Committee sends bill to criminalize harmful communications with minors to Senate floor after amendments

The Wyoming Senate Judiciary Committee voted Tuesday to advance House Bill 189, legislation that would create a new offense for repeated harmful communications with minors, add a civil cause of action and penalties, and permit certain post-conviction restrictions and forfeitures.

Representative Jamie Lean (R), the bill sponsor, told the committee the measure is designed to address grooming behaviors and online communications that often precede sexual abuse of children. “When an adult involves any child in a sexual act … the statistics become shocking,” Lean said, citing figures she presented to the committee on forensic interviews and the prevalence of abuse.

Lean told the committee 774 children in the state were served with forensic interviews and 306 of those were sexual abuse cases; she said 79 percent of offenders were relatives in the cases she referenced. The bill creates a new statutory section titled “harmful communication with minors,” defines “obscene” communications and “personal sexual gratification,” and sets out a pattern-based offense that applies when an actor knowingly engages in repeated written, electronic or verbal communications targeted at a minor or a person purported to be a minor.

Under the draft…