On October 6th, 2017, sex buyer, Sean Lewis was sentenced to six years in prison after being convicted of sex trafficking in Aurora, Illinois after attempting to buy sex from underage girls while traveling to Illinois from Pennsylvania on business. In August of this year, Lewis was found guilty after a jury trial of several felony charges including involuntary servitude of a minor, traveling to meet a minor and grooming. The Aurora Police placed an ad online for someone to pay for sex with underage girls. Lewis responded to the ad, arrived at the agreed upon hotel, paid in advance, and was promptly arrested by police. No underage girls were ever used as part of this sting operation.
While Lewis’ defense attorney attempted to argue that there were no “true victims” in this case and that Lewis was entrapped by the ad, the jury delivered a guilty verdict, after siding with Assistant District Attorney for Kane County, Illinois, Christine Bayer’s argument that these reserve sting operations help shed light on the demand-driven side of human trafficking.
The CSE Institute commends Kane County, Illinois for appropriately focusing on investigating buyers of sex who are perpetrators in human trafficking, as advised by the Nordic Model. Even though these reverse sting operations do not have actual victims, law enforcement does help prevent potential victimization of by people like Lewis, whose intentions to purchase sex drive the commercial sex industry and sex trafficking. Purchasing sex from minors IS sex trafficking according to human trafficking statutes. We hope that other jurisdictions will follow the lead of Kane County, Illinois and engage in similar demand-driven tactics and human trafficking statutes as a means to effectively eliminate commercial sexual exploitation. The Institute also hopes that the business community makes sure to set standards and policies to show their employees that engaging and promoting sex trafficking in unacceptable. We hope that raising awareness and engaging the business community as allies in the discussions about sexual exploitation and sex trafficking will end this insidious crime.
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.