California Democrats scaled back legislation that was intended to strengthen laws regarding purchasing a child for sex a felony up from a misdemeanor this week.
The bill’s author, Sen. Shannon Grove (R-CA) initially advocated for harsher penalties for soliciting minors for sex by making it punishable by up to four years in prison and a fine of up to $25,000. The bill would also require a person convicted of soliciting a child for sex to register as a sex offender for ten years.
After changes were made to the bill, the new version will only allow prosecutors to press felony charges if the minor was under 16. This means that those who attempt to buy sex with a 16 or 17-year-old could still only be charged with a misdemeanor rather than a felony. The state’s Democrats also amended the bill to reduce the punishment from two years in prison to up to a year in county jail.
The bill was advanced in the legislature on Tuesday.
“To force these amendments on me in front of survivors, to water this down to avoid 16 and 17-year-olds,” Grove said. “You have a committee forcing amendments in front of survivors that are advocating for this bill. I’m incredibly disappointed that not only did my colleagues reject my proposal to make the buying of children for sex a prison felony, but that I was blindsided when they amended my bill without my consent.”
Grove accused her Democrat colleagues of putting California’s children at risk due to their soft-on-crime policies. The Republican pointed out that under the new revision, people soliciting minors for sex would still be “ineligible for prison” despite the child being 15 years old or younger.
Sen. Scott Wiener (D-CA), one of the bill’s critics, claimed the legislation could potentially target the wrong people and wrongfully punish young adults in consensual relationships with a teenager.
“This bill goes well beyond human trafficking. I think human trafficking, we should throw the book at them. This bill would sweep in a lot of people who are not trafficking. This bill will send people to state prison, on the sex registry, which is basically in many ways the end of their life,” Wiener said.
In 2020, Wiener sponsored a bill that said adults who are convicted of having oral or anal sex with a child ten years old or younger should not have to register as sex offenders. He also advocated for a law that supports gender-affirming surgery for children and banned doctors from cooperating with out-of-state attempts to stop a child from getting puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or sex-change surgery.