Luzerne County District Attorney Sam Sanguedolce presents his annual report at the county courthouse Tuesday as seated county Council members Jimmy Sabatino, at left, and Greg Wolovich look at statistics on a screen.
Jennifer Learn-Andes | Times Leader
During Luzerne County District Attorney Sam Sanguedolce’s annual report this week, county Council Vice Chairman Brian Thornton asked if the DA sees any disturbing trends “that we should really be worried about.”
Sanguedolce immediately cited a “pretty steady increase” in child sex abuse cases in recent years, including those involving child sex abuse materials.
Part of this stems from the office’s growing expertise in detecting online offenders, he told council during its Tuesday work session.
“We’re better at sorting through the internet — some of it is on the dark web. Obviously, they don’t do it out in public,” Sanguedolce said.
Detection aside, the DA said he believes the problem is “getting more and more prevalent.”
“The more people are exposed to internet pornography and things, the more it’s likely to happen,” he said. “I wish I had some answer for that.”
He said the office is trying to “throw more resources at it” to get offenders “off the streets.”
Councilwoman Joanna Bryn Smith said Victims Resource Center representatives informed her human trafficking is on the rise in this area and asked Sanguedolce if he is seeing that trend.
“Absolutely,” the DA said. “Human trafficking is one of the most disturbing crimes for us.”
Human trafficking is a crime in which people profit by exploiting others to perform services, such as labor or sexual acts.
The challenge is often getting through to the victims, Sanguedolce said.
Sometimes the subjects “don’t even know they’re victims,” and many distrust law enforcement and don’t believe police will help them, he said.
“I’m talking about people who are severely beaten and sexually abused over the course of weeks, months, years,” he said. “When they encounter a police officer who tries to help, they run the other way.”
Sanguedolce said he has attended several conferences to better understand human trafficking, and the issue is increasingly discussed at the state and national level.
For every 10 human trafficking victims, law enforcement is only able to help one or two, he estimated.
“So not only is it on the rise, it’s very difficult to prosecute. It’s difficult to save the victims. They would rather be with their traffickers because of the psychological effects,” the DA said.
That psychological control can include a perpetrator’s threats to kill or start trafficking family members of the victim if the victim does not comply, he said.
“We’re doing everything we can, and a large part of it is just education,” Sanguedolce said, referencing police training on how to recognize trafficking victims and techniques to convince them to seek help.
For information about human trafficking resources or to report a suspected case, contact the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888 or text “HELP” to 233733.
Report highlights
Sanguedolce said his office’s child predator division received 421 cyber tips from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 2024, which he described as a “drastic spike” compared to the 199 in 2023 and 167 in 2022.
These are tips about suspected child abuse.
He said the increase is “troubling” but emphasized it often includes double and triple duplicates of the same allegation.
“That isn’t 421 faces,” he said.
Sanguedolce called on the state to address the system to screen out duplicates, saying they eat up staff time that should be devoted to actually investigating child abuse cases.
His office also referred 437 children to the Child Advocacy Center last year because they disclosed some form of physical, mental or sexual abuse.
An independent organization solely reliant on donations and grants, the center allows young crime victims to undergo one videotaped forensic interview so they “don’t have to relive this trauma repeatedly,” he said.
Sanguedolce said there was an unusually high count of 578 children referred to the center in 2023, but the 2024 figure is more in line with the typical referrals of 473 in 2022 and 457 in 2021.
He provided an age category breakdown of center referrals the last two years:
• Birth to six years old: 2023, 107 cases; 2024, 74 cases.
• Seven to 12 years old: 2023, 205 cases; 2024, 108 cases.
• 13 to 17 years old: 2023, 216 cases; 2024, 255 cases.
Providing a broader overview, Sanguedolce said the DA’s Office prosecuted 3,989 adult cases in the county Court of Common Pleas in 2024, compared to 3,749 the previous year.
Juvenile prosecutions were down from 430 in 2023 to 378 in 2024, he said.
Personnel
Sanguedolce touched on continued difficulty recruiting and retaining staff but said the situation is improving.
In 2024, his office spent $4.76 million on wages and benefits but returned an additional unspent $1.04 million to the county that had been earmarked for personnel, primarily due to vacancies.
The office hired 10 new workers in 2024, but 14 employees left, for a net loss of four, he said.
That’s still an improvement from 2023, when the office hired eight and lost 14, he said.
“We’re doing slightly better this year, but we’re still at a net loss, which is bad for us,” the DA said.
There are currently 18 vacancies. The openings: four full-time assistant district attorneys; four part-time ADAs; three division chiefs, which are supervising attorneys; one part-time drug task force detective; two full-time opioid detectives; three staff clerks; and one part-time DUI coordinator.
Information on county job openings is posted under the human resources career opportunities section at luzernecounty.org.
Reach Jennifer Learn-Andes at 570-991-6388 or on Twitter @TLJenLearnAndes.
