Acrisure Stadium glows on the North Shore as seen from the West End Overlook Park, Wednesday, July 2, 2025. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)
Hundreds of thousands of visiting fans won’t necessarily draw sex trafficking, but advocates who contend with sexual violence are training community members to spot warning signs and take action.
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With the 2026 NFL Draft countdown clock ticking away, Pittsburgh is preparing for an influx of visitors, and local crisis center Pittsburgh Action Against Rape (PAAR) is concerned that may bring an uptick in sexual violence.
“We hope we’re wrong,” said Kelsey Leigh, PAAR’s director of external affairs and strategic initiatives. “We hope that we’re overstaffed for no reason, but certainly we’ve marked those dates on our calendars.”
In the months leading up to the April 23-25 draft, the nonprofit wants to expand on education prevention programs across the city in hopes of raising awareness among the public, the hospitality industry and sex workers about what violence looks like and how it can be intercepted. PAAR is in continued conversations with Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato’s office about engaging the community in the effort, Leigh said.
County spokesperson Abigail Gardner said in a statement to Pittsburgh’s Public Source that public safety is a priority for every large event.
“We have been in conversation with PAAR and are looking forward to more conversation about how we can provide resources and education to the public to keep people safe before, during and after the NFL Draft next year,” the statement read.
The draft is expected to draw 500,000 to 700,000 people, according to VisitPittsburgh.
Roughly 600,000 people attended the 2025 draft in Green Bay, Wisconsin, according to the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Detroit, which hosted the event in 2024, claimed 775,000 attendees, of whom around 230,000 traveled more than 100 miles. Both locales took steps to head off sexual violence.
Warning signs of sex trafficking:
- People who have a controlling partner or guardian who will not let them speak with anyone alone or who monitors their movements and finances
- Individuals who live where they work
- A person disclosing a desire to stop engaging in commercial sex work, but says they feel scared or unable to leave
- Unexplainable signs of physical abuse, neglect or health issues.
Large sporting events mean business for the sex work industry, said Theresa Nightingale, executive director of For Safer Sex Work Pittsburgh. That does not necessarily mean increased sex trafficking, despite common conceptions, she said.
“There are probably going to be a lot of exotic dancers who are doing this stuff legally and safely,” Nightingale said.
Preparation and decriminalization, Leigh said, are crucial to protect sex workers, hospitality staff and the public.
How training can curb sexual violence
Will McGinnis, director of education at PAAR, said an influx of tourists also means an influx of temporary service workers. PAAR’s Project Last Call program is designed to keep both customers and workers safe, McGinnis said. It trains hospitality workers at bars, restaurants and hotels to spot sexual violence and how to respond to it
Service industry jobs tend to lack formal violence prevention training, McGinnis said.
McGinnis said the training is three-pronged, including:
- How to spot potentially violent behaviors
- How to intervene and deescalate potential violence
- What to do when someone reports that violence is occurring.
Often, PAAR’s educators will run realistic scenarios for trainees, he said. PAAR runs the program year-round, and hopes to implement it more over the coming months, Leigh said.
For Keana McMahon, co-owner of 11th Hour Brewing in Lawrenceville, PAAR’s training helped give her staff “a dialogue to use if they feel funny in a situation.”
McMahon said the most important component of safety in the service industry is to have a plan, whether that means extra staffing, employing a bouncer or making sure the security cameras are working. It’s also important to her that the staff is supported.
“I am not a ‘customer is always right’ person,” McMahon said.
As PAAR preps for the draft, Leigh said the organization is willing to adapt their training to different settings, recalling a time where staff trained volunteer workers in half an hour at the Barrel & Flow Festival.
“Certainly an hour is ideal and we’re realists, and we know that maybe we get 10 minutes, and that would be huge,” she said. PAAR can train in-person or virtually, and fit its instruction into existing training programs.
PAAR plans to collaborate with the county and City of Pittsburgh as well as doing independent outreach, Leigh said.
City Department of Public Safety spokesperson Emily Bourne said the city is “definitely willing to partner” with PAAR and is in the process of figuring out what that would look like.
Last two draft hosts took precautions
Concerns in Pittsburgh mirror those of recent draft hosts.
In Green Bay this year, the nonprofit HER Alliance received $20,000 in funding from Brown County for education prevention, according to Wisconsin Public Radio.
With the funding, the nonprofit distributed informational materials about its services to businesses, restaurants and storefronts, garnering about 136 QR code scans, according to a funding report provided to Public Source. The organization also increased education prevention efforts in the months leading up to the 2025 draft, including several presentations and a TV campaign, according to the report.
During the week of the draft, HER received an uptick in hotline calls which reflected “the timely and critical connection made through prevention outreach,” the report stated.
In 2024, when the draft was held in Detroit, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel warned residents to be familiar with signs that a person was being sex trafficked, including unexplainable injuries or obvious fear of the person they are with, according to a press release.
Sex work decriminalization may enhance safety
According to The National Human Trafficking Hotline, individuals experiencing housing insecurity, substance abuse, those who have previously experienced abuse or are in the child welfare system, are at higher risk of being trafficked. The Polaris Project also offers industry-specific signs of sex and labor trafficking.
While media often reports concerns about sex trafficking around large sports events, there’s scant evidence that trafficking — as distinct from consensual sex work — is a byproduct of professional athletic events, according to the Anti-Trafficking Review.
Nightingale said often people conflate all sex work with trafficking. Decriminalization is key to actually keeping workers protected, she said, as it frees up time for officers to prosecute trafficking rather than consensual sex work.
“If we do see an increase of workers coming to the area during the draft or during any other kind of big events, we do not want to punish them,” Nightingale said. “We want to be able to make sure these people are safe.”
Decriminalization encourages sex workers to seek help from law enforcement without risk of arrest or lofty fines, said City Councilor Barb Warwick, who introduced the safer sex work legislation.
“If there is any population that … could conceivably be in the know about trafficking incidences, it would be our sex worker community,” Warwick said. “We want them to feel safe coming to law enforcement, both asking for help and providing help.”
In July, Pittsburgh City Council passed an ordinance that reduced penalties for prostitution, which police can now charge as a summary offense rather than a misdemeanor. Penalties would not exceed $100.
Leigh said she hopes that law enforcement and first responders will become familiar with the safer sex work ordinance and remember that PAAR is a resource for them to reach out to during the draft.
“We hope to be able to train everybody involved and offer our support and services in making this an inclusive and safe event for all,” Leigh said. “Those specifics are where we’re really looking to … our contacts in the city and county to help us understand what that looks like.”
Ember Duke is an editorial intern at Pittsburgh’s Public Source. She can be reached at ember@publicsource.org
This article first appeared on Pittsburgh’s Public Source and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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