Idaho lawmakers advanced a bill that would increase penalties for pedophilia, including a prescription of the death penalty in especially severe instances.
The legislation, which passed the Idaho House on Tuesday, establishes that those found guilty of making “lewd conduct” with children shall be “punished by death or by imprisonment for life” if the child is under twelve years old. Idaho Republican State Representative Bruce Skaug reportedly told lawmakers that the death penalty would be used in particularly heinous cases.
“There is a deep, dark, dark side in our culture,” he said. “And it’s our job to protect the children. There are times when things are so wicked that retribution is appropriate.”
Skaug added that the types of cases that merit the death penalty would be those which citizens “read about” in the newspaper and largely agree that capital punishment is necessary. “It would be very rare that this case would happen,” he continued. “It’d be very rare that a prosecutor would take this kind of case and ask for the death penalty, but it will happen.”
The lawmaker acknowledged that the Supreme Court has issued opinions against the death penalty in cases where a child under twelve years old survives. One decision in 1977 said that the death penalty can be considered “grossly disproportionate and excessive punishment” when an adult victim is raped but survives the encounter. Skaug said that the Idaho bill, which passed with fifty-seven lawmakers in support and eleven in opposition, would challenge the precedent.
The advent of social media and artificial intelligence in recent decades has prompted renewed concern about the safety of children from pedophiles. One bombshell investigation found that Instagram allowed users to search for sexually exploitative material involving children, enabling users to access a “vast pedophile network.” Through hashtags suggested by the algorithm, users could find videos of children harming themselves as well as committing bestiality.
The state of New Mexico filed a lawsuit against Meta to contend that both Facebook and Instagram are a “breeding ground” in which predators can target minors for sexual abuse. Investigators found that Meta would allow a fictitious mother to offer her thirteen-year-old daughter “for sale to sex traffickers and to create a professional page to allow her daughter to share revenue from advertising,” while officials determined that child exploitation content is “over ten times more prevalent” on Facebook and Instagram relative to major pornography websites.
