Read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.
This bill makes it a federal crime to threaten to share sexual images of children, even if the images do not actually exist. It also adds up to 10 extra years in prison when someone uses real child sexual abuse images to threaten, blackmail, or emotionally harm another person. If this passes, prosecutors would have a new, specific tool to go after people who use threats about these images to control or exploit victims.
Online predators increasingly use threats about sexual images , real or fake , to control and exploit children. This bill would give federal prosecutors a direct way to charge that threatening behavior as its own crime, rather than waiting until images are actually shared.