As high-profile sports figures descend on Northeast Ohio this week, an 83-year-old nun arrived at the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Monday advocating for victims who walk among us hidden in plain sight.

Sister Barbara Catalano, a Dominican Sister of Peace, did not resemble many other visitors clad in shirts and jerseys of their favorite NFL teams. The diminutive woman was dressed casually in white pants and a shirt accented with a purple short-sleeved jacket. She also wore a look of determination, toting a satchel containing anti-human trafficking literature and a bag filled with bars of specially wrapped soap to the Canton football shrine.

“I want to talk with someone important,” said the Akron resident, who had not called ahead to make an appointment with a Hall of Fame executive.

Parked in an auxiliary lot a quarter-mile from the front door, Catalano eschewed a free shuttle ride and walked along a narrow backstreet as cars and golf carts transporting HOF workers zipped past. The nun moved with such pace, bounding down a steep flight of concrete steps, a freelance photographer assigned to chronicle her visit had difficulty keeping up.

She was eager to discuss the evils of the world’s fastest-growing industry. Human trafficking, according to the United Nations’ International Labour Organization, generated about $99 billion in profits in 2016. And it thrives on the peripheries of major multiday events like the ones being hosted in Canton and Akron this weekend, say some anti-trafficking advocacy groups and law enforcement.

From foreign-born laborers erecting scaffolding for pennies on the dollar to underage girls being forced into prostitution at nearby hotels, human trafficking takes different forms. In the past month, several survivors have told The Athletic nightmarish tales of beatings, gang rape, threats to family members and years of mental anguish associated with a life of sex slavery. Two women began being trafficked at age 15.

“We are working against the powers of hell,” Catalano said.

On Monday, the nun planned to ask for laminated cards detailing the warning signs of sex trafficking to be distributed to HOF employees. She wanted posters hung in break rooms, and the bars of soap, which include the National Human Trafficking Hotline (888-373-7888), dispensed in women’s restrooms.

Catalano made a similar pitch a day later when she drove her Toyota Corolla to Firestone Country Club.

“I’ve got to do something,” said Catalano, who resides in the convent at Our Lady of the Elms and works in an area nursing home. “I can’t just sit back and say, ‘Let somebody else do it.’ We have to be there to help those kids. I may never know if this helped someone on this side of heaven, but I think this is what God is calling me to do.”

The feisty 5-foot-tall woman with the powerful handshake is part of a collaborative effort among advocates and law enforcement to raise awareness of an issue that impacts families, communities and the health care system.

Let’s be clear: There’s not even a hint of wrongdoing on the HOF’s or golf tournament’s parts. During the course of the reporting of this story, several advocacy groups expressed keen interest in partnering with the Hall in their fight against human trafficking. Its platform and NFL ties could spread the message to larger audiences.

Trafficking is a 365-day-a-year problem. When the final HOF induction speech is given Saturday and the winning putt is sunk Sunday, regional authorities and advocates will still be rooting out buyers and sellers of fraudulent labor and coerced sex.

Ohio ranks fourth in reported cases behind California, Texas and Florida, according to National Human Trafficking Hotline figures. Statewide investigations rose by 50 percent last year, the Ohio attorney general’s office reported, and the 202 cases mark the highest sum since authorities began compiling numbers in 2012.

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine interprets the figures not as a spike in criminal activity, but as a sign of increased community vigilance. It means the soap bars delivered from Sister Karen Bernhardt of the Partners Against Trafficking of Humans to Belden Village hotels before Hall of Fame week might be having an impact. It means the required anti-trafficking training for truck drivers and cosmetologists might be helping them spot potential victims at truck stops and salons.

However, DeWine acknowledges the challenges of combating crimes that often go unreported because the public isn’t educated on the telltale signs.

“If you get mugged on the street or you come home at night and your house has been broken into, you know a crime has been committed,” DeWine said. “People see victims of human trafficking many times — they are right in front of them, they are in clear view — but don’t know they are a victim.”

