California's Child Trafficking Bill Sort of Advances, But.... [UPDATED BELOW]

It’s alive, but it’s bleeding.

In a committee hearing late this morning, the California Senate’s Public Safety Committee voted to send Senator Shannon Grove’s SB 1414 to the floor — but with a long list of amendments that were made over Grove’s angry objections. SB 1414, as originally written, would have unambiguously made it a felony to solicit sex from a child, with potential prison terms up to two years and with mandatory registration as a sex offender. The bill remains alive, now, but it’s no longer clear what the final version might end up looking like. This morning, the motion to extensively amend was made by Senator Nancy Skinner, a former member of the Berkeley City Council.

No permalink is available, but you can find video of this hearing here by clicking on the link, then opening the archived video of the April 16 Public Safety Committee Hearing, then forwarding the video to 1:55:50.

Grove opened the discussion by calling her current bill the other component of a measure she got through the legislature last year, SB 14, which classified the trafficking of children for sex as a serious felony with enhanced penalties. The trafficking of a child, she argued this morning, takes two criminals, “a seller and a buyer,” and the new bill addresses the other party to the deal.

It was immediately clear how much controversy the bill is causing behind the scenes, because Grove opened with a description of the long discussions she’s been having with colleagues. Following those discussions, she said, she wasn’t willing to amend the bill to exclude buyers who solicit 16 and 17 year-olds; without naming names, she said she rejected the framing from colleagues that prostitutes at that age can give consent. The bill, she said, isn’t about relationships; it’s about “buying children for sex.”

“A minor can never consent to sex trafficking,” Grove argued.

With the usual four minutes allotted in committee for witness testimony, Grove’s two witnesses spoke about their work with trafficked minors. Vanessa Russell, the founding director of Love Never Fails, was a dance teacher who lost a 15 year-old student to traffickers, and now provides housing for recovery to teenagers who have escaped trafficking. Sandy Esparza, who was trafficked as a foster child, said she was sold to men for sex starting at the age of 14. “I was terrified,” she said, “and I needed help that never came.”

And then the objections began. Natasha Minkser from Smart Justice California warned that a bill that penalizes adults who buy children for sex “will be used to target the LGBT community in particular,” though she didn’t explain the connection. Another, representing the California Public Defenders Association, argued that existing laws allow prosecutors to punish adults who sexually exploit children.

Senators also objected, but some said that Grove had proved willing to address their concerns. Senator Steven Bradford expressed concern that the bill, in its original form, didn’t require that buyers know they were soliciting a minor. He also objected to the requirement that buyers register as sex offenders, accepting Grove’s offer to make registration a requirement only for repeat offenders.

And then the backroom maneuvering began to become a bit clearer, as Grove said that she would offer both amendments but hadn’t been able to get the committee chair to agree to them before the hearing. Similarly, she said, she would happily amend the bill to ensure that teenagers couldn’t be charged for soliciting a minor, but she had also been unable to make that amendment prior to the hearing. “Our intent is not 18 year-olds,” she said — that is, her intent isn’t to make teenagers subject to the bill as potential felons — but her changes had been declined or deflected.

And then it was Nancy Skinner’s turn. “Selling sex has been within human cultures for millennia,” she argued, so even legislators who wish to prevent trafficking face a complicated task. “It is a very difficult area of law to get into.”

Delving into the concern about 18 year-olds being prosecuted for soliciting sex from 17 year-olds, Skinner suggested that the bill incorporate a ten-year age gap between the buyer and the purchased minor. In its current form, she said, the bill “goes too far.”

Grove responded that she had a technical witness, a supervising deputy district attorney, on hand to speak to the practical realities of the proposed amendments — but committee chair Aisha Wahab declined Grove’s request to have that technical witness speak, noting that she’d already had her four minutes for witnesses.

Finally, Senator Scott Wiener spoke.

“This bill is incredibly overbroad, in my opinion,” Wiener argued. As written, it allows for prison terms merely for asking for sex with a child, with “no physical contact.”

And then Skinner offered a motion to amend the bill, referencing a series of written amendments that had been handed to Grove — who asked that the amendments be read into the record. Wahab declined.

“Are you forcing these amendments on me, Madam Chair?” Grove asked.

“Most likely, yes,” Wahab replied.

With the amendments adopted, over the lone objection of Republican Senator Kelly Seyarto, the bill then passed in committee, with amendments that had only been hinted at for the record.

Grove, with her voice shaking, said that the amendments adopted without the consent of the author were “completely unacceptable,” but the bill nonetheless advances in its new form.

Nancy Skinner doesn’t speak that clearly, and the amendments she offered were in written form but not offered for the record. It appears, on the limited evidence, that the Public Safety Committee has amended the bill to require proof that the person soliciting sex with a child know that the victim is a child, to make first offenses a “wobbler” that can be prosecuted as a misdemeanor, to remove 16 and 17 year-olds as defined victims of sex trafficking, and to modify the requirement for sex offender registration for people who might violate the law.

(Updated below.) I’ve emailed Grove’s office for a clear and complete list of the amendments, and will post those if they send them, or post the full list of amendments when they make it into the public record.

California’s very strange and dark battle over the meaning of childhood continues. Tomorrow, Republican Senator Ochoa Bogh’s SB 1435 goes before the Senate Education Committee. That bill would require school districts to remove obscene material from K-8 classrooms — putting it in tension with halfwit Assemblyman Corey Jackson’s successful AB 1078, which allegedly banned book bans in schools and defined access to sexually school explicit materials as a right.

To be continued.

UPDATE:

Senator Grove’s office has sent a draft of the bill with amendments in place, and a summary:

What the Senate Public Safety Committee Amendments Did:

Make the solicitation or purchase of children for sex punishable by a wobbler, which can still be charged as a misdemeanor, punishable by as little as 2 days in jail or up to a $10,000 fine.

Can be charged as a felony ONLY if the child is 15 years old or younger, but still ineligible for prison.

If a buyer has a previous conviction of purchasing a child under 16 years old and is convicted on a second offense of buying child under 16 years old and the victim and buyer are more than 10 years apart in age, the buyer would register as a tier one sex offender (10-years).

Remarkable. So, to see some of the language of the bill in its current form, here’s part of the chain of conditions now being proposed:

If the person soliciting sex with a minor is an adult, and if it’s a repeat offense, and if there’s a ten-year gap between the ages of the minor being bought for sex and the person doing the buying, then the offender shall register as a sex offender. Note that this means an 18 year-old can solicit a 9 year-old for sex without triggering the possibility of sex offender registration, since the age gap is less than ten years.

And remember, as I wrote earlier, the California legislature has a long-established pattern of killing bills that aim to toughen penalties for the sexual solicitation of a minor:

Prior Legislation:

SB 1414
Grove
February 16, 2024

Subject: Crimes: solicitation of a minor

AB 1970 (Boerner Horvath), held in Assem. Public Safety Comm., 2022

AB 1173 (Rubio), failed passage Assem. Public Safety Comm., 2021

AB 892 (Choi), failed passage Assem. Public Safety Comm., 2021

AB 2862 (Rubio), held in Assem. Public Safety Comm., 2020

AB 663 (Cunningham), held in Sen. Approps., 2019

SB 303 (Morrell), held in Sen. Public Safety Comm., 2017

SB 982 (Huff), held in Sen. Approps., 2014

Succinct news headline: