Delaware County, PA, is situated roughly equidistant between Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Wilmington, Delaware in southeast Pennsylvania. With a population of about 574,000 it is the fifth most populous county in Pennsylvania.  Its government seat is the city of Chester. Prostitution and sex trafficking have posed considerable problems in the county for years.  For example, in June, 2012 a joint task force with investigators from the Pennsylvania State Police, the FBI, the Delaware County District Attorney’s Office and Tinicum Police conducted the operation targeting prostitution in township hotels and motels. The investigation began earlier this year with a report of shots fired in a hotel near the Philadelphia International Airport. That investigation prompted police to take a closer look at prostitution in the area, and five women and one man were charged with prostitution and disorderly conduct. In February, 2013, two Upper Darby Township women who operated out of their homes were arrested on prostitution charges after neighbors complained about the traffic and investigators found their websites.

In April, 2017 a massive prostitution sting in Delaware County resulted in the arrests of five women in one night. Deputies found them on a website that was supposed to be barred from posting sex ads. Undercover deputies with The Delaware County Sheriffs Office said it only takes seconds to find prostitutes online and many will travel from anywhere in central Indiana to Muncie to make some money and often times, buy drugs.  At least two cases of child sex trafficking has been documented in Chester. In one instance, in May 2013, two city residents were charged with recruiting and pimping young women (at least one of whom was under the age of 18) in nearby Philadelphia using online advertisements. In a federal indictment, the traffickers were alleged to have “engaged in acts of physical violence and threats of physical harm to maintain the participation of females in their prostitution business. They [were] charged with sex trafficking of a minor and sex trafficking by force.”

To reduce commercial sex and trafficking activity, the Delaware County Sheriff’s Office has worked with local police to conduct reverse stings since at least 1994. Stings are conducted at street level, using a female undercover officer as a decoy. The operations have at times been large in scale, netting as many as 38 male sex buyers in a single investigation. To deter other would-be sex buyers, arrestees’ names and other identifying information are also released to the public.

In July, 2019 the annual report released by the Institute to Address Commercial Sexual Exploitation in Pennsylvania at Villanova University (Charles Widger School of Law) presented county-level data on arrests for purchasing sex in Pennsylvania (the state has separate statutes for buying versus selling sex) during calendar year 2018. The report’s data comes from the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts, and during 2018 there were three arrested sex buyers in Delaware County that were charged under the statute for purchasing sex (18 Pa.C.S. § 5902(e)). It is important to note that there may have been larger numbers of arrested sex buyers, since some cities and counties may choose to handle such cases by issuing civil citations for violating prostitution ordinances in local courts or magistrate’s offices, rather than charging with a state criminal offenses in district courts.