More than 100 people were arrested in Cook County as part of a national Super Bowl sex-sting sweep, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart announced. Thirty law enforcement agencies from 15 states took part in the National Johns Suppression Initiative (NJSI), which ran from Jan. 18-Feb. 5 (Super Bowl Sunday). Nationally, a total of around 750 arrests took place, including 723 sex buyers (or “johns”) and 29 pimps or sex traffickers.

In Illinois, 101 sex buyers were arrested. These included six sex-buyers arrested in Lansing and 11 in Matteson. The Arlington Heights police department arrested 11 sex buyers and the Lake County Sheriff’s office arrested two. Three adult victims were “recovered” by Cook County Sheriff’s police. The sheriff’s department offers immediate services to women and men picked up for prostitution.

In Houston, where the Super Bowl was held, police arrested 105 sex buyers. One sex-seller was allegedly shot in the head by a local sex-buyer. Two suspects were arrested. Three sex buyers were caught trying to solicit a child over the Internet and one man had his four-year-old son with him when he was arrested. The Harris County Sheriff’s Dept. arrested 178 sex buyers including a high school principal, a college professor and a fireman, the sheriff’s report said.

The NJSI was started by Dart in 2011, to “bring further attention to the tragic and exploitive nature of the sex trafficking industry,” Dart’s office said in a statement. In five years, more than 6,500 sex buyers and traffickers have been arrested across the country.

Since 2011, Dart’s office has kept track of trends in arrests, which were released in a report, “Buyers and Sellers: A window into sex trafficking.”  Researchers at local law enforcement agencies collected anonymous survey data from 3,500 people arrested for prostitution, whether sex worker or sex buyer. The data was collected at locations across the country, including Seattle, Las Vegas, Boston and Chicago, Dart’s report said.

According to volunteer surveys, the most commonly occurring sex-buyer is male, Caucasian and over 30 years old with a job, the report says. Most sex buyers have a high school education or higher, the report says. Many are married.

As for victims, of the 172 women surveyed, 60 percent were African American while 29 percent were white. Six percent were Hispanic or biracial. Two-thirds of the victims answering the survey said they started in the prostitution trade under age 20, and 44 percent started as minors under age 18. Several reported starting at age 13 or younger, with one woman reporting that she started at nine.

The report also said that most victims surveyed reported experiencing violence and sexual assault, many of them being sexually assaulted as minors. Eighty-three percent of the victims reported use of illegal drugs and one fourth of the victims surveyed said they had a mental health condition, most often depression, anxiety or bi-polar disorder.

“The results illustrate how sex buyers and those they exploit can come from different social worlds. Sex buyers are often educated and of means while the victims are frequently burdened by addiction and coerced or forced into selling sex before they could even legally drink alcohol,” the report said.
Half of the women surveyed reported being recruited by a pimp, while others said they were recruited by friends or family members.

“The federal definition of sex trafficking is the use of force, fraud or coercion to induce someone, or keep someone, in prostitution,” the report said. “It is the Sheriff’s Office experience that sex trafficking is both pervasive within and inseparable from the illegal prostitution industry.”

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— Cook County makes more than 100 arrests in Super Bowl sex-sting —