Sheboygan is a city of about 50,000 residents located in Sheboygan County, Wisconsin.  It is situated on the Western shore of Lake Michigan, about 40 miles north of Milwaukee.  Prostitution and sex trafficking activity have been documented in the city. For example, in 2017 charges were filed against two people who were arrested in Sheboygan on charges of misdemeanor prostitution, felony threats, and other charges stemming from an encounter in which a woman was hired to come to a man’s home on Illinois avenue twice for sex. The second time, as the woman was leaving the home, gunshots were fired and the woman’s alleged pimp began texting threats to kill the customer and his family for not paying. The sex buyer told Sheboygan Police he paid the woman for sex previously, then she began demanding increasingly higher payments and threatened him if he didn’t pay more.  The victim told police he’d met the woman at a bar in downtown Sheboygan and that he paid her $60 for sex. A week later, the pair arranged for another sexual encounter, but the woman demanded $100 and the man said he refused to pay.

Among local efforts to reduce commercial sex and trafficking have been the use of tactics addressing demand. For example, in 2017 the Wisconsin Attorney General announced the arrest of 25 people in sex trafficking stings across the state, including Sheboygan. The operations were focused in northern and eastern Wisconsin, and the state Department of Justice’s new Human Trafficking Bureau investigated people seeking children for sex and johns who solicit prostitutes.  The DCI said some of the people who were arrested were seeking the paid sexual abuse of 14-and 15-year-old children. Charges included soliciting a prostitute, pandering, soliciting a child for prostitution, attempted second degree sexual assault of a child, child enticement, using a computer to facilitate a child sex crime, exposing a child to harmful material, and exposing a child to harmful narrations. Three of the arrested suspects were from Door and Sheboygan Counties.