Senate committee advances bill defining child torture as first-degree felony with 10-year minimum

Senate Bill 24, the Child Abuse and Torture Amendments, was advanced out of the Senate Judiciary, Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Standing Committee on a unanimous 4–0 vote after roughly an hour of testimony and questions.

The bill’s sponsor, Senator Don Ibsen, introduced the measure and asked prosecutors and medical experts to describe the need for a separate criminal category. Eric Clark, Washington County attorney, said the measure would "define child torture, and make that a first-degree felony" and add a statutory definition of psychological injury. Dr. Antoinette Lasky, a child abuse pediatrician speaking for the Utah Children's Justice Centers, told the committee she and colleagues had evaluated cases of “severe torture” that included confinement, malnutrition, burning, electrocution and prolonged psychological abuse. "Survivors of child torture will have decades, if not their whole life, to work through the consequences of what happened…