Women who claim they were sexually assaulted by Jeffrey Epstein when he was running his notorious suspected sex trafficking network, have endorsed new legislation in Florida that aims to ban lifelike sex dolls resembling children in an effort to protect minors and stop paedophiles from preying on them.
Among those who threw their weight behind the new bill are several victim's advocacy groups, including Victims Refuse Silence, the Child Rescue Coalition, and the Selah Way Foundation, with more endorsement expected later this week, as per Fox News.
The bill was introduced by Republican Rep. Vern Buchanan in the state where Epstein was convicted of paedophilia and solicitation of prostitution in 2008 and served a 13-month sentence.
It is based on the so-dubbed CREEPER Act, an already-existing legislative initiative, which banned the transportation and importation of child sex dolls: introduced to Congress in 2017, it has since languished in the US Senate.
Buchanan’s updated version went still further, proposing to make it illegal to sell or possess such dolls, while Florida, Tennessee, and Kentucky are the only states that put a ban on these sexual items.
The people behind the newly-proposed legislation argue that the lifelike dolls are used by paedophiles to “normalise” sex acts against children, as "these dolls not only violate children mentally and emotionally but also deny their privacy rights."
"We cannot permit these products to make their way into Americans’ homes, potentially enabling a first step to even more heinous crimes against our children,” co-chair of the Florida congressional delegation, Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fort Lauderdale, said in a statement.
Convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his Manhattan prison cell, a month after his arrest on new, sex trafficking charges involving alleged victims as young as 14 years old.
He was suspected of paying his “sex slaves” hundreds of dollars for erotic massages, before abusing them in his multiple properties across the country, including on his private Caribbean island.
In the most recent development to the Epstein case, his former partner and suspected right-hand person Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested on six federal charges – including of perjury and procurement of underage girls for sex with Epstein. If found guilty, the conviction on all the charges could put her behind bars for up to 35 years.