No More Loophole for “johns” in Arizona

We received the following letter from our dear friend and partner in ministry Peggy Bilsten.  She has worked tirelessly for many many years fighting for the voiceless and marginalized in our city.  Please join us as we celebrate with her the finalization of the change in Arizona law that will no longer provide a loophole for johns to rape our children and then only get hit with a $50 fine. 

Dear friends,

I am writing you to thank you for all your help and advocacy regarding many faceless children in Arizona.  I’m referring to the boys and girls who are forced into prostitution every day.  As unbelievable as it may seem, the average age for a child who is prostituted in the United States is thirteen.   This is also true in Arizona!

After the rescue of a tortured fifteen year old girl my life was changed forever.  She had been lured by her best friend into her boyfriend’s car.  He turned out to be a pimp.  She was kept in a dog crate, repeatedly raped, drugged, and tortured.  I will never be the same because of what happened to her.

As a mother, teacher, and an elected official, I knew something had to be done.  We had to give these children a voice, a place to stay and be restored, and we had to put a halt to this evil, evil business.  The only way this could be done is by stopping the demand.  As I did my research, I found that the only people being put in jail for these crimes were the prostituted woman and girls; not the men who paid to rape them.

We were all shocked to find out that in the state of Arizona, the customer and the pimp had a built in defense!  Arizona Revised Statute 13-3213 said that if they could not have reasonably known the girl’s age, or if the girls told them they were over eighteen, the punishment was only a misdemeanor.  A $50 fine!

That takes me to Senate Bill 1268, which so many of you helped me with.  You testified, you wrote our legislators, you spoke on behalf of the voiceless.  The result was a law that would hold pimps accountable and require serious time in jail.  This law has been so successful!  Our wonderful County Attorneys have put these pimps away for many, many years, however; we were not able to change the affirmative defense for the customer: the john who wanted to have sex with a child.  Certain representatives were strongly opposed to punishing the johns for this.  They reasoned that because of the way children dress, or because this is a victimless crime, that anything other than a misdemeanor would be too harsh.

This legislative session, Sen. Linda Gray, Rep. Nancy Barto, and Rep. Adam Driggs, sponsored what would become House Bill 2238, which takes away the affirmative defense of the john (I didn’t know her age).  This past Friday, Gov. Brewer signed it into law!  Yes that’s right, after all this time, Arizona now has a law that will hold the customer accountable.  It is no longer a misdemeanor.  It is a minimum class six felony.  It carries with it mandatory sentencing of 180 days on the first offense.  90 days may be deferred if the rapist goes to john school.  The judge can increase the sentence as well.

In Arizona, there is no longer a defense that a rapist can use by simply saying that he did not know the age of the prostituted person he paid to have sex with.

I want to thank all of you!  This is just the beginning, but it is a great place to start.  We can make a difference; we did make a difference.  We are so blessed in this community, to have such dedicated vice-officers, and county, state, and federal attorneys!  Now, they have better tools to work with.

While there are millions of girls and women victimized everyday, our work will always be about the one.  The one girl deceived, the one girl kidnapped and held in a dog cage, the one girl raped, the one girl afflicted with Aids, the one girl needing a rescuer.  To succumb to the enormity of the problem is to fail the one, and more is required of us.

Peace and Blessings,

Peggy Bilsten
Bilsten & Associates