Audio Transcript

Mollie Halpern: Sixteen girls were rescued at the Super Bowl in an FBI-led operation targeting commercial child sex trafficking; 48 pimps and their associates were arrested.

Michael Harpster: This was the most successful and the largest special event coordination that we had to do to date.

Halpern: I’m Mollie Halpern of the Bureau, and this is FBI, This Week. The victim girls range in ages from 13 to 17 years old; they include high school students and missing children. Their pimps brought them to the Super Bowl from 13 states. Michael Harpster, chief of the Violent Crimes Against Children Section, says pimps traveled to New Jersey from as far away as California and Florida.

Harpster: This is not a problem that’s associated just around an individual event—these are trafficking criminal enterprises that travel across the States to go to these events. So that’s what we’re really interested in, is identifying those criminal enterprises.

Halpern: The FBI and more than 50 law enforcement agencies prepared for this operation for months. For more information, visit www.fbi.gov.