EXCLUSIVE — Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) is introducing legislation seeking to raise federal mandates for those convicted of child abuse, child pornography, and other related crimes to correct statutes that the Florida congresswoman calls “scarily low.”
Luna will introduce three bills, the Holding Child Predators Accountable Act, the No Repeat Child Sex Offenders Act, and the Justice for Rape Survivors Act, on Thursday. In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Luna, a first-term congresswoman, said she introduced the bills not only because she’s a new mother but because she believes there is more Congress can do to protect children and victims of abuse.
“We looked at the current minimums, and it’s pretty egregious that you can essentially take someone’s life in the sense that, you know, you rape a child — one of our most vulnerable and innocent, and yet the minimums that are associated with that are pretty scarily low,” Luna said.
Each of the three bills seeks to raise the federal minimum to either life imprisonment or the death penalty for sex abuse and other related crimes, and two of the three focus on children specifically.
The Holding Child Predators Accountable Act focuses on child pornography and seeks to mandate the death penalty or life imprisonment for those convicted. The No Repeat Child Sex Offenders Act tackles crimes against children and child trafficking. If passed, it would mandate the death penalty or life imprisonment for those convicted.
The Justice for Rape Survivors Act, which is the only bill that focuses on adults, tackles sexual abuse of adults and mandates at least 30 years or life imprisonment for those convicted.
Luna said she has spoken with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who “seemed supportive,” and that the legislation will be coming to the floor.
The Florida congresswoman said raising the federal minimums would not only work to bring justice for families and for the individual but would also serve as a “deterrent” for criminals. Though the bills seek life imprisonment as well as the death penalty, Luna said she would prefer the death penalty.
“Rape is an act that can really destroy someone’s life, and if not make them suicidal, and that needs to be a higher standard,” Luna said, referring to the statutes.
Like many Republicans, Luna champions states’ rights. However, she said some of the minimums that she and other lawmakers are seeing in states are “only enabling these predators.”
“In our viewpoint, you cannot rehabilitate a predator,” Luna said. “And so this is ultimately setting the standard of justice equally across the country, which is well within our purview.”
Luna, who had her first child in August 2023, has spent much of her first term in Congress working on bills centered on women and new mothers. In January, she and Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA) co-wrote bipartisan legislation that would allow women to vote by proxy for the first six weeks after giving birth.
Following the Alabama Supreme Court decision that ruled frozen embryos were children, Luna introduced the first Republican-sponsored bill aimed at prohibiting states from blocking women from receiving in vitro fertilization treatment if a doctor has certified it is medically necessary to conceive. It would offer protections for those who use or implement the procedure.
Luna said when she started down the path of creating the three bills introduced Thursday, it was “really alarming” to find that there was not more work done on the topic.
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“You would think that we’re supposed to be representing a massive portion of the population — and every single parent, I’m not even kidding, that I’ve told this, or had this discussion in regards to this bill to, they’ve all been supportive of it,” Luna said. “They’re like, ‘I can’t believe that this isn’t an actual statute already.’”
“We just hope that parents understand that we are fighting for their kids and protecting them at the federal level and that we don’t want to, at all, in any way, shape, or form, allow these monsters to get away with some of the things that they’re doing against our children,” Luna continued.
