Latest news with #AB379
San Francisco Chronicle
31-07-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
Amid Epstein scandal, California navigates its own sex trafficking panic
With the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and Sean Combs trial jarring public attention around sex trafficking, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday signed a bill that aims to increase penalties for traffickers of teens and their customers. But more than three dozen civil rights, survivor and immigrant organizations — and even some legislators who voted for the bill — say the well-intentioned Assembly Bill 379 revives a vague, Jim Crow-era law that Newsom largely struck from the books three years ago because of its discriminatory application against Black and gay communities. And the opponents say that AB379 could inadvertently help the Trump administration deport California immigrants who have done nothing wrong. 'None of us want minors to be sex trafficked. None of us want anyone to be sex trafficked,' said Ann Block, a senior staff attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, a national policy organization that opposed AB379. '(But) this bill is so vague. … I can't imagine how this will not sweep up a lot of people who have nothing to do with prostitution.' AB379's emotionally fraught, five-month journey to becoming law underscores a political dichotomy: At a time when President Donald Trump is being hammered by his MAGA base for withholding the so-called Epstein files, in Sacramento it is the Democrats who are on the defensive regarding one of society's darkest crimes. Introduced in February by Assembly Member Maggy Krell, D-Sacramento, AB379 sharpens criminal penalties against adults who solicit sex from teens and civil penalties against businesses that enable them. It does this by making the solicitation of 16- and 17-year-olds a 'wobbler' offense that prosecutors can charge as a felony if the perpetrator is more than three years older than the victim. The age-gap provision was added to make sure older teens and young adults wouldn't face sex-crime felonies for being in consensual relationships with younger partners, and quieted one of the first dustups over the bill. But the real battle erupted over a portion of the legislation that has gotten little media attention. AB379 also makes it a misdemeanor to loiter in a public place with the intent to purchase commercial sex, a crime the bill says can be evidenced by 'circling an area in a motor vehicle and repeatedly beckoning to, contacting, or attempting to contact or stop pedestrians or other motorists, making unauthorized stops along known prostitution tracks, or engaging in other conduct indicative of soliciting to procure another to engage in commercial sex.' Opponents say that language is so broad it can apply to day laborers, rideshare drivers, outreach workers and people who live and work in neighborhoods where prostitution occurs, an argument the impartial Senate Rules Committee bolstered in an analysis warning the definition 'may be constitutionally overbroad.' 'It could be (challenged),' said Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, one of only two legislators to vote against AB379. 'Loitering laws inherently raise potential constitutional issues, because they're so vague in terms of the behaviors that are being criminalized.' Wiener was the one to introduce Senate Bill 357 in 2022, which deleted the crime of loitering with the intent to engage in prostitution because of its fuzzy definition and discriminatory history against Black, brown and LGBTQ communities. A 2019 study by the Los Angeles County Public Defender's Office found the charge resulted in hugely lopsided arrests of young Black women because of how they were dressed. When he signed SB357 in July 2022, Newsom pushed back against law enforcement criticism that it would legalize prostitution. 'It simply revokes provisions of the law that have led to disproportionate harassment of women and transgender adults,' the governor wrote in his signing statement, adding a cautionary note that he'd be watching 'crime and prosecution trends for any possible unintended consequences and will act to mitigate any such impacts.' Newsom, largely speculated to be considering a 2028 presidential campaign, did not release a signing statement for AB379. A month after SB357 took effect in 2023, San Diego's police chief claimed it prevented his officers from rescuing trafficked sex workers by arresting them. The California Penal Code includes multiple laws against human trafficking, pimping and pandering and prostitution. 'To be clear, the police don't need anti-loitering laws to protect or help survivors or hold traffickers accountable,' Jess Torres, a child sex trafficking survivor who was formerly incarcerated and undocumented, said during the Senate Public Safety Committee hearing on June 10. 