Kent County is a county of about 653,000 residents in southwestern Michigan, with a county seat in Grand Rapids. Prostitution and sex trafficking have been well-documented in the county for decades. Problems related to the local commercial sex market include cases of drugs involved in prostitution, attempted sex trafficking through violence and assault, child sex trafficking, rape of a minor with a learning disability, and the murder of a sex buyer by a pimp. There has also been at least one serial killer who targeted Grand Rapids women engaged in prostitution, and other cases of murder and rape of victims of commercial sex. In one example, a man convicted of murdering a teenage girl escaped from prison and while on the run murdered two additional people and raped at least three prostituted women. In August, 2022, a man accused of raping and killing a local woman in 1996 is expected to appear before a Kent County judge to be formally charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct, felony murder and open murder. The charges stem from the death of a woman whose body was found along 76th Street near Kraft Avenue in Caledonia Township in October, 1996. She had been raped, strangled and stabbed.  The victim was the mother of two who was pregnant with a third child when she was killed. She struggled with addiction and turned to prostitution to fund survival and her drug abuse. To combat persistent sex trafficking and all the related crimes in the area generated by the sex trade, local law enforcement and non-profits launched a task force in February 2022. The Salvation Army teamed up with the Kent County Sheriff’s Office and Solutions to End Exploitation to form their Human Trafficking Task Force.