As sports fans flock to the region this weekend, anti-trafficking advocates hope they will be attuned to their surrounding environments in hotels, restaurants and even tattoo parlors.

Does the age disparity between the couple checking into a room appear strange? Does the young girl seated at the next table speak for herself or does she seem controlled by the person in her company? Does the branding on the back of a youngster’s neck raise questions?

The graphic is courtesy of the Ohio Attorney General office’s website.

Conventions and major sports/entertainment events are sources of pride and economic growth for a community. An increase in human trafficking is an unintended consequence surrounding them. In two years, the Hall of Fame might not only play host to the annual enshrinement week, but also the NFL draft if the dual bid from Canton and Cleveland is accepted by the league.

“It’s capitalism, right?” said Suzanne Lewis-Johnson, a former FBI agent who’s now the executive director of RAHAB, a non-government organization that provides outreach to sexually trafficked women and children. “When you have more customers in a region for an event, you have more demand.”

Sherri McKinney-Frantz, program administrator for the Children’s Network of Stark County, considers big sports events “a trifecta” for sex trafficking. White males — the predominant buyers of commercial sex — have extra time, additional money and little accountability as they often travel with buddies, not spouses, McKinney-Frantz said.

Authorities and advocates interviewed by The Athletic agree sporting events help drive up the demand for commercial sex. They also acknowledge statistics involving arrests and victim rescues do not always support the claim. It’s why some question the validity of stories about the Super Bowl being a haven for sex trafficking.

Lewis-Johnson, who spent 10 years in the FBI, said pursuing cases are complex and the low number of arrests and convictions doesn’t diminish the severity of the problem. Sting operations are common at Super Bowls and other major events, tending to temper demand among savvy buyers and suppliers of sex.

“It’s a really stupid time for traffickers to do what they do because law enforcement is being particularly vigilant,” she said.

But authorities who monitor online sites where sex is trafficked told The Athletic the number of ads rise in cities holding events such as the HOF and Bridgestone Invitational in Northeast Ohio and the Arnold Sports Festival and The Memorial in Central Ohio.

“I don’t have to buy a theory, I know it’s true,” said John Morgan, a Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department detective and one of the state’s leading authorities on human trafficking. “Any time you get a large congregation of men going to a convention, to a sporting event, whatever, there will always be more girls. Whether they are coming in from other states or they are on loan from another trafficker, there will be more. We have sources in the field that say there is an increase.”

Law enforcement said there are prostitutes and escorts who work for themselves to earn a living or pay their way through college. Authorities estimate 90 percent of sex workers are being trafficked, however.

In other words, they seldom wind up with much or any of the money from their services.

“The acronym the traffickers use is C.R.E.A.M. — cash rules everything around me,” Morgan said. “They don’t care about the condition of their victims or whatever state their bodies may be in.

“We’ve seen them try to stop (a victim’s) menstrual flow so they could make money. We had one young woman with a decomposing fetus inside of her for 13 weeks and she was still out there trying to make money for her pimp.”

Theresa Flores, first row in the middle, is pictured with her family in 1983. She was trafficked for two years before escaping the life when the family moved from Michigan to Connecticut. (Family archive photo)

‘They threatened to kill my family’

The woman who masterminded the idea for the soap bars — ones annually given to hotel staffs at the Super Bowl, Final Four and many other sports showcases — didn’t know whether she would live long enough to see her 17th birthday.

Theresa Flores doesn’t need to imagine what it’s like to be trapped in a room filled with men expecting her to fulfill their sexual desires. She experienced it for two years as a teenager growing up in an affluent Detroit suburb.

Among Flores’ most chilling memories is being led into a sleazy motel room barefoot wearing only a T-shirt and pajama bottoms.

There were so many men waiting, Flores told The Athletic, she couldn’t see the furniture they sat on.

From her memoir, “The Slave Across the Street”:

“At some point during the night I lost consciousness. I lost count of how many men took their turn and abused my body for their pleasure. The fact I was not there of my own free will excited them. I blacked out from the intense trauma overload and liquor laced with some drug.”

