Florida anti-groomer bill passes House committee
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – A bill sponsored by Reps. Taylor Yarkosky, R-Montverde, and Douglas Bankson, R-Apopka, creating offenses for lewd and lascivious grooming passed its first committee assignment on Friday.
The legislation, HB 1135, passed the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee by a vote of 15-2. Reps. Michelle Rayner, D-St. Petersburg, and Lavon Bray Davis, D-Ocoee, voted against it. Sen. Jonathan Martin, R-Fort Myers, filed the senate version of the bill, SB 1238.
Yarkosky explained during the committee meeting that the bill goes after sexual grooming that predators tend to use when targeting children before they continue to sexually abuse minors.
A strike all amendment on the bill was passed in order to better define the purpose of the bill. That being, a third degree felony will be charged on any person above the age of 18 using sexually inappropriate communication and conduct with someone under the age of 16 in order to entice, excite, or compel them to participate in illegal sexual activity.
Rep. Michelle Rayner, D-St. Petersburg, questioned the differentiation between “enticing” children to do sexual activity versus “preparing” them through sex education.
“We’re not looking for isolated incidences and we’re certainly not trying to entrap or put anyone in a corner here,” Yarkosky responded. “If you are consistently, and I would say at least two or more times, doing things that are inappropriate, unethical, in the shadows if you will […] things like that are just not appropriate.”
Rep. Berny Jacques, R-Seminole, thanked Yarkosky and Bankson for introducing the legislation and pushing it through committees.
“Here in the state of Florida we are a law and order state,” he said. “And you reference Representative Baker’s bill that now brings back the death penalty for these pedophiles, and that’s great, but it would be great if they didn’t do it in the first place. And this is what this bill does.”
Equality Florida, a progressive, LGBTQ activist organization labeled the legislation as the “Criminalizing Sex Ed Bill.”
“‘Criminalizing Sex Ed’ goes beyond existing lewdness and indecent exposure laws, threatening to restrict information crucial to preventing STDs and unwanted pregnancy for minors and threatening to deny them access to LGBTQ content,” the organization argued.
John Labriola from the Christian Family Coalition spoke in favor of the bill during the public comment period of the bill.
Labriola explained that what makes the bill so important is how it allows for the state to step in and prevent a potentially dangerous incident from occurring.
“The sooner that we can intervene in these cases, I believe we will help bring down and finally get our hands around the issue of human trafficking,” he said.
