Arizona Legislators: Loophole in Arizona Law Needs Closing to Help Stop Web Cam Sexual Abuse
In a recent incident, an undercover officer from the Georgia ICAC Task Force posed as a minor on-line and was approached in a chat room by an Arizona man. The Arizona man, believing that the officer was a minor, invited the fictitious minor to view his web cam and then exposed his penis and masturbated to ejaculation. The unemployed Arizona offender later admitted that he spends much of his spare time masturbating to anyone on-line who will view his web camera. This form of sexual misconduct is common on the Internet, where many offenders seek to sexually gratify themselves to an audience of minors.

The Arizona man was arrested and investigators hoped to charge him with the Arizona crime: Furnishing harmful images to minors, a class four felony (ARS 13-3506.01). Unfortunately, a loophole in the law was found when it was determined that according to the statute; the victim must be in the state of Arizona for the crime to be charged.

The loophole means that an offender in Arizona can masturbate on-line to a minor victim in any other state besides Arizona and the crime of furnishing harmful materials to a minor does not apply. The crime can only be charged if the victim is in Arizona.

In the case cited, investigators were able to charge the man with a lesser offense; Attempt public sexual indecency, a class 6 felony, so the investigation was not a total loss.

The loophole in the Arizona law could be easily fixed simply by eliminating the words “in this state” from the law. The fix would permit Arizona law enforcement to also protect minors from other states

EXISTING STATUTE - RECOMMENDATION TO ELIMINATE THE WORDS: IN THIS STATE

13-3506.01. Furnishing harmful items to minors; internet activity; classification; definitions

A. It is unlawful for any person, with knowledge of the character of the item involved, to intentionally or knowingly transmit or send to a minor by means of electronic mail, personal messaging or any other direct internet communication an item that is harmful to minors when the person knows or believes at the time of the transmission that a minor IN THIS STATE will receive the item.

B. This section does not apply to:

1. Posting material on an internet web site, bulletin board or newsgroup.

2. Sending material via a mailing list or listserv that is not administered by the sender. For the purposes of this paragraph, "mailing list" or "listserv" means a method of internet communication where a message is sent to an internet address and then is retransmitted to one or more subscribers to the mailing list or listserv.

C. It is not a defense to a prosecution for a violation of this section that the recipient of the transmission was a peace officer posing as a minor.

D. A violation of this section is a class 4 felony.

E. The failure to report a violation of this section is a class 6 felony as prescribed by section 13-3620.

F. For the purposes of this section:

1. "Internet" means the combination of computer facilities and electromagnetic transmission media, and related equipment and software, comprising the interconnected worldwide network of computer networks that employ the transmission control protocol or internet protocol or any successor protocol to transmit information.

2. "Internet web site" means a location where material placed in a computer server-based file archive is publicly accessible, over the internet, using hypertext transfer protocol or any successor protocol.
Posted by Dr. Kardasz at 4:46 PM