{"id":97519,"date":"2026-01-26T23:03:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T23:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/97519\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T23:03:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T23:03:11","slug":"woman-convicted-of-trafficking-child-for-rape-in-lehigh-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/97519\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman convicted of trafficking child for rape in Lehigh County"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Catasauqua <\/a>woman has been convicted of all charges in the human trafficking and rape of a child.<\/p>\n

Julie Acosta, 41, was found guilty Friday of felony rape of a child; two counts felony trafficking in individuals; two counts felony sexual exploitation of children; and two counts misdemeanor simple assault. <\/p>\n

Acosta additionally was found guilty of felony intimidation of a witness when she contacted the victim in the rape case<\/a> and asked the child to lie.<\/p>\n

Acosta\u2019s co-defendant, Joshua Martel, 32, of Allentown, previously pleaded guilty to felony rape of a child, felony trafficking in individuals and felony statutory sexual assault charges involving a second victim. Martel was sentenced to serve 21 to 50 years in state prison. <\/p>\n

Acosta\u2019s conviction came down after a three-day jury trial last week at the Lehigh County Court of Common Pleas. Acosta\u2019s bail was revoked and she remains incarcerated at the Lehigh County Jail. <\/p>\n

Acosta is scheduled for a sentencing hearing at 9 a.m. April 14. She faces a maximum sentence of 46 to 92 years in state prison and will be required to register as a sex offender for the rest of her life.<\/p>\n

Lehigh County District Attorney Gavin Holihan announced the verdict Friday afternoon. Edward J. Andres, the public defender representing Acosta, couldn\u2019t immediately be reached for comment Monday afternoon.<\/p>\n

The child was under the age of 13 at the time of the rape investigation in 2024.<\/p>\n

The victim told investigators sometime between April 23, 2024, and April 24, 2024, Acosta took her and her siblings to a hotel along Airport Road where they split a hotel room with Martel. <\/p>\n

At the hotel room, Martel gave Acosta $100 and two bags of crystal methamphetamine before Acosta left Martel alone with the victim. <\/p>\n

Martel sexually and physically assaulted the child. During the rape, the victim said she tried to get away, but Martel would not allow her to leave. <\/p>\n

After Acosta was arrested and arraigned on the charges in the child rape investigation, she was sent to Lehigh County Jail. <\/p>\n

While incarcerated from Feb. 9, 2025, to June 6, 2025, Acosta both called and used her jail-issued tablet to communicate with the victim despite being ordered by Lehigh County Children and Youth to not communicate with the child.<\/p>\n

Acosta also used another inmate\u2019s tablet to contact the victim and asked the victim to tell authorities she lied about the child rape investigation and to not cooperate. Acosta told the victim this in an attempt for Acosta to be released from jail, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n

The cases were investigated by Allentown Police Detective Suzanne Toth and Lehigh County District Attorney Detective Steve Furlong. The cases were prosecuted by Lehigh County Chief Deputy District Attorney Sara A. Moyer and paralegal Rachel Bard. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Catasauqua woman has been convicted of all charges in the human trafficking and rape of a child.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37772,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[23159,119,121,120,11281,23160,4329,23161,23162,4036,23163,4394,16888,4044,23164,23165,787],"class_list":["post-97519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-absence","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-bed","tag-colour","tag-day","tag-easy-retouch","tag-empty","tag-horizontal","tag-indoors","tag-jail","tag-nobody","tag-photography","tag-prison-bars","tag-prison-cell","tag-punishment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97519","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=97519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}