Sponsors (3)
The bill strengthens federal criminal protections and prosecutorial clarity for sexual contact with minors and in federal custody — improving victim protection and deterrence — but does so while narrowing certain defenses, risking retroactive exposure for past conduct, and imposing modest administrative burdens on federal agencies.
Children, teens, and other victims: federal law expands coverage of sexual contact offenses (including non‑consensual touching) and explicitly criminalizes attempts, increasing protections and deterrence in federal jurisdictions.
Parents and families: clarifies and broadens federal jurisdiction (covers conduct involving interstate or foreign travel/commerce), making cross‑jurisdictional offenders more likely to be prosecuted federally.
Federal prosecutors and courts: statutory citations and definitions are clarified and updated, reducing legal uncertainty and helping ensure more consistent charging and sentencing.
Defendants in federal cases (including federal employees): the bill narrows the availability of a consent defense for victims under 16 by shifting the burden to the offender to prove a reasonable belief by a preponderance, increasing conviction risk and raising due‑process concerns.
People with past conduct: retroactive application of amended provisions could expose individuals to new federal prosecution for acts they relied on prior law for.
Federal agencies and custody operations: updating statutes, forms, training, monitoring, and staffing to implement broader criminal coverage will impose additional administrative and operational costs on DOJ, courts, the Sentencing Commission, and federal prison systems.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Revises federal criminal law to expand and clarify sexual-offense definitions against minors, create a genital-touching offense for under-16s, add attempt penalties, and allow a reasonable-belief defense.
Amends the federal criminal code to change how kidnapping and sexual-abuse offenses involving minors are defined, prosecuted, and punished. It adds a new federal offense for intentional, non-clothed touching of the genitalia of persons under 16, clarifies and broadens language to capture more kinds of sexual conduct and attempts, and creates an express attempt penalty rule making attempts punishable like completed offenses. The bill also adds a limited defense for some defendants who reasonably (by a preponderance of the evidence) believed a victim was age 16, makes one change to interstate-travel language retroactive, and updates cross-references and sentencing classifications so other federal statutes point to the revised offense structure. The amendments are largely substantive changes to criminal definitions and penalties and technical conforming edits; they do not authorize new spending.
Introduced April 8, 2025 by John Cornyn · Last progress October 10, 2025