God.
CLiCK HERE to learn about about how you can help stop sex trafficking.
