Fayette County is a county of approximately 131,000 residents in southwestern Pennsylvania, adjacent to Maryland and West Virginia. Its county seat is Uniontown, PA. Prostitution and sex trafficking have been identified as substantial problems in the county, and residents have complained about unwanted solicitation and other negative effects of the local commercial sex market such as violence against individuals engaging in commercial sex. Cases investigated have included one large-scale escort service prostitution operation with records of over 1,800 calls from male sex buyers. Among the more serious issues associated with the local commercial sex market is child sex trafficking.

Not all arrests of sex buyers are the result of reverse stings, but are instead the product of investigating allegations against offenders with real victims. For example, in 2000, a large-scale escort service prostitution operation with records of over 1,800 calls from male sex buyers dismantled by Fayette County law enforcement led to the arrest of multiple sex buyers in the county. Although their names were not released until two years after the operation was dismantled, sex buyers were arrested by police as a result of this investigation. Some of the arrested sex buyers included doctors and county officials.

Employment loss is also a consequence of buying sex in the county. For example, in 2004, a Fayette County corrections officer accused of soliciting sex from a prostituted woman was suspended without pay. According to reports, the corrections officer and the prostituted woman were engaging in commercial sex in a church parking lot when they were located by three Uniontown police officers. The former officer allegedly picked up the prostituted woman on North Gallatin Avenue. The two stopped at a gas station, where the former corrections officer bought the woman a pack of cigarettes, a hot dog, a bag of chips, and a Mountain Dew. The two then went to the church parking lot, where the sex buyer allegedly offered the woman $20, but she refused it. She told police, “that the sex was a way of thanking him for the food.” County records indicated that the sex buyer was hired to work in the county jail on July 31, 2000, and was earning $13.23 per hour. As a result of his arrest, Warden Larry Medlock suspended the sex buyer without pay. The male sex buyer and the prostituted woman were charged with open lewdness and prostitution; both offenses are classified as third-degree misdemeanors. Their identities were included in reports by local media outlets.

In the Spring of 2016 a report was released by the Institute to Address Commercial Sexual Exploitation in Pennsylvania at Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law. The report presented county-level data on arrests for purchasing sex in Pennsylvania (the state has separate statutes for buying versus selling sex) during calendar years 2014-2015. The report’s data comes from the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts, and during 2014-2015 there were 14 arrests in Fayette 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 sex buyer arrests in that time period, since some cities and counties choose to handle such cases by issuing civil citations for violating local prostitution ordinances rather than charging with violating state criminal law.