Scioto County has a population of roughly 75,000 and is situated along the northern banks of the Ohio River, about 30 miles northwest of Ashland, Kentucky. Its population center and government seat is Portsmouth. Commercial sex, including the sex trafficking of minors, has been reported within the county since the 1870s. A wide range of additional crimes occur in local prostitution transactions, including rape, drug offenses, obstruction of justice, and the production and possession of child sexual abuse materials (CSAM, often called “child pornography” in state laws).  For example, August, 2022, an offender was convicted in a Scioto County child sex trafficking case, on charges stemming from his exchanging drugs for sexual access to the children of drug-addicted mothers from 2019-2020.  The man was arrested on local charges during a human trafficking operation that involved a victim as young as 7 years old. Investigators learned that the man would sexually abuse children and documented the abuse in video recordings stored on flash drives. He would give illegal narcotics to drug-addicted parents in exchange for access to sexually abuse their children, and instructed the parents to sexually abuse their own children and recorded it to use as blackmail.  The man had been charged in a 13-count indictment with conspiring to sex traffic children (15 years up to life in prison), attempting to sex traffic children (15 years up to life), producing “child pornography” (15 to 30 years), possessing “child pornography” (up to 10 years), conspiring to obstruct a child sex trafficking investigation (up to 25 years) and conspiring to witness tamper (up to 20 years). Two women con-conspirators were caught digging holes on the grounds of the property to conceal evidence, including a memory card containing CSAM images, and were charged with conspiring to obstruct a child sex trafficking investigation (up to 25 years), destroying or removing evidence (up to five years), and making false statements to law enforcement (up to eight years). The Scioto County city of Portsmouth has also documented at least one case of prostitution-related homicide; in August 2014, the body of a teenage girl was pulled from the Ohio River in Portsmouth. In the weeks that followed, a 46-year-old man from Racine, Ohio was arrested and charged with murdering the teen after the two allegedly “met over the internet, where she had placed an ad on Craigslist.com.” The man was charged with “felony charges of tampering with evidence, abuse of a corpse, and two counts of compelling prostitution.”

In an effort to reduce commercial sex and trafficking in the area, the Scioto County Sheriff’s Office and Portsmouth Police Department have conducted reverse stings since at least 2008, if not earlier. Operations have been typically conducted at street level, with one or more female undercover officers posing as decoys. Law enforcement have continued to target prostituted women and girls for arrest, and often run sex buyer stings in parallel with stings targeting those who are sexually exploited. Once arrested, all individuals charged with prostitution-related offenses may have their names released to the public.

In July, 2022, five people were arrested in connection with a human trafficking ring in Scioto County, the county Sheriff’s Office announced. Investigators with the Southern Ohio Organized and Major Crimes Task Force found six victims. Deputies say the suspects were targeting minors for sexual activity. One man was charged with compelling prostitution, a felony, and was held in the Scioto County Jail on a $25,000 bond. Four men from Scioto County, ranging from their 40s to their 70s, faced misdemeanor solicitation charges.

Some arrests of sex buyers in the county have been result of investigating crimes against real victims, rather than from stings using undercover police as decoys.  For example, in June 2020, nine people were charged in relation to an alleged sex trafficking ring in Scioto County involving the exchange of drugs for access to children for sexual abuse. By August, 2022, a federal grand jury had convicted the final defendant in the case. One of the offenders was a 71 year old man who sexually abused male and female minors with the consent of the minor’s parents in exchange for illegal drugs. The man’s identity was included in news reports.