Sen. Robinson’s Alicia’s Law News Conference
Monday, June 10, 2024 | 10 a.m.
Media Center
Senator Devlin Robinson will join legislative colleagues to announce “Alicia’s Law”, legislation to fund the prosecution of technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation and internet crimes against children.
They will be joined at the news conference by Alicia Kozak, who was abducted from her Pittsburgh home by an internet predator at the age of 13 in 2002. She became the first known case of such a crime. Alicia was chained and held captive in the perpetrator’s dungeon in Virginia. He livestreamed the abuse, and Alicia was rescued thanks to an anonymous tip to the FBI. Since her rescue, Alicia has been an outspoken advocate for internet safety by working to educate the public and policymakers about the dangers of online predators and ways to end predatory crime.
House Bill 2199 and Senate Bill 1233 would create a process to establish state and local task forces across the Commonwealth to fight internet crimes against children. These task forces would supplement and enhance the work of the existing federal Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force Program, under which 61 task forces nationwide receive funding, training and technical assistance for the protection of children who are online. One of these currently operates in Pennsylvania. Furthermore, under the bills, additional funding for these new task forces and any federally recognized task forces in Pennsylvania would come from a partial redirection of an existing funding stream that supports judicial operations.