Earlier this month, two men pleaded guilty to charges related to separate sex buying/human trafficking incidents in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. On June 5, William Stum, 62, of Enola, pleaded guilty to one count of criminal attempt to patronize prostitutes. Two days later, Corey Johnson, 36, of Mechanicsburg, pleaded guilty to one count of patronizing prostitutes and one count of possession of a small amount of marijuana.
Stum’s conviction arose from an incident in December 2023, when Stum attempted to solicit sex from an ex-paramour’s daughter in exchange for money. The facts indicate that the victim picked Stum up from his residence and the two traveled together to a grocery store, where Stum commented that he would buy the victim alcohol but she would have to stay the night. The two then went to the gym where the victim reported that Stum smacked her on her buttocks during her workout. Once they returned to Stum’s residence, Stum made sexual comments to the victim and attempted to coerce her to engage in sex with him in exchange for $500 cash. The victim refused and reported this encounter to the Hampden County Police Department.
On January 5, 2024, the victim met up with Stum at a pizzeria in Mechanicsburg, where Hampden County police recorded the conversation between the two with the victim’s consent. During their interaction, Stum again offered to pay the victim $500 for sex and expressed his desire to record her performing sex acts on him in his kitchen. The police arrested and took Stum into custody shortly after. Bail was set and posted at $500. Stum’s sentencing is scheduled for August 6, 2024.
Johnson’s conviction arose from the Cumberland County Human Trafficking Task Force’s investigation, Operation Impact VI. As the CSE Institute previously reported, Operation Impact and its counterpart OPERATION: Closed2Trafficking target hotels and commercial establishments posing as massage parlors and sex buyers seeking to purchase sex. Since 2022, the Cumberland County Human Trafficking Task Force has conducted 6 operations as part of Operation Impact Demand. According to Cumberland County District Attorney Seán M. McCormack, the purpose of these operations is to identify and arrest sex buyers. Since the start of OPERATION: Closed2Trafficking and operations like it, 60 individuals have been arrested for their attempts to exploit women throughout south-central Pennsylvania.
On September 29, 2023, pursuant to Operation Impact VI, undercover Hampden County police officers were working a trafficking/prostitution detail at the Holiday Inn Express in Mechanicsburg. The undercover officers were contacted by Johnson, who offered the undercover officers money, marijuana and alcohol in exchange for sexual acts. Pursuant to his guilty plea, Johnson was sentenced to 12 months of probation on June 7, 2024.
As stated by DA McCormack, “The fuel that feeds human trafficking is the money customers pay for commercial sex.” Indeed, to eradicate trafficking, we must focus on the demand: the buyers. All profits made by sex traffickers come out of the wallets of those who purchase sex. Sex buyers drive sex trafficking by putting money into the pockets of sex traffickers who exploit individuals trapped in the life.
The CSE Institute commends the efforts of the Cumberland County District Attorney’s office, District Attorney McCormack, Hampden Township Police Department, the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office, and the investigators on their work to combat commercial sexual exploitation and human trafficking by targeting the sex buyers. Arresting sex buyers who seek to exploit vulnerable populations is a key part of reducing the demand for commercial sexual exploitation.
The CSE will continue to monitor this development in Cumberland County and provide updates.
All views expressed herein are personal to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law or Villanova University.