Child Prostitution and California

California continues on its path to creep out the rest of the country with its laws regarding sex, we now have a bill that passed that legalizes child prostitution. Of course, the sponsors of the bill, especially one Holly Mitchell will tell you that it does nothing of the sort. Their argument that it will save children from sex trafficking.

The Washington Post disagrees: To their credit, they are sincere in their belief that decriminalizing underage prostitution is good public policy that will help victims of sex trafficking. Unfortunately, the reality is that the legalization of underage prostitution suffers from the fatal defect endemic to progressive-left policy-making: it ignores experience, common sense and most of all human nature — especially its darker side.

It is not just the legislators who are misguided in their attempt to end sex trafficking of children. The County Welfare Directors Association of California (CWDA) believes that the passage of SB 1322 by the California legislature will bode well for children caught in the sex trade.

The County Welfare Directors Association of California (CWDA) has taken a position of SUPPORT on your SB 1322.

This legislation would decriminalize the crimes of prostitution and loitering with intent to commit prostitution (crimes listed in 647 and 653.22 of the Penal Code) for minors.

The idea is that if a child is caught in a sex trafficking they will feel free to tell the authorities because they won’t have to worry about prison time. While no one thinks that children in the sex trafficking trade should do jail time, we also know a child caught in that nightmare is not “free to report” what is going on regardless if they would end up in jail or not. All you have done is given the reigns of control to their abuser and have essentially said what they are doing is just fine.  The proponents say those who have sex with minors will still be prosecuted.  So let’s look what punishment they will receive:

 If a defendant violates paragraph (3) and knew or should have known that the person who was solicited was a minor at the time of the offense, or if a defendant violates paragraph (2) and the person who was solicited was a person posing as a minor and the defendant had specific intent to solicit a minor, the violation is punishable by imprisonment in a county jail for not less than 72 hours and not more than one year and by a fine of not less than one thousand dollars ($1,000) but not exceeding ten thousand dollars ($10,000).

This is the amended version? Are you serious? You are only going to give people who victimize children a year in jail and 10,000 dollar fine. When Michael Vick got busted for dog fighting he received 23 months in prison! So let me get this straight running dog fights will get you 23 month in prison but having sex with a child will get three days jail time at the least. You don’t even get any prison time (And yes there is a difference. Prison is for hard core criminals and jail is for misdemeanors and the like and you don’t spend more than a year there. )  So our legislators didn’t think having sex with a child was worth any prison time? Do we really value dogs more than we value our children!? Is this what we have come to?

The legislators were nice enough to put: (7) This subdivision does not prohibit prosecution under any other law. Oh I see it wasn’t worth their time to make the punishment for SEX TRAFFICKING A CHILD something substantial, no we have to get them for other crimes because being a pedophile is not good enough! Maybe we can get them for dog fighting! This whole law is a mess. The reason we make things illegal is to demonstrate that we think these things are wrong.  By saying child prostitution is not “illegal” all you have done is sanction the practice of sleeping with children. You haven’t protected them, you have essentially fed them to the wolves.

Child pornography is illegal but we don’t throw the children who have participated in it, in jail. We also make sure the adults found having child pornography do some real time. All this law does is slap the adults on the wrist and away they go! This will not protect children. It will not make those who are being prostituted any safer and people will not just start coming forward. That is not the way it works. Rape is illegal, the women do not go to jail for being raped like in some countries, but yet rape is very much under-reported. So we know reporting a crime has little to do with, whether or not you will go to jail.

So how do we protect the children since we know the majority of them are not going to be reporting what is happening to them? Well obviously the state needs to step in. And this what the law says:  “The bill would authorize the minor to be taken into temporary custody under limited circumstances.”  While limited powers from the state is almost always a good thing, I fear in this case those “limited circumstances” will end up meaning limited children will actually get the help they so desperately need.

In conclusion, all this law will end up doing is allowing more children to be victimized, while not punishing the perpetrators with any real legal consequence and saving only few from further abuse. It is an awful law all the way around and it is despicable that California saw fit to pass it. The bill goes into effect January 1, 2017! Happy New Year California, you just destroyed your children!