Panel approves bill adding trafficking, grooming to victims-rights list

State Representative Dolly Henley, sponsor of House Bill 15-81, told the House Judiciary Committee the bill would enhance victims’ rights by adding two offenses to the statutory list of covered ‘‘sex offenses’’ (as used in the code): trafficking of persons and grooming a minor for future trafficking.

Henley said the trafficking statute passed in 2013 and the grooming statute passed in 2021 had not been added to the victims’ rights code subsection. She told the committee the proposed insertion would allow victims of those offenses to receive statutorily required notifications of certain hearings and to benefit from limited nondisclosure protections for personal identifying information in court records.

Alex Benton of the Office of the Attorney General told the committee the change is narrow. “It is not always, the offense of trafficking of persons can sometimes include labor trafficking,” Benton said, and the proposed change in the victims’ rights subsection would not automatically impose sex-offender registration or other collateral requirements tied to different statutory schemes. Benton said the provision at Arkansas Code Annotated 16-90-111(o)(4) uses the defined term “sex offense” narrowly and this bill would extend those notice and nondisclosure protections to victims of trafficking and grooming in that narrow sense.

No members of the public had signed up to speak for or against the bill. Henley closed for the bill and the committee voice-voted “ayes”; the chair said, “The ayes have it. You have passed your bill.”