In 1982, Flores escaped traffickers who had blackmailed her and threatened to kill her family if she exposed them. But it wasn’t until she attended her first conference on human trafficking in 2007 that she fully absorbed what had transpired decades earlier.

Law enforcement experts said it’s not uncommon for survivors to take years to process the pain and put the pieces of coercion together.

“Victims of human trafficking typically do not identify themselves as that,” Lewis-Johnson said. “They don’t even know that’s what they are. Traffickers’ evil weapon is deception. Victims don’t know they are a victim. They don’t know they are being held against their will, rather their will has been conformed to the trafficker’s. They just know they are in a terrible, awful place. This isn’t the movie ‘Taken,’ where someone is just snatched off the street. Most of the time, this is a gradual process — a grooming, a degrading, an eliminating of any sense within themselves they can make any choices at all.”

There were 8,524 cases reported last year to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, and 75.7 percent of them involved the sex trade. Traffickers prey on the vulnerabilities of their victims. The top-three risk factors, according to the annual report, are: migration/relocation, substance abuse and runaway/homeless youth.

Flores, 53, was raised in an upper-middle class environment with three younger brothers and both parents living at home. Her father, a corporate executive, transferred often, and Flores had moved eight times by 1980 when the family relocated to Birmingham, Michigan.

As a sophomore, she became enchanted with a boy named Daniel, who was two years older but in the same grade. For six months they got to know each other before he offered to drive her home from school one day. Once they were in the car, plans changed. Daniel said he needed to stop at his house. Flores followed him into the empty residence and accepted a soda, which she says was laced with a drug that made her dizzy.

Not only did Daniel rape her, Flores said, but a few days later he told her his older cousins had photos of them having sex.

“He said I was going to have to earn them back,” Flores said.

She came to understand the cousins were part of an organized crime ring. For two years, Flores sneaked out of her large house after midnight and was squired to sexual rendezvous in the suburban homes of rich businessmen.

“They threatened to kill my family if I told my parents,” Flores said. “They followed me home. Followed my little brothers. Dead animals would appear in our mailbox. It was very scary.”

Theresa Flores, a human trafficking survivor, is the founder of the S.O.A.P. Project. (Family archive)

Some are skeptical of stories like the one Flores describes. They can’t comprehend how a victim wouldn’t go to a friend, family member or police officer for help.

Sex trafficking isn’t an addiction, said Kimberly Diemert, executive director of the Hue Jackson Foundation, which is dedicated to stamping out the sex trade, but she added victims at times experience similar symptoms in their struggles to survive and cope.

“I’m going to bring in a reality that most people are familiar with, if not comfortable with, unfortunately,” Diemert said. “Most people have an understanding of alcoholism and drug addiction. We have athletes and entertainers that are all over today’s news and they are giving up multimillion-dollar contracts and opportunities for this demon they are carrying around. It’s something that controls your body and your mind’s ability to rationally think like a person who’s not suffering from that addiction.

“Trafficking is not an addiction, but the mental effect is no less overwhelming and unmanageable than that of someone who’s suffering from an addiction. Your brain does not have the capacity to step outside the environment you are in and say, ‘Listen, this isn’t right and I have a choice.’ ”

The physical suffering for Flores ended after her father got another job and moved the family to Connecticut prior to her senior year. It took her decades, however, to explain the entire saga.

After college, Flores became a social worker. A single mother with two kids living in Columbus, Ohio, she has evolved into a tireless crusader for kids ensnared in sexual slavery. Her testimony has helped change laws in multiple states. Michigan has removed the statute of limitations for survivors who were forced into prostitution as minors. The new law is named the Theresa Flores Act.

Eight years ago, she founded the S.O.A.P. Project, which stands for Save Our Adolescents from Prostitution. The soap wrappers not only contain the hotline number, but also three questions:

• Are you being forced to do anything you do not want to do?

