East Peoria is a city in Tazewell County, Illinois, with a population of approximately 23,000. East Peoria is a suburb of Peoria and is part of the Peoria Metropolitan Statistical Area, located across the Illinois River from downtown Peoria. Prostitution activity has been well-documented throughout Tazewell County, including in East Peoria. For example, in May 2015, an undercover police investigation led to the prostitution arrest of a woman working at an East Peoria massage parlor. The woman was released with a notice to appear in Tazewell County Circuit Court on a misdemeanor charge of prostitution. The arrest came after the city police department received “a number of complaints” about possible prostitution at the business, which the woman, who spoke little English, listed as her home address. Among the more serious crimes associated with the local commercial sex market are sex trafficking and the serial killing of prostituted women. In 2018, and East Peoria mother was killed after threatening to tell police that her daughter was in prostitution.

Consumer-level demand provides the revenue stream for all prostitution and sex trafficking, and the demand reduction tactics of sex buyer arrests and public disclosure of sex buyer identities have been employed in East Peoria. Some local arrests of sex buyers in the county are the result of allegations of crimes against real victims, rather than the product of reverse stings using undercover police decoys. For example, in September 2018, an East Peoria man was arrested for soliciting a homeless minor for “juvenile prostitution,” coercing her into sexual abuse by threatening to kick her and her mother out of his home. The man was tried and found guilty in a Tazewell County jury trial. He was convicted of seven charges that included aggravated criminal sexual assault while in a supervisory capacity of a minor and soliciting to promote juvenile prostitution. He was sentenced to 28 years in prison. He had preyed on the 16-year-old girl for about seven months after she and her mother moved into his home, the girl testified. The mother and daughter had lived in their car, and the man took them into his home, and the girl’s mother found house cleaning work. He soon demanded rent from them and began sexually touching the girl as she watched TV or read books for her homeschooling courses. The affidavit stated the 16-year-old homeless girl was afraid of being kicked out and living out of the car again if she didn’t submit to him.