Print edition: 
Two months after Brian Guse paid more than $1,500 in fines for prostituting Wichita women through an escort service, he was back on West Kellogg doing it again.
Now, Guse has gone from being a misdemeanor offender to a convicted felon, after pleading guilty to promoting prostitution Tuesday morning in Sedgwick County District Court.
Guse, 29, could face felony probation to nearly three years in prison when he returns to court for sentencing in August. Kansas law allows felony prosecution for pimps on a second offense.
District Attorney Nola Foulston said her office is emphasizing prosecuting the pimps who exploit women for money and the customers who pay to have sex with them. Two so-called johns face lengthy prison sentences in two cases, accused of paying for sex with minors.
Sedgwick County is one of few places in the country pursuing charges against pimps and johns, as law enforcement looks at redefining how it approaches the sex trade in America.
"We are actively using all of the resources we can to take and prosecute these cases, and law enforcement in these instances have done a sensational job," Foulston said.
Prosecutors say Wichita police arrested Guse on Feb. 10, after he agreed to sell women to an undercover officer for sex. He had been advertising the services under Brian's Escorts in the Prospector, a local publication featuring a large advertising section for sexually oriented businesses, prosecutors say.
According to police reports, Guse drove two women, who offered prostitution services to the officer, to the 5800 block of West Kellogg.
About two months earlier, in December, Guse had pleaded no contest in Wichita Municipal Court on five prostitution-related charges.
Court records show Guse was fined $977 and $619 in court costs.
This is the third case the DA's office has prosecuted since December accusing a man of pimping local women for prostitution.
Two of the cases involve minors and also resulted in the arrests of men charged with purchasing sex from the girls.
"I'd like to see more johns prosecuted," Foulston said. "That's the reason we have prostitution. You have to go to the source."
Foulston said she has worked for years with women involved in the sex trade, and that she has come to understand how they end up being commercially exploited.
"The bottom line is poverty, lack of education, addiction," Foulston said. "They are young women, who didn't have focus. They didn't have family support. They didn't have job skills and they feel they have nowhere to go."
Such women are easily taken advantage of by men who see the women as an easy way to make money.
"You need to interpret it, why someone would go into prostitution, and I don't look down my nose at someone who is involved with that," Foulston said.
Foulston said she's seen women recovering from being sold on the streets and over the Internet who go on to college, have families and find better lives.
The YWCA runs Project Butterfly, which helps women trying to escape the sex trade.
Stacey Mann, executive director of the YWCA, says prosecuting pimps is more effective in stopping sex trafficking than punishing the women.
"It's better public policy and a better use of the resources to go to the source of the trafficking and exploitation," Mann said.
Foulston said she and her staff know they're just beginning to learn the extent of a problem that often stays hidden within the city.
"We have these cases because they are pending, but those are the ones we know about," Foulston said. "We know there are others out there that slip through the cracks."
