Colchester is a town in Chittenden County, Vermont, that has a population of about 17,500. It borders Burlington, Vermont’s most populous city.  Prostitution and sex trafficking are known to be widespread in the city and surrounding areas, and have been for decades. For example, in November 1981 a man was arrested and charged with operating a local prostitution ring under the guise of an escort service. The Chittenden County State’s Attorney reportedly considered whether to release the names of more than 20 men who appeared on a “client list” and may have patronized the alleged prostitution ring. Four women were also cited into court on prostitution charges, and police seized a list of more than 20 clients, some of whom reportedly were well-known in the Burlington area. A number of human trafficking investigations across Vermont between 2013 and 2016 — including in Burlington, Shelburne, Colchester, Williston, Rutland, and Bennington — involved massage spas and parlors serving as fronts for illegal activity. Authorities said that traffickers would bring young women to Vermont from overseas or other states and force them into commercial sex.  A federal grant application submitted in 2018 by the statewide Human Trafficking Task Force showed that the number of victims who received services in Vermont jumped by almost 400 percent between 2015 and 2017, from 31 to 150 people. The number of sex trafficking investigations doubled in that same period of time, from 31 to 64. In 2018, two Chinese citizens were arrested and accused of running a prostitution and sex trafficking ring in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. Federal authorities said Chinese women were forced to meet men for paid sex. The married couple used social media to recruit an unknown number of Chinese women, allegedly helping them obtain U.S. visas and flying them from China to airports across the U.S. The couple allegedly promised the women, who spoke little to no English, hundreds of dollars a day, and then advertised sex with them on BackPage.com. They allegedly transported the women to hotels across northern New England, including South Burlington and Colchester, Vermont. The pair faced several felony charges, including sex trafficking.