'Human trafficking continues to be illegal and we already have a trafficking law that criminalizes persons who pay for sex with minors.' Opponents have also raised the issue that the loitering misdemeanor can be a deportable offense and gives the Trump administration another avenue into California's immigrant communities, which have been under siege from Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids at worksites, courthouses, clinics, campuses and homes. 'ICE are going after people who are arrested, who enter the criminal justice system at all. They're arresting people at arraignment, without prior contact,' said Kate Chatfield, executive director of the California Public Defenders Association, which opposed the bill. 'Just expanding the net of arrests for people, whether or not they're ultimately convicted, you are putting them in ICE's crosshairs.' Krell, who had her authorship stripped from AB379 during the bill's sharp-elbowed journey, contested that argument. 'I would love to see ICE go after sex traffickers, but they're not. And this bill won't change that,' she said. AB379's 51 registered supporters, including 25 law enforcement agencies and unions, as well as seven cities and some survivor groups, have also dismissed the immigration concerns as catastrophizing while shifting focus onto the bill's other changes. 'The most important aspect of this bill is creating a felony around solicitation,' said Yasmin Vafa, executive director of the Washington D.C.-based nonprofit Rights4Girls, an AB379 cosponsor. Vafa testified during committee hearings that this was a racial justice issue, involving affluent white male buyers and Black girl victims. 'If we were talking about white girls, this wouldn't be a debate.' In California, the federally funded National Human Trafficking Hotline said it identified 1,261 acts of sex-related trafficking among callers in 2024, a 10-year high and 48.5% higher than in 2015, the earliest year for which the hotline provided annual totals. The hotline, operated by the national anti-trafficking nonprofit Polaris, said its callers also reported the highest numbers of sex-trafficking cases occurring on the street (122) and in residences (111) since at least 2015 last year. According to the Human Trafficking Institute, California's federal courts saw 14 new sex-trafficking prosecutions in 2023, the second most behind Texas (21). Federal courts are where more trafficking prosecutions occur. Both the Human Trafficking Institute and Polaris caution that their numbers do not reflect the true prevalence of sex trafficking. Krell, a former deputy attorney general who prosecuted trafficking cases in the California Department of Justice, said she made sure AB379 only brings back the loitering misdemeanor in a way that can be used against sex buyers, not the sellers. 'It's targeted at those who are looking to buy,' said Krell, who has also introduced bills this session that would require social media companies to remove more child sexual abuse material and expand relief for people who were convicted of crimes as a result of being trafficked. 'It doesn't go after sex workers and it definitely doesn't go after victims.' But AB379 does make sex workers eligible for $1,000 fines that would go into a special fund for prosecutors and diversion programs like the one run by Community Against Sexual Harm, a bill co-sponsor and a survivor-led organization started by a Sacramento police officer in 2013. Republicans in the Legislature rallied around AB379, and have used sex trafficking as a cudgel to hammer away at the supermajority party and enhance their influence. 'I have to say, I'm tired of excuses,' Sen. Suzette Martinez Valladares, R-Santa Clarita, said before the Senate's July 14 floor vote. 'We should all be able to agree on this. There is no moral or rational argument against protecting children from being bought and sold for sex.' While Democratic lawmakers raised concerns about reviving a loitering law that was first used against the state's indigenous residents in the 1800s, all but seven voted for AB379, with five abstentions, and expressed their wish that the issues be addressed after it became law. Wiener, who said he would have voted for AB379 if it was just about soliciting teens for sex and who said he endured slurs and death threats in the years he worked to repeal loitering, said he would not be the one to clean up the Legislature's 'mess.' Block, of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, characterized AB379's success as an instance where narrative overpowered the facts. 'In the times that we're in with the federal administration attacking California and many other states, perhaps this was a way of saying, 'Look, we're doing something about sex trafficking,' she said. 'That is something that is hard for legislators to vote against.'
