Osage County is a county of about 16,000 residents in eastern Kansas, located south of Topeka. Its county seat is Lyndon, and its most populous city is Osage City. Prostitution within the county has been well-documented back to the 1800s. One example includes a case in July 2008 when a search warrant executed in Carbondale resulted in the arrest of a woman on charges of prostitution and promoting prostitution. Officers from the Osage County Sheriff’s Office and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation executed the search warrant. The woman was booked into the Osage County Jail and released on her own recognizance to await formal charges. The search warrant and arrest came after a lengthy investigation.

To address the consumer-level demand for prostitution and sex trafficking, sex buyers have been arrested and their identities released to the public. For example, in April 2021, a man was arrested in Osage County on suspicion of human trafficking after he planned to meet with someone he believed to be a minor for the purpose of sexual abuse. The 49-year-old man was taken into custody and was booked into the Osage County Jail in Lyndon. The Osage County Sheriff’s Office was conducting an investigation into the online solicitation of a child by an adult when the arrest was made. As a result of the investigation, members of the Osage County Sheriff’s Office’s Criminal Investigation Unit took the suspect into custody. He was booked into the Osage County Jail on charges of aggravated human trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation of a child, and several illicit drug charges.