California lawmakers in the Public Safety Committee gave their seal of approval on Tuesday morning to a bill that would crack down on consumers of the child sex trafficking industry.
Assemblymembers Mia Bonta (D) and LaShae Sharp Collins (D) abstained from the vote.
Assembly Bill 379, which targets buyers of commercial sex, was introduced by Assemblymember Maggy Krell (D), who worked at the California Department of Justice and became known for prosecuting the operators of Backpage.com, which was shut down in 2018 for facilitating sex trafficking and prostitution. Krell was elected to the Assembly last year.
The bill proposes stricter penalties for soliciting minors and loitering to purchase sex.
Late changes had to be made to keep the bill on the hearing calendar. Those changes entailed removing a provision that would have made it a felony to purchase 16- and 17-year-olds.
AB-379, which was introduced in February, includes provisions to create a misdemeanor for loitering with the intent to solicit commercial sex, to impose fines as high as $25,000 for soliciting minors under 16, and to allow felony human trafficking charges for repeat offenders who buy sex from minors.
The bill also looks to create a first-of-its-kind Survivor Support Fund. Money from the fund would go to community-based organizations led by survivors of human trafficking. The sponsor noted that support includes housing, mental health services, and job training.
While introducing the bill to the committee, Krell said it would support victims and give law enforcement better tools to prosecute the buyers.
“Demand is the buyers,” she said. “It is the rows of cars of men lined up on street corners to buy teenagers for sex,” she said. “Without the buyers, we don’t really have sex trafficking.”
The bill drew support from the California District Attorneys Association, the California Police Chief Association, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, the City of Stockton, the Association for L.A. Deputy Sheriffs, the League of County Board of Supervisors, and more.
The bill also reinstates penalties for offenses that were decriminalized by a 2022 California law, such as loitering with the intent to purchase a victim. Those convicted would face a misdemeanor and pay up to a $1,000 fine that would go toward the fund for survivors.
Opponents, including survivors of child trafficking, focused on this aspect of the law in their testimony.
Jess Torres, a child trafficking survivor and director of programs at Rising International, respectfully opposed the bill, saying it hinges on a vaguely defined suspicion of intent to do something criminal, rather than evidence.
“This bill will only escalate violence against survivors because persons who are trafficked in commercial sex are harmed when they operate in a criminalized environment,” Torres said. “When buyers believe they are taking on greater risk, they often become more demanding, and that pressure frequently becomes compromising.”
Leela Chapelle of the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking also opposed the bill, arguing that loitering with intent laws harm communities they claim to protect and are unconstitutional.
“We do believe that this will cause the same issues that we have seen over and over again, that we spend our resources clearing the criminal records of survivors, that should not have happened in the first place—these criminal records that prevent them from lives of stability,” Chapelle said.
Opposition also included the LA Public Defenders Union and the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office.
The bill is now due to advance on to the Assembly Appropriations Committee before it can advance to a full vote on the Assembly floor and the Senate.
