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Committee adopts amendment and advances bill targeting child grooming behaviors
Summary
The committee amended and reported Senate Bill 58, revising how grooming is handled in statutes on indecent behavior with juveniles and adding a defined grooming element; prosecutors and district attorneys described safeguards to avoid overbreadth.
The House Criminal Justice Committee adopted an amendment and reported Senate Bill 58, a measure that integrates a defined grooming element into Louisiana's statutes governing indecent behavior with juveniles.
"This is a super important bill," sponsor Sen. Kirkconnell Connick said, describing the measure as aimed at preventing "the devastation that comes from child ****** abuse" by criminalizing antecedent grooming behavior and providing deterrence and victim support. The committee adopted amendment set 03/1976, which replaces the bill's original standalone grooming offense with a revision to Revised Statute 14:81 (indecent behavior with juveniles) and inserts a statutory grooming definition.
Zach Daniels, executive director of the Louisiana District Attorneys Association, told the committee the definition borrows language from other states and the federal government to capture antecedent behavior—"the building of a rapport, the building of a trust"—while including safeguards requiring proof of intent. "The grooming would be that antecedent behavior, the behavior prior to an actual assault with the specific intent to commit a *** offense against the juvenile," Daniels said.
District Attorney Christine Russell explained prosecutorial approach and evidentiary limits, saying conduct such as gift-giving or emotional manipulation alone may be insufficient but can be used together with other evidence to show intent: "Standing alone we may not have been able to do it, but brought together with those other things we can have account for child ***********, but we can also have indecent behavior."
Committee members debated age thresholds and a provision that limits the statute to acts against minors under 17 by an individual at least four years older; Rep. Knox praised the bill and asked to move it favorably. The committee reconsidered and withdrew the original amendment set to adopt a revised set that replaces the term "inappropriate" with "intimate" in the bill's language; proponents said using the term "intimate" aligns with existing evidence law (Code of Evidence Art. 404) and narrows potential overbreadth.
After the amendment was adopted, the committee voted to report SB 58 as amended with no objections.
