Senator Mike Fasano and State Representative Robert Schenck held a joint press conference on February 12 to announce the filing of legislation that will help prosecute child modeling website operators who exploit children. Attorney General Bill McCollum attended the press conference, which was held in Tallahassee, to show his support for the bill.
The idea for the bill first came out of a series of stories broadcast on WFLA Channel 8 in which a Tampa Bay-based website was exposed for selling access to photos and videos of minors in suggestive poses. In many of the photographs the models are barely clothed. News media in both South Florida and in Orlando subsequently brought to the public’s attention a similar website which used child models as young as ten years old. The website operators have hid behind the shield of the free speech as a justification for the existence of their businesses.
This legislation will provide a tool for prosecutors to bring charges against those who walk the thin line between producing child pornography and producing the images available on these type of child modeling websites. By expanding the definition of obscenity, much of what is sold online as so-called legitimate photographs and videos of children would become illegal and those who produce them subject to criminal prosecution.
“This bill will put an end to the exploitation of children who are duped into believing that they are pursuing a legitimate modeling career,” Senator Fasano stated at the press conference. “These children have become the objects of obsession of individuals whose sole purpose is to view these photographs and videos to satisfy their own unnatural interests. This bill will help protect those children from entering a future that may include hardcore pornography and the abuse that may come from being a part of that world.”
Unsuccessful attempts to prosecute website operators in the past may truly become a thing of the past. Both Senator Fasano and Representative Schenck urged their colleagues in the legislature to support this legislation which will give state attorneys an opening to pursue criminal charges against the people who exploit children for their own personal gain.