• Have you been threatened if you try to leave?

• Have you witnessed young girls being prostituted?

Flores and her volunteers began distributing soap bars to hotels housing visitors for major sporting events, conventions and entertainment extravaganzas across the nation. Brent LaLonde, a spokesman for the Arnold Sports Festival, said his group includes literature on the S.O.A.P Project on the information tables they set up at Columbus hotels during their annual event.

The Arnold is the largest multi-sports festival in the nation, drawing 22,000 athletes from 80 nations. The four-day showcase attracts about 200,000 fans.

“We’re very sensitive to the issue,” LaLonde said. “We work with advocacy groups while at the same time letting folks know support of our event is not condoning this activity by any means because there is no hard and fast connection between the two. … The advocacy groups target the big events for their cause, and at least with our event we are happy to play a role in that with them.”

Flores has heard from several survivors who said the soap bars influenced their decisions to escape the torture, including this message from several years ago:

“I was speaking to a small group here in Columbus sharing my story with about 20 ladies (in a drug and alcohol rehab program),” Flores said. “A lady sitting across from me said, ‘I found your bar of soap in a motel room (in suburban Detroit) and the shit was being beat out of me by this guy and I thought I was going to die. I went to the bathroom, locked the door, saw the bar of soap with a red label on it. I wasn’t sure what the phone number was — I just called it.’

“The police came and got her. She ended up in a drug and alcohol program and she ended up in Columbus four months later. You don’t get to hear those type of stories very often.”

The confluence of opioids and trafficking

Vanessa Perkins sat in a Columbus coffee shop a month ago as a storm front gathered outside the window.

The 33-year-old woman works as a bailiff in the same Franklin County court where she used to appear as a defendant on charges ranging from drug use to fighting to prostitution.

Perkins mentioned how sex trafficking in Columbus seems to escalate on weeks the city hosts big sporting events. She was asked if she recalled being pimped out during such times. Perkins gave the question some thought.

“To be honest, I had no idea what time of year it was,” Perkins told The Athletic regarding her five years of being trafficked. “I only knew if it was hot or cold, day or night. There were times I was right here in Columbus and had no idea where I was. I didn’t know what day it was. There was no reason to know.

“I got to a super dark place where I was trying to put too much dope in the needle so I wouldn’t wake up again. I hated myself and everything around me.”

The 2017 report from the state attorney general’s office cites “drug, alcohol or other dependency” as the main factor for someone being trafficked in Ohio. Among the 202 cases investigated last year, dependency more than doubled the second-leading factor (runaway/homeless).

The opioid epidemic has hit Ohio hard, and sex traffickers have capitalized on it, using the promise of heroin as a way to lure victims into their web. It’s how Perkins was groomed by her first pimp when she moved to the city from rural southeast Ohio in 2003.

“This drug issue does not help, and in some cases, it exacerbates the problem of human trafficking,” DeWine said. “Sometimes, the two are very intertwined.”

Perkins left a dysfunctional home life in Nelsonville, Ohio, with her infant son in search of more drugs. She was smart enough to send her boy back to her mother before life spiraled out of control in Columbus. Perkins said her pimps would give her just enough dope to get through a night turning tricks.

She remembers almost vomiting on customers because she was getting sick, badly in need of her next fix. The threat of violence was everywhere, particularly from her traffickers.

“There were beatings and rapes from my first pimp,” Perkins said. “He hit me with a hammer and I think cracked my ribs. I thought my trafficker loved me, as much as I hate to share that. There was a sick psychological piece to it. Making me into nothing so I would do anything he wanted me to do.”

What compels people to traffic and abuse other human beings? In many cases, it’s simply the lucrative financial incentive, experts said.

“Think about it: If you have 10 pounds of heroin and you sell it, you have zero pounds of heroin,” McKinney-Frantz said. “But if you buy a 12-year-old — and the average age of someone entering the life in Ohio is about 13 — that is a commodity that will give and give and give until that person either escapes or dies. These women almost never turn on their pimps.”

