Estimated read time: minutes. This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information.
Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story. They estimate more than , American children are being exploited. Just last week, police accused the mother of a murdered North Carolina girl of selling the 5-year-old for sex.
The problem is just as serious in Utah. Court records show 42 sex trafficking cases involving minors in the last decade. Officers think that is only a small fraction of the problem. In , an elite unit of police officers formed in Utah County to crack down on this very thing. Since many of these officers do their jobs by going undercover, KSL protected both their identities and their methods, but the exclusive police video we obtained shows this unit in action all across Utah County.
The group's mission: to root out prostitution and arrest those who go looking for it. According to unit member Sgt. Salt Lake City's done such a great job that prostitutes won't go into Salt Lake City, nor will johns, because the probability of them being arrested is so high. We'd like to have that here in Utah County. By commonality, McCombs referred to the fact that many of the so-called "johns" they arrest blend so easily into the community.
In less than a year, the Utah Valley Special Victims Unit has arrested nearly 50 in six undercover operations. Those arrested include a surgeon, a corporate attorney and a BYU graduate student. From the police videotapes, we hear this exchange between a law enforcement officer and a man in handcuffs:.
