Other public safety pieces were tacked onto bill as it moved through legislative process
By Abraham Kenmore
SCDailyGazette.com
COLUMBIA — A wide-ranging public safety law that started out as a proposal to help victims of human trafficking was celebrated Thursday by advocates who had been working on its various sections for years.
“I’m not normally one who likes to have things tacked on to my legislation like a Christmas tree, but in this case each and every one will protect victims and punish perpetrators,” said Sen. Katrina Shealy, R-Lexington, the law’s chief sponsor.
The law actually took effect July 2 with Gov. Henry McMaster’s signature. On Thursday, he ceremoniously signed it again.
Shealy’s bill prevents trafficking victims under 18 from being prosecuted for misdemeanor or minor felony offenses they were forced to do to survive, such as prostitution or drug possession. It also allows trafficking victims of all ages who were convicted of prostitution or other crimes they were coerced to do to have those charges expunged. Those changes were long overdue, Shealy said.
“Children who are victims of trafficking should not be convicted of crimes related to being trafficked. It is as simple as that,” Shealy said. “Protecting them means not just from criminals but from injustice as well.”
Another key section of the law created a new criminal offense for trying to lure a child away for nefarious reasons. For example, if an adult used the promise of a puppy to entice a child into a car. Previously, luring a child was only an offense once it escalated to kidnapping, but the attempt itself was not a crime.
The law made it a felony punishable by up to a $10,000 fine and/or 10 years in prison or both.
Making the attempt a crime is something U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace tried to do during her three years in the state House. The coastal 1st District congresswoman was among those celebrating the law’s passage.
Mace, who first won in a January 2018 special election, worked with GOP Rep. Lee Hewitt of Murrells Inlet on an anti-luring proposal he pre-filed for the 2019-20 session that failed to ever get a vote.
Mace said she began working on the luring bill after receiving a phone call from Katie Shields, a Mount Pleasant mother, in 2018.
Shields said she called Mace after hearing about a luring incident in Mount Pleasant. Shields told the S.C. Daily Gazette she didn’t know anyone involved but learning that it was not a crime galvanized her.
“We just kept on it year after year,” she said.
Then last year a stranger approached the 14-year-old son of one of her good friends, Brittany Williams.
“He was never in danger because he knew the tools and he knew what to do,” Williams said at Thursday’s signing, adding that her son talked another child out of going with the man. After that happened, Shields launched a petition calling for lawmakers to take action.
The law also creates a new program that allows victims of domestic violence, human trafficking, stalking and similar crimes to apply to the state attorney general’s office to keep their home address confidential. Their mail would be forwarded to them from the state office.
And it does away with a quirk of criminal law that prevented someone being sentenced for a kidnapping offense if they have been sentenced for murder. In a handful of cases, a murder conviction has been thrown out on appeal while a kidnapping charge stands, resulting in no sentence.
The entire bill was a victory, Williams said.
“Everything today was an added layer of protection for the children of South Carolina, and it’s an amazing day,” she said.
Abraham Kenmore is a reporter covering elections, health care and more. He joins the S.C. Daily Gazette from The Augusta Chronicle, where he reported on Georgia legislators, military and housing issues.
S.C. Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
