I am a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking operation. I know what it means to be a teenage girl targeted by powerful adults, groomed by people who knew exactly what they were doing, and then left to carry the consequences while the adults responsible evade accountability.
Under current New York law, an adult who buys sex from a 15-, 16- or 17-year-old child can face far weaker consequences than someone who exploits a younger child. That distinction is dangerous. It tells predators that the age of the child they target can determine how seriously the state treats the crime.
The Victims Protection and Child Sex Buyer Accountability Act would fix this loophole by ensuring all minors are treated as victims of sexual exploitation and strengthening penalties for adult sex buyers. It would also bring New York closer in line with federal law and with the reality of trafficking: Children do not become less vulnerable because they are in their mid- to late teens.
No adult who purchases access to a minor should be able to benefit from legal distinctions that ignore the reality of abuse, coercion and exploitation.
This measure would also help shift accountability where it belongs: onto the adults who create the demand for child exploitation. Traffickers deserve accountability. But trafficking exists because adults choose to buy access to children. Buyers create the market, and they cause the harm. But for too long, the law has treated them as secondary actors instead of central participants in the abuse.
Child sexual exploitation rarely looks the way people imagine. It does not always involve a stranger, a kidnapping or physical force. More often, it involves grooming, manipulation, money and power.
That is especially true for teenagers. A child may be old enough to walk into a room, answer a phone call or accept money, but that does not make her responsible for an adult’s decision to exploit her. Grooming is designed to blur those lines. The law should be clear where predators try to create confusion.
The Epstein case showed the world how predators exploit these assumptions. Many of the girls pulled into that network were teenagers — 15, 16, 17 — who were groomed, coerced and targeted by adults with money, influence and protection.
This bill will not undo what happened to me or to other Epstein survivors. But it can help protect the next child, give prosecutors stronger tools and make clear that New York will not treat the purchase of a child for sex as a minor offense.
New York lawmakers must close a legal loophole that should never have existed and affirm a principle that should be beyond debate: Every child under 18 deserves the full protection of the law.
There is no good reason to wait. Every day this loophole remains open is another day New York tells exploiters that some children count less than others.
Pass the Victims Protection and Child Sex Buyer Accountability Act. Do it for survivors, for the children being groomed and bought right now, and for every young person New York has a duty to protect.
A child is a child. The law should finally treat them that way.
Danielle Bensky is a lifelong New Yorker.