California Democrat state senator Susan Talamantes Eggman has had enough. She rose on the floor of the Senate to support a Republican bill that would drastically stiffen penalties for child solicitation.
Currently, anyone convicted of soliciting a child in California can be sentenced to a maximum of one year in jail and a $10,000 fine.
The Republican bill would "make soliciting a child less than 16 years old punishable by a jail term of up to three years. Anyone convicted of solicitation a second time would have to register as a sex offender if they were more than 10 years older than the minor," according to KOMO News.
Eggman was incensed by the slew of amendments Democrats tried to load onto the bill that would have watered the bill down.
Last month, Democrats on the Public Safety Committee "mutilated" portions of Grove's bill and added several amendments that only made proposed charges applicable if the child is younger than 15. The bill cleared the state Senate last week without Grove's original language in a 36-0 vote. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom also signaled his support for the bill, which now heads to the Assembly, where Grove hopes to reinsert a few of the bill's original proposals.
Grove had also proposed amendments to classify solicitation or purchasing sex from a child of any age as a prison felony and eliminate the 10-year age gap requirement for the sex offender registry.
“A lot of these kids can be throwaway kids – they’re poor kids, they’re kids of color,” Sen. Eggman said. “But they shouldn’t have to live a life determined by what happens to them by others at a very young age and by having the Democratic Party of California say it’s okay. It’s not okay.”
Eggman is term-limited and will be gone in November. But she had a warning for her radical leftist colleagues. She told her fellow progressives they would look like “fools” and “laughing stocks” if they didn’t move more toward the middle.
"I’m leaving, but the rest of you who are gonna be here for a while, let’s get our stuff together and really start focusing on some of the important things,” she said. “We talk about learning, and we talk about being safe. This is like at the core of it.”
Some surprising and welcome common sense from a Democrat on this issue.
“I am not arguing that we open the gates to flood our prisons with people, but I am arguing that we have a moral responsibility to say enough,” she continued. “We have given away enough on this area.”
Then Eggman brought the hammer down.
“As a progressive, proud member of this body for the last 12 years, I’m done. I’m done with us protecting people who would buy and abuse our children,” Eggman said. “I don’t want people buying little girls anymore, and I’m tired of saying it’s okay and that we have to protect the men who do it.”
Eggman talked about the mental health cost of selling young people into sexual bondage.
"As a mental health professional and as a social worker, I can tell you I've spent my entire career working with people who have been wounded," Eggman added. "I'm not gonna say beyond repair, but they have been wounded to their core by the abuse that's been heaped on them oftentimes by those that they love and look to protect them."
The bill passed the California Senate unanimously without the far stricter penalties and provisions in the original bill.
