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Senate bill seeks to change child exploitation from a second- to first-degree felony
In a new bill that moved to the House floor on Thursday, local legislators are looking to intensify penalties for manufacturing and intending to distribute pornographic material involving minors.
“The surge in child pornography on the internet has led to increased victimization and trafficking and an increase in sexual violence against increasingly younger children,” testified Sen. Chis Wilson, R-Logan, to the Senate Judiciary, Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee during a meeting on Feb. 17. “Sexual exploitation of minors causes added harm to their emotional, mental and psychological well-being.”
Senate Bill 167, sponsored by Wilson, seeks to make manufacturing and distributing child pornography a felony in the first degree rendering a potential sentence of five-to-life in prison. Currently, the charge is a second-degree felony and can result in one-to-15 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.
However, Assistant Attorney General for the Utah Attorney General’s office Ryan Holtan said during the meeting that a person convicted of such a crime, on average, is sentenced to 180 days of incarceration. In federal courts, those convicted of child exploitation receive an average of 40 to 51 months in prison; those who are convicted of the production of child pornography receive a 15-year minimum sentence.
“We need to hold them responsible because right now, when investigators are picking and choosing which child victims they have time to rescue, we need consequences for the people we do catch,” Holtan said, “and they need to be the right consequences because we can’t catch everyone.”
While Holtan said the Attorney General’s office saw 3,000 reported cases of child exploitation in 2021, Cache County Executive David Zook added that Cache County saw 20 cases in just the last two months.
“We feel there is a need to address the most egregious cases more aggressively,” Zook said, showing in support of the bill.
Cache County Attorney John Luthy also commented on the bill, sharing a story of Royal Canadian Mounted Police who located a man in Cache County who had produced and distributed of thousands of images and videos of child pornography. The man, who was prosecuted and convicted in Cache County, only received 60 days in jail, Luthy said.
“When you have agents from Canada, the FBI, Homeland Security, Cache County and prosecutors” investigating cases for months or years, Luthy said, being “victimized by having to watch this material and someone walks away with 60 days in jail, our system is not working. This bill is a step forward to address it.”
Luthy added that the first draft of the bill started in Cache County with the help of attorneys in his office.
Sen. Todd Weiler, the committee chair, spoke to his concerns with the bill when it came to underage teenagers sharing explicit photos of themselves. Wilson pointed out a section of the bill had been carved out to remove teenagers from first-degree sentencing should the bill pass. Wilson also worked with Weiler for a third substitution in the bill that exempted children under the age of 14 entirely for distribution.
In addition, Wilson said he was working Utah Sentencing Commission to address sentencing for offenders. Wilson said he worked with many stakeholders for the bill including, but not limited to, the Utah Attorney General’s Office, the Utah Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice and many more.
The bill passed from the Senate floor to the house in a 24-0 vote with six absences. The Legislative session ends on March 4.
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