St. Cloud is a city of approximately 69,000 residents, located in central Minnesota’s Stearns County about 60 miles northwest of the Twin Cities. Numerous cases of prostitution and sex trafficking, often arranged online, have been documented in the community for many years. In a relatively recent example in 2019, a 25-year-old man was sentenced to 20 […]
Breezy Point is a city of less than 3,000 residents, located in central Minnesota’s Crow Wing County, north of Brainerd and Baxter. Although reports of prostitution in the city remain limited, law enforcement officials have taken a proactive approach to reducing demand for prostitution and have conducted at least one reverse sting in the community. […]
Baxter is a small city of less than 10,000 residents, situated in central Minnesota’s Crow Wing County, near Brainerd. In May 2015, officers with the Baxter and Brainerd Police Departments, and Crow Wing County Sheriff’s Office, conducted what they described as a “first-of-its-kind” operation targeting sex buyers in the community. Law enforcement placed a decoy advertisement […]
Owatonna is a small city of approximately 26,000 residents, located south of the Twin Cities and west of Rochester in Minnesota’s Steele County, at the juncture of Interstate 35 and U.S. Highways 14 and 218. In late March 2015, regional task force officers with the South Central Drug Investigative Unit conducted a reverse sting in Owatonna that […]
Fort Collins is a city of roughly 169,000 residents, situated 65 miles north of Denver in Larimer County, CO. For at least two decades, instances of prostitution, particularly those arranged online and conducted within city hotels and adult-oriented businesses, have been reported throughout the county. Numerous cases of prostitution, solicitation of prostitution, commercial sexual exploitation, […]
Albert Lea is a city of approximately 18,000 residents, located at the juncture of Interstates 35 and 90 in southeastern Minnesota’s Freeborn County, south of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul. Prostitution and sex trafficking activity have been well-documented in the city and surrounding areas. This activity and the problems and ancillary crimes it generates results […]
Eau Claire is a county of about 106,000 residents located in western Wisconsin, near Minneapolis. Child sex trafficking and prostitution have been documented within the county. For example, in April, 2021, a total of 34 charges were filed against two individuals arrested in Eau Claire after they tried to sell a child under the age […]
Bellevue is a suburb of about 150,000 residents in King County, WA. It is located across Lake Washington from Seattle. Prostitution and sex trafficking are well-documented problems in the city and have generated, in addition to complaints to police from the community, an array of serious felonies such as robbery, weapons offenses, and serial rapists […]
Troutdale is a city of approximately 17,000 residents in Northwestern Oregon. It is located in Multnomah County, OR, and is a suburb of Portland, OR. It is located just east of the city along the Columbia River and Interstate 84. Instances of prostitution and sex trafficking have been documented in the city. For example, residents […]
Superior is a city of approximately 27,000 residents, located along Lake Superior in northern Wisconsin’s Douglas County. Situated across the bay from Duluth, Minnesota, the cities comprise the Twin Ports metropolitan area. Prostitution has been documented in Superior and Duluth dating back to the early 1900s. For example, between 1951 and 1956, there was a federal campaign […]
Demand Forum is powered by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) and directed by Dr. Michael Shively, NCOSE's Senior Advisor on Research and Data Analysis. It was originally developed by Dr. Shively and Abt Associates with grant support from the National Institute of Justice. In January 2020 the website transferred to NCOSE. In January 2021, work began on a new grant from NIJ (#2020-75-CX-0011) to update and expand the content presented on Demand Forum.
