What the hell do human trafficking, the Super Bowl and SEPTA have in common?

OK, this bizarre article "Septa Joins Pre-Super Bowl Campaign Against Human Trafficking" over at CBS Philly is drawing some conclusions that briefly had us extremely confused. It starts:

UPPER DARBY, Pa. (CBS) — With the Super Bowl just days away, Septa is posting billboards in its stations alerting travelers to look for signs of human trafficking.

The brief article goes on to kind of explain what human trafficking is and that it is bad, but it never mentions the Super Bowl again, nor clears up what the hell SEPTA has to do with human trafficking. 

The only other person at this press conference appears to have been from the Delco News Network, which offered some important clarifying details like:

SEPTA Police Chief Thomas Nestel ... added that the Super Bowl being played Sunday just a couple of hours north in New York/New Jersey makes it a big week for human traffickers.

and:

One of the reasons it was held at such a busy transportation hub is that it is the kind of place where human traffickers can find their next victim.

OK! That makes more sense, sort of! But it still seems like a weird thing to suddenly hold a press conference about, right?

More information makes it make more sense: We hadn't been paying much attention to Congress the past couple days, and apparently on Monday Rep. Christopher Smith of New Jersey told the House of Representatives: 

"In less than a week, New Jersey will be hosting the Super Bowl, and along with welcoming enthusiastic fans, the state also is preparing for a likely influx of both domestic and international traffickers ... We know from the past, any sports venue — especially the Super Bowl — acts as a sex-trafficking magnet."

And then Chris Christie got on the issue, and everybody's paying a whole lot of attention to Chris Christie these days, and then we guess everybody is assumed to be familiar with the connection between sex trafficking and the Super Bowl.

Smith's statements about the Super Bowl being a sex-trafficking magnet, by the way, just scream of "I CAN'T BACK ANY OF THIS UP!" There's a lot of use of the words "huge," "clear" and "obvious," but no actual numbers. There isn't much solid evidence that this is a thing — we looked. However, sex trafficking is the worst thing that gets the least attention, and we can't see how getting some Super Bowl based attention would hurt the larger cause. So today, just this once, the willingness of many press outlets to report generalities as facts without any due diligence works for good rather than evil. 

Also, what the fuck is up with people continuing to use sexy/porny photos to illustrate articles on sex trafficking? It is 2014. Check out this particularly bad example from the New York Daily News' article on Super Bowl/trafficking:

Yeah — sexy training sessions! Shut up, The Daily News.