Rep. Roberts: 2025 House Bill No. 5923 - House Judiciary (42225) (B)

Thank you, chairman, members of the committee. Uh before I begin uh my testimony, I'd like to draw your attention first to a fivepage packet of child sexual depictions via both drawings and very lewd descriptive writings. Could we please just show this to the committee members, please? Is that actual pass? Wait, wait, wait. Is that actual images? Is that like Yes. Yeah. You can't That's contraband. Um to distribute it would be a crime, believe it or not. Oh, okay. Yeah, we don't want to do that. Well, I just I I thought that there was Okay, because I remember the police in here showing pictures when they were trying to pass some legislation before and they showed some graphite pictures to people on the committee. So, I thought that that was okay to um bring into I don't know what it is, but out of an abundance of caution, I don't want to put you in a position to have somebody criticize you for that. That's fine. Um So uh this is uh anyway it was one sample of many currently being marketed to a target audience of children. So obviously if I shouldn't be showing it here it probably shouldn't be marketed to children. Um so and it's being made available to them. So uh make no mistake I recognize immediately when I see attempts to groom children for pedophilia. By grooming in this case I mean sexualizing and normalizing sexual acts between children and others. Um the acts depicted the acts depicted often come in the form of graphic cartoons, sketches or writings promoting dangerous promiscuity depicting sexual fetishes often promoting incestuous acts bondage the subjugation of women and the glorification of women being raped to name a few. If this is not the definition of obscenity then I don't know what is. If this content was shared with you by a colleague, would you not rightfully be offended and consider it to be sexual harassment? And why then are we allowing our children to be exposed to this very same offensive material? The graphic photos that I was going to present to you um should be appropriately labeled free porn for children. Uh, rest assured that these insidious attempts to condition impressionable children to accept non-age appropriate sexualized material in behavior as normal is a surefire way to confuse minors so that they are no longer able to distinguish the difference between acceptable behaviors or abusive behaviors. As the instinctual red flag trigger warnings that children are naturally born with will become fractured, they will no longer alert the unsuspecting child, turning our vulnerable children instead into easy prey for pedophiles. Do we not have enough deviant behaviors to contend with in society without promoting these harmful degenerate behaviors into the minds of young vulnerable children? And at what point do we find that these fetishes of depraved mind should priority over over the very best interests of children because that's what appears to be happening. In conclusion, as a person acutely familiar with child abuse, it is my contention that providing graphic pornographic depictions of any kind to miners is absolutely the first stages of child sex abuse and my legislation seeks to criminalize these depictions as such. Uh when this issue becomes a major topic of national debate, how will we in Rhode Island be remembered as having stood on this issue? Um I urge you to pass this obviously necessary legislation.