A former Delco child services caseworker got probation for coercing a client into sex work

A former Delaware County child services caseworker was sentenced Monday to six years of probation for coercing one of her clients to join a ring of sex workers with the promise of expediting her child custody case.

Candace Talley, 28, of Sicklerville, N.J., apologized to County Judge John Capuzzi and characterized her actions as a terrible mistake.

Though the sentence spared Talley from prison, the judge told her his decision was rooted in concern over the victim’s well-being: He didn’t want the woman to face a public criminal trial, he said, given the trauma she had already suffered.

“I don’t want you to think by giving you probation, I’m minimizing what you’ve done,” Capuzzi said during a hearing at the county courthouse in Media. “You took advantage of a woman in a bad mental and physical state who was trying to get her life back. You should know how hurtful that was.”

Talley pleaded guilty to promoting prostitution and human trafficking earlier this month.

» READ MORE: Former Delco child services caseworker is charged with human trafficking, promoting prostitution

Assistant District Attorney Christopher Boggs, who prosecuted the case, had asked Capuzzi to impose a “harsh sentence” for a crime he described as heinous.

“Unless the victim had been a child, I can’t imagine a more serious set of facts,” Boggs said. “The defendant used the situation with the victim’s children to leverage her back to a life of prostitution.”

In 2017, Talley, then newly out of college and a recent hire at the county’s Office of Children and Youth Services, began working with a woman seeking to regain custody of her children from foster care, prosecutors said.

The woman told detectives that Talley recruited her to join a ring of sex workers operating out of Upland, according to the affidavit of probable cause for Talley’s arrest. Talley promised her that she could make as much as $1,000 a day and that the ring had more than 2,000 customers.

The woman had previously been charged with prostitution and drug dealing, information investigators believed Talley gleaned from state records. In addition to the money, Talley promised to “help her with her children’s situation,” which she took to mean taking them out of the foster-care system, the affidavit said.

Talley also told the woman that she would help her pass all of her drug tests, regardless if she was using drugs. The woman, eager to get her children back, agreed and joined the sex ring, investigators said.

Text messages later recovered by investigators showed that Talley had an arrangement with an organizer in the ring to get 50% of the money earned by the sex workers, according to the affidavit. It was unclear how much money she made. She was not accused of pressing any other women to join the ring.

Talley was fired in 2017, shortly after the woman reported her to county officials. After a little more than two years of investigation, detectives arrested her in January 2020.

Her attorney, Troy Archie, said he felt Capuzzi’s sentence was appropriate, given the circumstances of the case.

“It was a serious case, and we feel bad for the victim,” Archie said. “We never tried to downplay the seriousness of what happened. It was a big mistake, and she is paying for it.”