CARSON CITY, Nev. – Members of a Nevada Senate committee voted Wednesday to approve an Assembly-backed proposal that would allow lawsuits by victims of child sexual abuse when visual depictions of those crimes are discovered, even if the victim has become an adult and the perpetrator was never prosecuted for the crime.
A Nevada Senate panel voted unanimously Wednesday for an Assembly-approved proposal allowing civil lawsuits when victims of childhood sex crimes learn there’s pornography depicting the crimes against them.
Senate Judiciary Committee members voted for AB88, which allows for the civil lawsuits and fines up to $150,000 based on crimes for which perpetrators may never have been convicted. The measure was sought by Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto.
According to the Mercury News, Allen Lichtenstein of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada told the Judiciary Committee that language about accessing materials and child pornography on the Internet “has to be pretty explicit in terms of the intent.”
“Any of us who use computers know we access things all the time, thinking it might be one thing and it turns out to be something else,” Lichtenstein said. “The idea that accessing something itself, even if you see it and get rid of it, becomes actionable is problematic.”
His comments prompted a change to the bill by the AGs office that would make accessing depictions of child sexual abuse on the Internet a crime as long as viewing the illegal content was the intent of the perpetrator.
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