Sponsors (2)
The bill strengthens victim-centered protections, training, and funding to better protect child sex trafficking victims and expand legal coverage, but does so at increased fiscal and administrative cost and risks uneven adoption and legal challenges that could delay or complicate implementation.
Children and youth who are child sex trafficking victims will receive safer, victim-centered protections during and after testimony (reduced retraumatization, witness-support measures), improving their ability to participate in prosecutions.
Federal, state, and local prosecutors, judges, and law enforcement will receive standardized guidance and training on victim‑centered practices, improving identification of victims, evidence collection, and consistency of responses across districts.
Local and state agencies can use grant funds to provide trauma‑informed services, safe travel/lodging/accompaniment for testifying victims, and to expand use of child advocacy centers and family justice centers, enhancing recovery and logistical safety for victims and families.
Implementing guidance, mandatory trainings, travel/lodging support, and expanded allowable grant uses will increase federal, state, and local costs and may require new funding or reallocation of existing resources.
If guidance or Attorney General direction is not sufficiently specific or uniformly adopted, protections for child victims could vary by district, leaving some victims less protected and reducing nationwide consistency.
Expanded procedural protections and new/changed statutory language may prompt legal challenges, increased litigation, or defense objections (complicating prosecution logistics), producing delays or uncertainty in court proceedings.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Requires DOJ to publish victim-centered guidance and adds training, expanded grant uses, and statutory wording to strengthen protections for child sex trafficking victims who testify.
Requires the Attorney General to develop and publish victim-centered guidance to protect child sex trafficking victims who testify, and to ensure that guidance is distributed and used in training for all U.S. Attorney offices. The bill also amends federal law to require DOJ anti-trafficking training to include those protections, expands allowable uses of certain child-trafficking prevention grants to cover witness-protection measures tied to the guidance, and updates statutory wording in the federal witness-protection provisions to explicitly include child sex trafficking and refine related procedural language.
Introduced January 22, 2026 by Tim Moore · Last progress January 22, 2026