Traffickers fit no profile. Some are tied to lives of organized crime, but others can be men and women you might never suspect. A neighbor. A family member.

Cynthia Helms grew up in Central Ohio as a standout student and athlete living in an upper-middle class home. She was an all-state volleyball player who earned a scholarship and set college conference records.

Helms’ success in the classroom and on the court, however, masked an awful secret. She was sexually abused by her older brother, who began trafficking her at age 15 to support his drug addiction.

(The Athletic has agreed to change the name of this survivor, who now helps run a safe house in Ohio.)

Helms’ parents divorced before she entered high school. She told her mother of the initial abuse from her brother, but the mother “chose to cover it up under the guise of family secrets,” Helms said.

There were times the youngster missed school to meet with businessmen for sexual encounters.

“School was like a saving grace,” Helms said. “It was a way to separate and to, on some levels, function like it was never happening. Sports was a big part of coping. It allowed me to pretend I had a whole separate life.

“When you think of young girls and what they are experiencing at that age, they are thinking about their friends and their boyfriends. I was trying to figure out how to survive day to day. Friendships weren’t a priority.”

Those who buy sex rarely face significant legal penalties even when they get caught in sting operations. Oftentimes the greatest consequence is dealing with a spouse or the embarrassment of having their name appear in a public document or newspaper.

But what of the moral issues? How do buyers justify their decisions when someone as young as Flores or Helms walks through a hotel-room door?

Suzanne Lewis-Johnson received the Director’s Award from FBI Director Christopher Wray for her part in combating human trafficking. (Courtesy of Suzanne Lewis-Johnson)

“Law enforcement is usually trying to recover victims and identify the traffickers,” Lewis-Johnson said. “But sometimes they also will focus on the customers. Some will say, ‘It’s a business transaction.’ Some will say, ‘I know what human trafficking is, and that’s not what’s happening here. There is no pimp.’ The customers buy into the false narratives. They believe the lie that the young girl wants to be there.’’

A year ago, the Indianapolis Star ran a 10-part series on human trafficking. One piece was dedicated to a court-ordered program for sex buyers. A reporter asked the men if they ever thought about the back stories of the girls and women they purchased.

A once-a-week customer, arrested for buying sex from a police officer posing as a 15-year-old, said, “I don’t want to know how the sausage is made.”

As for Helms, she spent two years under her brother’s control. A high school teacher finally acted on his suspicions and notified authorities. Children Services removed Helms from her home and placed her with a foster family. The brother was sentenced to six years for sexual imposition.

Perkins turned her life around after being arrested for the last time in 2010. She submitted to a counseling and recovery program created by Franklin County Municipal Judge Paul Herbert. She started working in the county prosecutor’s office before becoming Herbert’s bailiff. Perkins, who’s regained custody of her son, frequently speaks about her life in human trafficking with hopes of helping others.

“I never knew what to do with my feelings,” she said. “All I did was put something on top of them like alcohol and drugs. Now, it feels like I have control over my life.”

Michelle and Hue Jackson were present at the July 17 ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Hue Jackson Respite Services for Recovered Survivors of Human Trafficking. (Courtesy of the Hue Jackson Foundation)

‘It’s happening everywhere’

Hue Jackson answered 10 minutes’ worth of football-related questions last Thursday after the first day of Browns training camp.



A few moments later, he spoke on a subject seldom discussed by NFL head coaches.



“I just don’t think people understand it,” Jackson told The Athletic in regard to human trafficking. “They don’t understand the signs of it and how it occurs. It’s happening in families, it’s happening in neighborhoods, it’s happening everywhere. It’s right around the corner. People don’t get that.”

The Hue Jackson Foundation was established a year ago by the coach and his wife, Michelle. It donated $250,000 to fund the Hue Jackson Respite Services for Recovered Survivors of Human Trafficking, which is part of the Salvation Army of Greater Cleveland’s Harbor Light Complex.

