ALLENTOWN, Pa. – Julie Acosta faces multiple charges including sexual exploitation of children as her trial gets underway in Lehigh County.<\/p>\n
Investigators said she sold a child for cash and two bags of crystal meth at the Super 8 on Airport Road in Allentown in April of 2024.<\/p>\n
The child was then allegedly raped by then 31-year-old Joshua Martel after being left in a motel room with him.<\/p>\n
Investigators said the alleged victim told a trusted adult about what happened in July of the same year.<\/p>\n
The defense said during opening arguments that there is no evidence Acosta provided the child to Martel.<\/p>\n
The alleged victim testified that they saw Acosta exchange money and crystal meth with Martel before the rape allegedly happened.<\/p>\n
The child said Acosta and Martel looked at them for about 10 seconds.<\/p>\n
According to the alleged victim’s testimony, they could not hear what Acosta and Martel said to each other.<\/p>\n
Prosecution had the alleged victim describe the motel room and point to photos where certain things allegedly happened in the room.<\/p>\n
During opening arguments, prosecution said a woman who interviewed the alleged victim will be among those testifying.<\/p>\n
The prosecution also told the jury that they will hear about phone evidence between Acosta and Martel.<\/p>\n
Investigators said Acosta also intimidated the victim prior to trial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. – Julie Acosta faces multiple charges including sexual exploitation of children as her trial gets underway…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,232,31],"class_list":{"0":"post-93023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-allentown","8":"tag-_homepage_top_stories","9":"tag-allentown","10":"tag-allentown-headlines","11":"tag-allentown-news","12":"tag-allentown-area","13":"tag-crime"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}