Another Pennsylvania county has recently charged a criminal defendant using a provision in the Commonwealth’s comprehensive human trafficking statute that was enacted in 2014. In a press release dated December 5, 2016, Delaware County District Attorney Jack Whelan announced that Matthew Jeffrey Sipps, a resident of Aston Township, was charged with patronizing a victim of sexual servitude, concealment of the whereabouts of a child, and corruption of a minor. He was arrested on December 5, 2016 with bail set at $50,000 after an extensive joint investigation conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Delaware County Criminal Investigation Division Child Abuse Unit and the Aston Township Police Department.
Authorities claim that in March 2015 Sipps accessed Backpage.com, and arranged to buy sex from a minor at a hotel in Marple Shade, New Jersey. He allegedly returned on four separate occasions to buy sex from the 16-year-old girl. According to the press release, the victim remained in Sipps’s home for approximately one month until she was able to use Sipps’s cell phone to contact her mother in Rhode Island. The victim was a runaway and was reported missing by her family.
To successfully convict Sipps of the charge “patronizing a victim of sexual servitude”, the Commonwealth must prove the following elements beyond a reasonable doubt: (1) Sipps engaged in a sex act or performance with the victim, (2) with the knowledge that the sex act or performance was a result of the victim being subject to human trafficking. The knowledge element is an especially crucial aspect of this charge; if the prosecution cannot prove that Sipps knew the minor was a victim of human trafficking, there will be no conviction. The CSE Institute considers the mens rea requirement of knowledge a legislative flaw in the human trafficking statute. Instead, we would like to see the legislature amend the statute to include other forms of mens rea such as “reckless disregard” or that the defendant “should have known” the circumstances under which he was purchasing sex from a child. Nevertheless, according to the press release, there is evidence showing that Sipps knew the victim was a minor, which makes the child a per se victim of trafficking.
We encourage the prosecutors to utilize Pennsylvania’s human trafficking statute to its fullest extent when appropriate in order to ensure all offenders of sex trafficking are held accountable. Therefore, we believe Sipps should be charged as both a sex buyer and a trafficker. We would encourage the Delaware County District Attorney’s office to bring additional charges against Sipps under the new human trafficking law, specifically trafficking in minors and involuntary servitude.
With respect to the trafficking charge, state and federal law both unequivocally equate the culpability of sex buyers and traffickers. In Pennsylvania, it is a felony to recruit, entice, solicit, harbor, transport, provide, obtain or maintain an individual if the person knows or recklessly disregards that the individual will be subject to involuntary servitude. The federal law is even broader, because it includes additional acts which make it a felony to recruit, entice, harbor, transport, obtain, advertise, maintain, patronize, or solicit a person knowing or recklessly disregarding that the person will be forced to engage in a commercial sex act. Here, according to the press release, Sipps is alleged to have solicited the victim’s services from Backpage.com. He allegedly patronized commercial sex from her. Sipps allegedly transported the victim to his home where he allegedly maintained and harbored her for weeks of sexual servitude.
Secondly, in terms of an involuntary servitude charge, under Pennsylvania law, it is a felony to knowingly subject an individual to sexual servitude by any means of force, fraud, or coercion, which are listed in the statute. Among those listed are kidnapping, physically restraining, threatening to cause serious harm, and using any scheme, plan, or pattern intended to make the victim believe if she does not engage in the sex act, she will suffer physical harm. Here, there is a strong basis to argue that Sipps kidnapped the minor victim. Furthermore, according to authorities, Sipps confined the 16-year-old victim to a room and threatened her to stay quiet. However, it is important to note that although these alleged facts suggest certain means were utilized by Sipps, the prosecution does not need to prove any means of force, fraud, or coercion in any case where the victim is a minor.
Accordingly, we commend the Delaware County District Attorney’s Office for identifying Sipps’s offenses as a human trafficking violation, and we encourage them to use their discretion to charge additional offenses that may be appropriate in this case.
Sadly, Sipps was not the only perpetrator involved in the trafficking and exploitation of this particular child. Sometime in February 2015, the victim was originally transported from Rhode Island into New Jersey by Raymond Justis. Justis knew that the victim was underage and a runaway, but that did not stop him from putting her to “work” for him. On March 30, 2016, in a federal case prosecuted by CSE Institute Advisory Board member Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle L. Morgan, Justis pled guilty to sex trafficking of a minor and was sentenced to 14 years in federal prison.
We applaud Assistant U.S. Attorney Morgan and the United States Attorneys Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania for this successful prosecution and their ongoing efforts to combat commercial sexual exploitation in the Commonwealth. Additionally, we commend the collaborative work conducted by state and federal law enforcement on the investigation of this case.