California has legalized child prostitution

[nightmare69]

Sad but true.





http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/calif ... le/2610540

[jkurtz]

Not exactly. The act itself is still illegal and an individual caught trying to pay for sex with a minor will still be arrested. The purpose of this bill is to protect the kids, who are often forced into the activity, and get them to a safer environment. I have seen underage kids forced into prostitution by their family and significant others at the mental health hospital. Arresting the minor and charging them with a crime does nothing to help them. Instead, the person forcing the activity needs to be charged and the kids need to be placed into protective custody in order to foster a healthier living environment.

[nightmare69]

I know their intent was to help children but it's true that children can now roam the streets and sell their bodies with immunity. The far left liberals passed this and I believe it's going to backfire as pimps and people involved in human trafficking will take advantage of this new law.

[jkurtz]

It is just no longer a crime for the child. Everything the pimp and/or human traffickers do is still illegal. Very few minors engage in prostitution out of their own free will and arresting them does not help if they get out of jail and go straight back to the environment that forced them into prostitution to begin with. In the cases I have seen the children were forced into prostitution to fuel their parents' drug addictions. How does arresting that kid help them?

[The Annoyed Man]

This is already covered here: http://www.texaschlforum.com/viewtopic. ... 7#p1126817

Here is what I wrote in that thread:

Hey, even Gov. Moonbeam is, like a broken clock, right once in a while. This new California law about child prostitution is being WAY misinterpreted and misrepresented in social media. Sex trafficking of children is a serious problem - even right here in Texas, even in Fort Worth. When a minor, who is being forced into prosecution, is arrested, how likely is it that this child will then testify against either the pimp or the john? Not very likely, if that testimony will ALSO get the child thrown behind bars! What this new law does is protect minors, who have been forced into sex trafficking by criminal adults, from having to face the possibility of a criminal conviction. Charges will still be brought against the pimps and johns who abuse those minors, but the minors themselves will not be charged. Instead, they will be RESCUED from prostitution — AS IT SHOULD BE — and the pimps and johns thrown in jail.

Now, it is certainly possible that some small number of teenagers will take advantage of this law for their own financial benefit, but the ones who do will be far outnumbered by the ones whom the law rescues.

But that doesn't satisfy the salacious needs of social media to convey faux shock and outrage over something which is both poorly understood, and often deliberately ignored by grownups. I found out the truth by googling the headline, because it seemed just at little TOO outrageous for even me to believe.

Like many other laws, California's legislatures may find some unintended consequences in their actions, and will have to go back and rewrite/modify some part of what they have passed — just like Texas has done over the years with CHL law, for instance — but honestly, not even California's legislature would actually promote child prostitution.