Theresa Flores plans to attend her 11th Super Bowl this year, but not necessarily because she is a football fan. 

Instead, the 57-year-old author, speaker and social worker will be in Glendale, Arizona, with volunteers from the SOAP (Save Our Adolescents from Prostitution) Project, which Flores founded to prevent human trafficking.

“A lot of kids are being trafficked during sporting events,” said Flores, who along with her team holds outreaches during large entertainment gatherings nationwide, training participants to recognize the signs of trafficking while distributing materials — including millions of bars of soap — labeled with the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline number: 888-373-7888.

Experts differ over the Super Bowl’s impact on human trafficking, but overall data shows that the problem has risen sharply across the globe. 

Some 50 million individuals worldwide were ensnared in modern slavery during 2021, according to the United Nations International Labor Organization Sept. 2022 report….