METAIRIE, La. — While the city prepares for the exciting events and 125,000 visitors for the Super Bowl in February, federal law enforcement has another issue to plan for, preventing sex trafficking.
And one man in Metairie is helping survivors in a special way, and now needs your help.
And that help could win you tickets to the big game.
“Our bodies were branded. We had no say so over our bodies," said a sex trafficking survivor. " We were told what to do, what to wear, where to go, what to, you know, we weren't allowed to think for ourselves, or have choices, like we weren't even allowed to use the bathroom."
Last year a sex trafficking survivor explained the years of terror she escaped.
Scott Vaughan, owner of First Down Health Care and Aesthetics, showed us how he was helping survivors, by donating all laser treatments to remove barcodes and tattoos forced upon them.
“What a trafficker will do, he will sell a boy or a girl," said Scott Vaughan, founder of the nonprofit, Unbranded. "From, to another trafficker, and then that trafficker puts his brand on that girl, just like a rancher brands his cattle.”
Today, with his therapy dog Lucy at their side, he's done more than 300 treatments on 40 survivors.
“First, of all, they tell me how I'm changing their life,” Vaughan said as he teared up. “And it gets me emotional as it does now, because as I tell them you don't know how much you're changing my life.”
Scott now has a goal to help thousands of survivors across Louisiana who can't get to his Metairie office. So, he worked with the laser company to design a small, lighter machine, that could take the vibrations of travel.
“The statistics from 2022 to 2023, there was a 77 percent increase in cases of sex trafficking here in the state of Louisiana.”
Scott, his father, and his grandfather were all SEC football officials. His dad was an NFL referee too. So, he asked the NFL Referee Association to support him, and they voted unanimously to donate 10 Super Bowl tickets to his cause, called Unbranded.
You can get your raffle tickets now. They're $200 apiece. If you get six, it will cost you $1,000. So, you get a little bit of a break on cost, and they're only selling 1,500 so that increases your chances of winning.
He’s also told Homeland Security that Unbranded wants to help in any way possible.
“The Super Bowl is an event where sex traffickers come and set up. So, the FBI is very involved trying to stop that from happening,” explained Vaughan.
Now you can be involved too. There will be five winners in the Jan. 20 drawing. Each winner will get two tickets.
For raffle tickets: Unbranded.org.
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