Grand Chute is a city of about 23,000 residents near Appleton, WI in Outagamie County, WI. Prostitution and sex trafficking have been well-documented in the city and surrounding communities. Drugs, violence against individuals engaging in commercial sex, and child sex trafficking are often reported to occur as a result of the area’s commercial sex market.

To combat prostitution and sex trafficking in the area, local law enforcement agencies have targeted underlying demand for commercial sex. For example, the first web-based reverse stings were conducted between 2011 and 2012. It is not known if reverse stings were conducted there before 2011. Arrested sex buyers are ticketed by the town and must pay a $2,668 fine. The city has identified homeless teenagers who traveled or have been transported there from Wausau, Green Bay, Florida and Texas as prostituted persons, but most of those arrested in the community for selling sex arrive from the U.S. 41 corridor up from Milwaukee.

Grand Chute has reportedly become a preferred place for the sex trade, police and town officials contend. A major highway cuts through the town, which has about 20 hotels and motels. Between April 2011 and October 2012, Grand Chute police arrested 74 women and one man for prostitution, along with 107 men for soliciting prostituted women. Most of the arrests resulted from six large-scale stings involving up to eight officers who spent roughly two 12-hour days posing as prostituted women and sex buyers. In this timeframe, Grand Chute devoted about 1,150 man-hours and $21,000 in overtime and extra staffing for the stings.