HJNO Jan/Feb 2025

24 JAN / FEB 2025 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS always had an affinity for children since I was a child growing up — just always con- cerned about what happened to kids. Being in this arena, serving as the administrator for a counselor who saw many children in state custody who had been abused, I have seen abuse on so many different levels. I've seen children pimped out by their parents. I was like, "We can't keep doing this." I've watched this. I've been here almost two decades, not to include my years work- ing as an administrator, and we're doing the same thing. Many of the perpetrators are just getting a slap on the hand. They're not even being charged with a crime, are walking away, and then inflicting that same trauma on another child. Enough. Editor This is a topic a lot of us don’t seek to understand. One of the things that sur- prised me when I was doing a little re- search, is that the majority of molesters are not pedophiles — that they just don't have access to being able to gratify themselves with an adult, and the child happens to be available. A pedophile is interested in chil- dren only; they wouldn't be interested in an adult. What is happening in the vast major- ity of child sexual abuse in the U.S. is that the perpetrator just wants to sexually un- leash their pent-up desires, and the child is then targeted because they are easy and ac- cessible. That is why the majority of victims know and trust, or at least trusted, their abuser, and in many cases why the families did as well. They couldn’t imagine that level of perversion aimed at their child, but, 1 in 4 kids have. Sen. Barrow When we brought this bill back in 2022 as Senate Bill 252, there was a lot of pushback, even from people that I thought would be with us — folks against sexual crimes. I'm trying to remember if I heard that, but for me, it really does matter because this applies to everybody. I want it to apply for everybody that hurts children. Editor Just curious. Are you calling an adult someone who's 18 or older? Sen. Barrow Yes. I think I need to say that because that was a provision that I added to the bill that was not initially on the bill. Some of my colleagues asked, "What about someone who's 16, 17 who thinks a girl is older, they don't tell them, and then their whole life is messed up forever?” I say, "OK, we're going to see how this goes while I'm here because if I have too many cases like that, then we're going to take it down." I'm trying to not make this a penalty for a young person. "You've made a mistake. This is what we're going to do to you." My intent is for individuals who really prey on children, who preys on young people, and, like you said, whether it's a pedophile or someone who says, "This is what I want right now, and this is who's here," it doesn't matter either way. You will get the same consequence. Editor Do you have any idea howmany cas- es would have qualified for this to happen last year? Sen. Barrow No, I don't. Let me tell you what has happened, though, that really bothers me — how the cases are actually going. When an individual is picked up, they may be booked under indecent be- havior with a juvenile. But by the time they go to court, it's changed to something else. That is something that I'm going to work on because I want to know how often that actually happens. What we've been told is sometimes it's hard to prove, so they try to get something that they’re able to prosecute somebody on. To some degree, I understand. The other part of me is [ask- ing] how much investigation, how much work is really being done to ensure that we charge them with the proper crime? That, to me, is a gray area in law enforcement. I kind of drilled them in one of the com- mittees because I was very concerned with what they were giving us in terms of the data and saying, " We know it's happening, but the data doesn't line up with what we know." Even with the “1 out of 4,” the data still doesn't line up. The arrest does not line up or the prosecution does not line up with those numbers. And we know that it's hap- pening. Editor This went into effect in August? Sen. Barrow Yes, August 1. Editor Have there been any cases that qual- ify? Sen. Barrow The case that I just mentioned to you did qualify. Editor This has never been passed in the United States. Sen. Barrow No. Editor So, you're bringing up a bill to do this … and men are pretty fond of those parts. What was your pitch to your fellow legisla- tors? Sen. Barrow I would say to my colleagues, "First of all, if you are not molesting, rap- ing a child, then this doesn't apply to you. Why is this a problem? Help me under- stand this." That was pretty much it. They were like, "Well, dang, Regina." I said, "Am I right there? Am I wrong?" So, they were like, "OK." [Here, she threw her hands back, imitating the lawmakers' gesture of backing down, signaling their surrender and giving up their resistance.] But, then the other part of that, especially that my African American colleagues brought up was the connotation connected to slav- ery. And so, I said to them, "We are not in slavery. And again, if you are not molest- ing children, no one is looking to castrate you." It was pretty rough, and I say rough in that I could sense the tension sometimes in caucus meetings or other settings. But what I know that they knew is that I was very firm about where I was going with it. Then it was hard to really be able to build a defense against it when, at the end of the day, if you're not molesting children, then it shouldn't be a problem. And that is defi- nitely how I felt about it because that's the truth — If you're not molesting a child, then it's not a problem. Nobody's going to cas- trate you. Editor This is why you get the cigar. Sen. Barrow The other thing, I would say, which added more to this entire situation, is that we are getting ready to appoint the new secretary over the Office of Juvenile Justice. These, in the juvenile justice sys- tem, are the most vulnerable children in our state because they are in the system due to something that has happened. What I learned in the report — which had a lot of information redacted, but you could cer- tainly read between the lines — was that many things really stood out. It almost looked like there was a sex ring happen- ing; then there were females who had been raping female girls. When I read that one of the children just literally gave up because she couldn't fight anymore — there was no help … no help — I was like, "We are liter- ally failing children all the way around." In some kids, it is not picked up in school because teachers have all these mandates that they've got to meet, and follow up, and do, so nobody sees that child who is falling behind, not in any extracurricular activ- ity or [lack of] friends, and nobody helps them. But they are still expected to per- form, to do, pass; and when they can't, then people say, "You're dumb," or, "You can't learn." They accept that as being a part of who they are, and it's not. It is no fault of their own. At least I can give some level of hope. And I have said to young people, "If you have a situation like this, let me know so we can make sure that they're prosecut- ed so they don't hurt anybody else." That was devastating for me. That kept me up for at least two nights. Because there was nobody that they could call. We were their