Thanks to the efforts of the family, a six-bed safe house has grown to an 18-bed facility. The remodeled 4,500-square-foot haven includes counseling and 24-hour nursing care as well as medically supervised drug and alcohol detoxification and outpatient therapy.

“I don’t look at it in a prideful manner at all,” said Jackson, the father of three daughters. “I want more beds. I want to help more people. I want people to understand the epidemic that’s going on. Let’s fix it.”

Among the many obstacles law enforcement and advocates face is getting survivors into stable environments so they are not compelled to return to the streets, massage parlors and strip clubs where trafficking flourishes. More than 90 victims in the Cleveland area have come forward this year alone, but many others are afraid or unwilling to take the step.

“Why aren’t there more prosecutions?” Lewis-Johnson said. “Well, these are very complicated cases. Law enforcement sometimes lacks the resources, and often victims get snatched right back up by traffickers. That’s why securing safe places is so vital. Their stories are so hard to pin down when you have been through such trauma.”

RAHAB offers 10 beds for adult women in an undisclosed 30-acre property where survivors train horses and do yoga as part of their recovery process. A juvenile house, which will accommodate up to 18 girls, is set to open in the fall.

Lewis-Johnson and Morgan, the sheriff’s deputy, have dedicated the past 10-plus years to curbing the threat. They have seen athletes and coaches perform many charitable acts, but none strictly devoted to human trafficking.

At the July 17 ribbon-cutting ceremony in Cleveland, Jackson said the foundation is producing a training video with hopes of distributing it throughout the NFL.

“I ask every NFL team to stand up for those who cannot stand alone,” the coach said.

Jackson said the issue is personal to him but declined to reveal in what ways.

“It’s just something we have witnessed firsthand,” he added. “I just know what it is and how it works.”

‘In God’s hands’

Sister Barbara Catalano’s visit to the Hall of Fame lasted roughly 15 minutes Monday.

The nun said the executive she had hoped to meet, vice president of operations and facilities Kevin Shiplett, was unavailable at the time. It’s worth repeating that Catalano did not call ahead and this week marks the busiest on the HOF calendar.

However, The Athletic has sent multiple emails in recent weeks to Hall of Fame officials seeking an interview about human trafficking without receiving a reply. Catalano said she left her pamphlets and bag of soap bars with an attendant and was given Shiplett’s business card. She wrote him an email and hopes to get a response in the coming days.

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Catalano said as she walked from the Hall of Fame.

Her trip to Firestone Country Club on Tuesday proved more fruitful. She and a friend sat down with general manager Steve Carter, Catalano said.

“He told us they would pass out the (warning sign) cards to their employees and would be on the lookout for signs of it,” she said. “He also said they would put the soap in the lavatories.”

The news delighted Flores, who through her travels and contacts said she’s heard rumblings about unsavory late-night conduct in houses that are rented out during some PGA events. These homes are not property of the tournaments, Flores stressed, but sit either along or nearby the courses.

“These big businessmen, they entertain each other,” she said. “They get these big houses for the week. They have their private chefs come in and bring in women, too. They don’t need hotels. These men don’t know if these women are being trafficked. They just assume they are doing it because they want to.”

Flores continues to expand her list of events marked for soap distribution. This year, volunteers will canvass Columbus before the All American Quarter Horse Congress, which runs from Oct. 2-28. The four-week event attracts more than 650,000 people, according to its website.

Catalano doesn’t need crowds of that size or events of that magnitude to act. Every two months she rounds up helpers to offer bars of soap to Akron-area hotels.

Reached by phone late Wednesday afternoon, the nun was asked what she achieved with her trips to the Hall of Fame and the golf course.

“I guess we’ll wait and see,” the sister said. “You hope for the best, but I guess the best way to put it is that it’s in God’s hands now.”

— Reported from Cleveland, Columbus, Massillon, Akron, Berea and Canton

Top photo: Sister Barbara Catalano (David Richard)