St. Johnsbury is a community of about 6,000 residents in northeastern Vermont. Prostitution and sex trafficking have been well-documented in the city for years. For example, in February, 2013, a man was sentenced in U.S. District Court for arranging customers for prostituted women who would perform sex acts at various Vermont dairy farms on up […]
Signal Hill is a city of approximately 12,000 residents, located near Long Beach and Lakewood in Los Angeles County, CA. Problems associated with the local commercial sex market include child sex trafficking and cases of men raping and battering prostituted women in the community. In the early to mid-1990s, in response to numerous complaints over […]
Minot is a city of about 48,000 residents situated along Highway 2 in Northern part of North Dakota. It’s the county seat of Ward County. Prostitution and sex trafficking, including through illicit massage businesses, are well-documented problems in the county, generating numerous complaints to police from the community. The problems increased substantially due to the […]
Belmont is a small city of approximately 15,000 residents, located just west of Charlotte in Gaston County, North Carolina. Among the problems associated with local prostitution, there have been cases of sex buyers being robbed. In an effort to reduce prostitution activity in the city, the Belmont Police Department has conducted at least one street-level […]
Dickinson is a city of approximately 23,000 located along Interstate 94 in western North Dakota. It is the county seat of Stark County. In 2006, the discovery of untapped oil reserves in the Williston Basin drastically changed the entire state of North Dakota. Many men—often either single or with families in other states—moved to fill […]
Inwood is a census-designated place of approximately 7,000 residents, located near Winter Haven and Lakeland in Polk County, Florida. The Polk County Sheriff’s Office has conducted many street-level reverse stings in the area due in part to frequent complaints from residents, business owners, and public officials. Notably, in February 1989, PCSO deputies staged a sex […]
Cary is suburb of Raleigh, North Carolina, with over 176,000 residents. Prostitution is a well-known problem in the city, and has been linked to local cases of child endangerment and adult and minor sex trafficking. For example, an undercover operation at a Cary motel near RDU International Airport resulted in police charging a 21-year-old man […]
Riverside is a small hamlet of less than 3,000 residents, located within Southampton on central Long Island, New York. Cases of prostitution and child sex trafficking have been reported in the community. Riverside has also documented at least one robbery related to prostitution; in October 2014, “men armed with guns and machetes stormed a home […]
Zanesville is a city of about 25,000 residents located along Interstate 70 just east of Columbus in the state of Ohio. Police have fielded continuous complaints about prostitution from residents and businesses, and sex trafficking is known to occur in the city. In 2007, dental records identified the skeletal remains of a 21-year-old Zanesville resident who […]
Ypsilanti is a city of approximately 20,000 residents, situated in Michigan’s Washtenaw County just east of Ann Arbor. Prostitution has posed persistent and visible problems in the community for several years, and have generated numerous complaints from local residents and business owners. Cases of child sex trafficking, as well as targeted sexual assaults on persons […]
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.
