‘Every person is vulnerable.’ Bill targeting online ‘sextortion’ moves to Kentucky Senate
.png "Senate Bill 73 would establish the felony of sexual extortion in Kentucky in order to protect youths from predators.")
A bill that would establish the felony of online sexual extortion and create new protections for victims is advancing through the Kentucky legislature.
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday unanimously approved Senate Bill 73 and sent it to the full Senate.
Supporters of the bill said a growing number of Kentuckians are targeted through their phones and computers by predators who wreck their lives with “sextortion,” the threatened public exposure of sexually explicit images. Children often are the victims, but adults are preyed on, too.
Predators fool people into sending them explicit images, or they hack into people’s private files to steal them, or they use artificial intelligence to create images using publicly available photos of the victim’s face. Then they demand money, more images or sexual favors in return for not spreading the images around the internet.
Between October 2021 and March 2023, over 13,000 cases of online financial sextortion targeting minors were reported nationally, according to the nonprofit Kentucky Youth Advocates, which supports the bill.
In some cases, sextortion has driven victims to suicide or forced them into sex trafficking, other supporters of the bill said.
“It is calculated, it is cruel, and it thrives on fear and silence,” said the bill’s lead sponsor, state Sen. Julie Raque Adams, R-Louisville.
Adams’ bill would create a range of felony sex offenses, punishable from a year to life in prison, for people who engage in sexual extortion in Kentucky.
Stronger penalties would be faced by those who had prior sex-related convictions, targeted kids, occupied a position of trust, used or threatened to use a weapon or caused a serious injury, including suicide or a suicide attempt. Those convicted of sextortion would have to publicly register as sex offenders.
Other parts of the bill would make it easier for a person to sue online predators for actual and punitive damages after a sextortion attempt. And the bill would require Kentucky schools to educate students from grades four and up about the risks of sextortion, including the prominent posting of signs in English and Spanish.
The bill’s supporters said existing law offers inadequate protection.
For example, Louisville attorney Sara Collins told the committee about her client, “Jane Doe,” a high school teacher whose explicit photos were hacked from her Snapchat account by Louisville Metro Police Officer Bryan Wilson. Doe was terrified for months by vile demands she received from her anonymous stalker, a terror that only ended when the FBI arrested Wilson and notified Doe, Collins said.
Wilson used his access to law enforcement databases to target approximately two dozen women. In 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice convicted him for the federal crime of cyber-stalking.
Louisville Metro Government agreed to pay $118,000 to settle a lawsuit that Doe filed over Wilson’s hacking, the Courier Journal has reported.
But Wilson only spent a little over a year in federal prison for cyber-stalking, Collins said. He didn’t have to register as a sex offender or lose his access to the internet, she said. Just a few months ago, Doe ran into Wilson at a Kroger grocery, she added.
Kentucky law needs to more directly address the threat, Collins told the committee.
“These people are among us,” Collins said.
“While sextortion is a tremendous issue with teens and young adults, I think it is important to remember, especially with AI-generated images, that every person is vulnerable,” she said. “As long as you have something to lose, you become vulnerable.”
The members of the judiciary committee praised the bill, but there were a few minor questions and concerns that senators said might be addressed on the Senate floor with amendments.
State Sen. Michael Nemes, R-Shepherdsville, asked Adams if the felony penalties would apply to minors who tried to extort something from other minors using explicit images. Yes, Adams replied.
Two other senators, Republican Aaron Reed of Shelbyville and Democrat Reggie Thomas of Lexington, said they might want clearer language in the bill requiring age-appropriate explanations for sextortion in schools that have younger children. Fourth graders and high school seniors don’t always understand the same concepts, they said.
