General Assembly Passes Expansion of Child Porn Ban

The House and Senate have unanimously passed House Bill 428, which would expand the definition of child porn in the law to include photos of partially nude minors engaging in a sex act. For reasons passing any human understanding, the current status of the law requires the minor to be fully nude while engaging in a sex act in order for a person who produces or transmits that image to be prosecuted.

This bill seeks to remedy this problem by adding “partial nudity” to the definition of “prohibited sexual act.”

Sponsored by House Majority Leader Valerie Longhurst and Sen. Nicole Poore, HB 428 is a part of the SAFE legislation package instroduced in May to help better protect students from child predators and help better protect victims of sexual exploitation.  

Under this bill, such crime would be a class D felony punishable by up to an 8-year jail sentence.

House Bill 428 Sponsors	Yes Votes	No Votes
Longhurst, Heffernan, K.Johnson, Mitchell, Osienski, K.Williams, Briggs King	House Passed 41-0. Baumbach Bennett Bentz Bolden Freel Bush Carson Chukwuocha Cooke Dorsey-Walker Griffith Heffernan K.Johnson K.Williams Kowalko Lambert Longhurst Lynn Matthews Minor-Brown Mitchell Morrison Osienski S.Moore Schwartzkopf Wilson-Anton  Briggs King Collins D.Short Dukes Gray Hensley M.Smith Morris Postles Ramone Shupe Smyk Spiegelman Vanderwende Yearick
Poore, Ennis, Hansen, Hocker, Wilson	Senate Passes 21-0. Brown Ennis Gay Hansen Lockman Mantzavinos Paradee Pinkney Poore S.McBride Sokola Sturgeon Townsend Walsh Bonini Hocker Lawson Lopez Pettyjohn Richardson Wilson
Current Status:	Sent to the Governor

“Adults who traffic in these sexually exploitive images of children are very savvy and know how to skirt the letter of the law to avoid prosecution,” Sen. Nicole Poore said. “This bill will make that much harder and, in doing so, help make it easier to prosecute child sexual predators and protect innocent children from being the objects of their abuse.”