Butler Township police began receiving reports in 2017 of a trucker approaching Butler County minors about sex work.

Four years later and with the cooperation of various county organizations, the trucker faces federal charges of sex trafficking and exploitation of a child, prosecutors announced in late April.

“This case doesn't occur very often,” said Butler Township Police Chief John Hays, a 41-year veteran with the police department. “Really, we never came across anything like this.”

What started out as sporadic reports against Roederick King, a trucker and former resident of Indiana, would expand from the county to the state and then the federal government.

The investigation began in the county and culminated with a federal grand jury indictment charging King with attempted sex trafficking, sex trafficking and sexual exploitation of a child.

As with all cases dealing with sexual crimes, the victims' identities will not be disclosed, and people who were interviewed for this story agreed to do so only under the condition that specific details weren't discussed.

The progress from the county incident to federal charges was not a straight line. But the path provided an insight into how various county organizations work toward gathering evidence and protecting victims in such cases.A majority of the alleged activities in this case occurred online in the ever-changing space of social media and communication applications such as WhatsApp, according to several people interviewed for this story.At first, Hays said, police received reports of King approaching young girls, but without solid evidence, they were unable to bring charges.“He would approach young girls at shopping centers in the township — we got complaints of inappropriate comments being made by the guy,” Hays said, noting they received their first call about suspicious activity on Feb. 11, 2017.“Our detectives initially interviewed the victim, and it took her a while to become more forthcoming,” Hays said.Without cooperation, Hays said their investigation came to a dead end in 2019.“She was a little reluctant to get involved, and then after a while she changed her mind,” Hays said. “We had a couple instances with him approaching women or young girls in the area, and he was a truck driver, so it didn't take a lot for us to realize what was going on.”But the investigation was able to gain momentum with the cooperation of the Butler Township police, Butler City Police Department, Butler Area School District and Butler County Children and Youth Services (CYS), according to the Department of Justice in a news release announcing King's indictment.Through CYS, township police received a child line report in November 2020 involving King and a minor victim.“These cases inherently are going to shock our workers,” said Charles Johns, director of CYS, “and the public, because some of this online activity of teens is something parents should be aware of. That's not to say every kid will end up doing this, but it does open your eyes to the width and depth that kids could get pulled in, even local kids.”

Hays said there are several alleged victims in King's case, and one of the victims lived in Butler Township. When the victim filed a complaint, Hays said, they began the initial investigation.Hays said King would drive through Pennsylvania and Ohio as part of his work, allowing him to stay mobile.“We thought it was some guy trying to solicit sex or something,” Hays said. “We didn't know the scale of it at first. We knew there were several incidents in the township, but because of him being a truck driver, it was a much bigger issue.”Johns said when CYS became involved with the case late last year, it had two workers in the office “entirely dedicated to sex trafficking investigations.”

Through their work, Johns, like Hays, said they realized the initial complaint was “just the tip of the iceberg.”He continued, “Once we got involved, it became a much bigger, more complicated case. We learned there's a lot more of a web of children than we might think.”The victims were all under 18 years old.“For the past several years, we've been hearing about the prevalence of trafficking or commercial sexualized exploitation of children,” Johns said. “But we didn't come face to face with it until recently with this case.”During that investigation, Johns said, the priorities of the department (protecting children) and the priorities of law enforcement (arresting suspected criminals with enough evidence for prosecutors) had to come together.“The multiagency aspect is an important note,” Johns said. “You have multiple disciplines coming together to help children, getting each others' languages to coincide and working to fulfill our mandates.”

In order to do that, Johns said, “We got pretty creative to assure safety of children without tipping off suspects.”For CYS, that meant “we needed to make sure we had eyes on the children and make sure they weren't being hurt.”Johns said they were able to do this for a while, allowing police to continue to investigate without tipping King off about their activity.For Johns and many other investigators, these kinds of crimes can feel personal.“I have a 16-year-old that I still see as a 2-year-old,” Johns said. “When we were 16, we thought we ruled the world, but looking back I didn't have a cellphone that could provide you instant access to people in the entire world. It's pretty cool you can talk to someone in Europe, but it should be a good old-fashioned pen pal, not someone who is going to victimize you.”And for many of these children, schools play an important role in preventing these crimes.“School districts are great partners in that we're working more and more each day to help keep kids safe,” Johns said. “We have a great group of school districts in this county that understand how important it is to work together for child welfare.”

Federal prosecutors noted the cooperation of the Butler Area School District in the King case. John Stepansky was largely behind the work as the district's head of cybersecurity.Stepansky did not want to reveal too much of his work to avoid tipping off would-be traffickers.Stepansky, a retired state trooper, primarily looks for possible dangers to the school, such as shooting threats.And in the process of watching for threats, Stepansky said, “We were seeing child exploitation.”With the information they gathered, they passed it along to law enforcement.“Social media is just how kids communicate today, and like every other source of communication, there will always be some activity that's nefarious,” Stepansky said. “In some ways, social media is helpful, because it gives us insight into what's going on with them.”Like others who participated in this investigation, Stepansky urged parents to become acquainted with smartphones and the latest forms of online communications that their children use.“Parents need to be aware of what their kids are doing,” Stepansky said. “A lot of parents are tentative to violate their privacy, but let's not forget that we're their parents, too. Privacy or protection: what comes first?”