Cherry Hill is a township of about 71,000 residents, located southeast of Philadelphia in Camden County, New Jersey. Prostitution and sex trafficking are well-documented problems in the community and in surrounding areas. For example, in March 2014, a man was arrested and charged with human trafficking for allegedly keeping women captive at a Cherry Hill motel and using violence and threats to force them to engage in prostitution daily. In January 2015, law enforcement discovered a trafficking victim during a prostitution sting that had been similarly coerced to commit acts of prostitution by a trafficker “several times a day by using threats of violence.”

In their efforts to reduce prostitution in the area, the Cherry Hill Police Department appears to have targeted sex buyers on at least one occasion. In July 2013, four women involved in prostitution were arrested during a CHPD joint operation with the FBI and Mount Laurel Police targeting online prostitution. The investigation aimed to identify escorts using Backpage.com to solicit sex buyers, and was designed to reduce prostitution and related crimes around local hotels and motels. During the operation, law enforcement also arrested and charged two men with promoting prostitution; these arrestees were alternately described as escort “service drivers” and “johns” (i.e., sex buyers) in media reports. It remains unclear if they were sex buyers or pimps/sex traffickers. All of the individuals arrested during the sting had their names, ages, and addresses released to the public.