The Herald Scotland
27-06-2025
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
Men who buy sex don't deserve California's protection
These buyers, the ones who made the demand for human flesh profitable, have operated with near impunity, shielded by stigma that falls harder on victims than perpetrators. AB 379, originally authored by Assemblymember Maggy Krell, D-Sacramento, and now authored by Assemblymember Nick Schultz, D-Burbank, is a historic opportunity to change that. Don't shield men who buy sex Standing in the way are opponents attempting to weaponize the federal government's cruel deportation sweeps and legitimate public fear to weaken this vital legislation. They claim that AB 379's loitering provision should be removed because it would create a new deportable offense. That argument is legally doubtful. Following its recommendation would shield sex buyers statewide at the expense of victims of the sex trade. It also would deprive California of an important tool for getting a handle on the sex trafficking industry. That is not safety nor is it justice. That would be an abdication of lawmakers' responsibility totheir constituents. Opinion: I work with sex trafficking victims. Here's how Diddy's trial could help them. Let us be clear: AB 379 does not target undocumented people or victims in the sex trade. It purposefully targets those who knowingly and willfully seek out vulnerable human beings, some of whom are immigrants themselves, for exploitation through paid rape. It is unconscionable to use the trauma of immigrant families as a political shield for sex buyers - many of whom are affluent White men. And yet, that's what's happening. We were badly abused as victims of sex trafficking This is the truth that the public and our elected officials must face: The sex trade is not "empowerment." On the street, it is almost all the result of trafficking. It is violence, and the buyers are not harmless "johns" - they are predators who rely on the silence of society and the shame of survivors to keep operating freely. Buyers call us names like "meat," "holes," "property," "whore," "slut," "worthless," "slave" and much worse than can be comfortably described here for the everyday reader. We've been choked and strangled, degraded, urinated on, burned, beaten and stabbed. We've been robbed, raped with physical body parts and objects, spit on and laughed at. We've been thrown out of moving vehicles naked and scared, and we've been left for dead on multiple occasions of severe assault. Opinion: A sex trafficking survivor nearly died trying to get out. How she turned her life around. We've been told we were "lucky" anyone would pay for us. We've been told that they could do anything to us and no one would care, that they could kill us and no one would come looking. We were children. Or barely adults. And every name we were called sank into our skin like a scar we still carry. Failing to hold buyers accountable only worsens these harms and creates more demand and need for supply. Opinion alerts: Get columns from your favorite columnists + expert analysis on top issues, delivered straight to your device through the USA TODAY app. Don't have the app? Download it for free from your app store. AB379's reinstatement of the loitering piece for the buyer is not radical. It is justice for everyone being trafficked and abandoned on our streets. To every state senator still on the fence: We are not asking for pity. We are demanding protection, accountability and truth. We're asking you not to forget us just because the politics are complicated. We survived the buyers who raped and abused us, insulted us, filmed us, and discarded us like garbage. Now we are surviving a political process that threatens to discard us yet again. Please don't let that happen. We've come too far. Stay strong, stand with survivors and pass AB 379 intact, and with the survivor-led accountability it was built to deliver. Marjorie Saylor, Ashley Faison-Maddox and Christina Rangel are survivor leaders with lived experience of sex trafficking in California.
USA Today
26-06-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
We survived sex trafficking. Don't protect men who exploit women like us.
California must crack down on predatory sex buyers to stop trafficking. Survivors like us have fought for accountability that reaches not just our traffickers but also men who used us like objects. In May, the California Capitol erupted in acrimonious debate over Assembly Bill 379, a proposal to make purchasing a 16- or 17-year-old for sex punishable as a felony. Now, opponents are trying to weaken a separate, equally important piece of that bill, to make it a misdemeanor to loiter with the intent to purchase commercial sex. California must crack down on predatory sex buyers to stop sex trafficking. For decades, survivors like us have fought for accountability that reaches not just our traffickers, but also the men who bought and used us like objects. These buyers, the ones who made the demand for human flesh profitable, have operated with near impunity, shielded by stigma that falls harder on victims than perpetrators. AB 379, originally authored by Assemblymember Maggy Krell, D-Sacramento, and now authored by Assemblymember Nick Schultz, D-Burbank, is a historic opportunity to change that. Don't shield men who buy sex Standing in the way are opponents attempting to weaponize the federal government's cruel deportation sweeps and legitimate public fear to weaken this vital legislation. They claim that AB 379's loitering provision should be removed because it would create a new deportable offense. That argument is legally doubtful. Following its recommendation would shield sex buyers statewide at the expense of victims of the sex trade. It also would deprive California of an important tool for getting a handle on the sex trafficking industry. That is not safety nor is it justice. That would be an abdication of lawmakers' responsibility totheir constituents. Opinion: I work with sex trafficking victims. Here's how Diddy's trial could help them. Let us be clear: AB 379 does not target undocumented people or victims in the sex trade. It purposefully targets those who knowingly and willfully seek out vulnerable