Peter Moldovan IV, 31, of Holbrook, Pennsylvania, faces several criminal charges including trafficking in individuals, statutory sexual assault, corruption of minors, and more after allegedly paying a mother to have sex with her 15-year-old daughter in an Allegheny County motel last summer.
According to police, Moldovan met the victim and her mother at the Avalon Motel sometime in June 2016. The victim told police Moldovan paid her mother $20 to be able to spend the next several hours with her. After Moldovan made payment, he allegedly took the victim to a room in the motel and sexually assaulted her.
The Avalon Motel is no longer in operation after a fire necessitated condemnation. A local resident, Diana Leighton, was quoted saying the motel was a “horrible” place known for illegal activity.
Police interviewed Moldovan about this incident in March of 2017. According to a media report, the Greene County regional police and Greene County Sheriff’s Task Force arrested Moldovan on April 27, 2017 with the assistance of a confidential informant. Moldovan was arraigned the following day in front of Magisterial District Judge D. Glenn Bates. He remains in custody in the Greene County Prison on $50,000 bail.
It is still unclear how or why the meeting was arranged, though one news outlet reports that the victim told police Moldovan and her mother have been friends for several years. Police have not indicated whether the victim’s mother has been arrested or charged with any crimes. According to the alleged facts, under state law, the actions of both Moldovan and the victim’s mother constitute human trafficking.
In Pennsylvania, a person commits the felony crime of human trafficking if the person “recruits, entices, solicits, harbors, transports, provides, obtains or maintains an individual if the person knows or recklessly disregards that the individual will be subject to involuntary servitude,” -or in this case sexual servitude- or “knowingly benefits financially or receives anything of value from any act that facilitates any activity described” above.
Here, the victim’s mother allegedly transported and provided her daughter to Moldovan. A prosecutor would have to prove that the mother knew or recklessly disregarded that her child would be forced into sexual servitude by Moldovan. In addition, the victim’s mother allegedly benefited financially from trafficking in the transaction where she traded her daughter for $20. Accordingly, based on these alleged facts, the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office could charge the victim’s mother alongside Moldovan with trafficking in minors.
The CSE Institute applauds the Greene County Sheriff’s Task Force and Allegheny County law enforcement whose collaborative, investigative efforts led to the arrest of this dangerous person.
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 of Villanova University.