human beings, some of whom are immigrants themselves, for exploitation through paid rape. It is unconscionable to use the trauma of immigrant families as a political shield for sex buyers − many of whom are affluent White men. And yet, that's what's happening. We were badly abused as victims of sex trafficking This is the truth that the public and our elected officials must face: The sex trade is not 'empowerment.' On the street, it is almost all the result of trafficking. It is violence, and the buyers are not harmless 'johns' ‒ they are predators who rely on the silence of society and the shame of survivors to keep operating freely. Buyers call us names like 'meat,' 'holes,' 'property,' 'whore,' 'slut,' 'worthless,' 'slave" and much worse than can be comfortably described here for the everyday reader. We've been choked and strangled, degraded, urinated on, burned, beaten and stabbed. We've been robbed, raped with physical body parts and objects, spit on and laughed at. We've been thrown out of moving vehicles naked and scared, and we've been left for dead on multiple occasions of severe assault. Opinion: A sex trafficking survivor nearly died trying to get out. How she turned her life around. We've been told we were 'lucky' anyone would pay for us. We've been told that they could do anything to us and no one would care, that they could kill us and no one would come looking. We were children. Or barely adults. And every name we were called sank into our skin like a scar we still carry. Failing to hold buyers accountable only worsens these harms and creates more demand and need for supply. AB379's reinstatement of the loitering piece for the buyer is not radical. It is justice for everyone being trafficked and abandoned on our streets. To every state senator still on the fence: We are not asking for pity. We are demanding protection, accountability and truth. We're asking you not to forget us just because the politics are complicated. We survived the buyers who raped and abused us, insulted us, filmed us, and discarded us like garbage. Now we are surviving a political process that threatens to discard us yet again. Please don't let that happen. We've come too far. Stay strong, stand with survivors and pass AB 379 intact, and with the survivor-led accountability it was built to deliver. Marjorie Saylor, Ashley Faison-Maddox and Christina Rangel are survivor leaders with lived experience of sex trafficking in California.
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- Yahoo
Man arrested for child abuse in Oroville, endangering toddler in roadway
( — A 31-year-old man was arrested on Wednesday for child abuse after he was witnessed endangering his child in the roadway and admitted to being under the influence of cocaine, according to the Oroville Police Department. Video Above: Controversial child sex trafficking bill AB379 amended Police said officers responded to reports of a man creating a traffic hazard around 1:30 p.m. on Meyers Street and Greenville Street. Callers said the man, later identified as Oscar Bonilla, was playing with an infant in the roadway, refusing to move for cars, walking in traffic while carrying the child and even dropping the toddler on the pavement. More witnesses said that Bonilla put the child on the street, walked in and out of traffic, and described him to be 'flinging the child around like a rag doll.' It was also reported that the suspect was armed with a knife and made motions as if he were trying to hurt the baby, OPD said. A witness was eventually able to take the toddler away when Bonilla dropped them. OPD said Bonilla was exhibiting erratic behavior when they made contact and admitted to being under the influence of a large quantity of cocaine. Police discovered that the suspect had removed the toddler from their home. Police investigate fatal, solo-vehicle crash in Rocklin According to OPD, the baby was taken to the hospital after they were left with road rash, scrapes and bruises. The suspect was taken into custody after being treated for his injuries at the hospital. Bonilla was arrested on felony child abuse and felony assault with a deadly weapon. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
California bill advances with new protections for minors in sex cases
( — California State Assemblyman Juan Alanis issued a statement on May 7 on the restoration of protections for 16 and 17-year-olds to Assembly 379. AB 379 was originally authored by Sacramento Democratic Assemblymember Maggie Krell. The bill's idea was to make it an automatic felony to purchase and solicit and minor under the age of 18 for sex. After the change in Assembly democratic leadership, the bill raised some concerns, arguing it could lead to unintended consequences, specifically jail time for 16 and 17-year-old trafficking victims and punishment for other young adults taking part in consensual sexual activity with them. Alanis said, 'Every child deserves to be shielded from the horrors of sexual exploitation. The overwhelming majority of Californians understand that 16 and 17-year-olds are minors and not adults.' Homeless woman suffers severe burns in alleged attack by suspect Democrats forced amendments onto the bill to exclude cases specifically when 16 and 17-year-olds are either purchased or solicited for sex. 'Making the purchase of 16- and 17-year-olds for sex a felony is both just and common sense. I commend my colleagues in the majority for reversing their previous actions, stripping protections for these kids,' Alanis said. 'I am still dismayed that we even had to have the threat of 16 and 17-year-olds not being covered by this law. The voice of the people matters, protecting our kids matters, and anyone selling children should face the highest penalties of the law.' The Assembly democratic leadership has reversed course, promising to once again allow the proposed felony in cases involving the mentioned age, but the only difference this time it would be that the felony will not apply when the perpetrator is within a three-year age range of the minor victim. At this time, the bill must receive approval from the assembly floor, which, if it does, it can advance to the State Senate. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
