Wyoming’s Grooming Bill: Child Protection or Pre-Crime Policing?

Wyoming is on the verge of joining a growing number of states attempting to criminalize the grooming of children as a standalone felony. House Bill 9, which has already passed both the state House and Senate, now sits on Governor Mark Gordon’s desk awaiting final approval. The bill would make sexual grooming of minors a felony offense punishable by up to five years in prison.

But while the bill’s supporters frame it as a necessary tool to protect vulnerable children, critics are raising serious questions about civil liberties, vague definitions, and whether existing laws already cover the behavior in question. At the heart of this debate lies a fundamental legal tension: Can you criminalize a pattern of behavior that might lead to a crime, even when no crime has actually been committed?

What Is Grooming, Exactly?

Before diving into the legal debate, it helps to understand what grooming actually means in this context. According to the National Office for Child Safety, grooming is the deliberate process an abuser uses to build a relationship, trust, and emotional connection with a child for the purpose of sexual abuse or exploitation.

The manipulative process often involves behaviors that individually may seem completely harmless but collectively serve to lower a victim’s inhibitions, isolate them from support systems, and ensure their silence. This can include:

  • Excessive gift-giving or attention (sometimes called “love bombing”)
  • Building trust with both the child and their family
  • Gradually introducing sexual topics or content
  • Creating dependency and emotional bonds
  • Isolating the child from other supportive adults

House Bill 9 defines grooming as deliberate acts that establish an emotional connection with a minor through manipulation, trust building, or influence to facilitate acts of sexual conduct, abuse, or exploitation. Critically, the bill covers both online and in-person conduct, and it applies even if no physical meeting ever takes place.

What the Bill Actually Does

The legislation creates a tiered penalty structure based on the age of the victim and the relationship between the offender and the child:

  • Base offense: Felony punishable by up to five years imprisonment and a fine of up to $10,000
  • Enhanced penalties: Increased prison time and fines when the victim is younger than 16 or the offender holds a position of authority
  • Maximum penalties: Even higher consequences when the victim is younger than 12 years of age

According to Terry Markham, Executive Director of Uprising (a 501(c)(3) organization focused on combating human trafficking and exploitation), the bill also closes gaps related to sex offender registry compliance. Specifically, it addresses situations where individuals convicted of offenses in other states move to Wyoming without registering and attempt to secure employment working with children.

The Gap in Current Wyoming Law

Proponents of House Bill 9 point to a real gap in Wyoming’s existing criminal code. Currently, prosecutors can charge specific components of grooming behavior under existing statutes:

  • Wyoming Statute 6-4-303 covers child exploitation
  • Wyoming Statute 6-2-316 addresses enticement
  • Solicitation of a child under 14 is already illegal
  • Sending obscene material to a minor is prosecutable
  • Sexual abuse charges apply when physical contact occurs

However, there is no standalone crime addressing the broader pattern of manipulation and trust-building that often precedes these offenses. Current law can alert parents of potential victims, but law enforcement cannot arrest someone solely for grooming behavior as currently defined.

Bill sponsor Representative Bratton argues that by creating a standalone felony offense focused on the preparatory manipulation itself, the bill equips law enforcement and courts to stop predators sooner, protect vulnerable children more effectively, and reduce the escalation seen in recent Wyoming cases involving online enticement and sextortion.

The Civil Liberties Counterargument

Critics of the bill raise concerns that cut to the core of criminal law philosophy. The central objection is straightforward: this legislation criminalizes behavior and intent before any actual crime has been committed.

This is sometimes called “pre-crime” policing, a concept made famous by the film Minority Report. The argument goes that if you can be arrested for behaviors that might lead to exploitation but haven’t yet resulted in any criminal act, you’re essentially being punished for what authorities believe you might do in the future.

The vagueness of the bill’s language compounds these concerns. Consider this: the bill criminalizes “deliberate acts that establish an emotional connection with a minor through manipulation, trust building, or influence.” But where exactly is the line between:

  • A predator strategically building trust with a child, and
  • A neighbor being friendly with kids on their block, or
  • A coach investing time and attention in a young athlete, or
  • A teacher going above and beyond for a struggling student?

As one commentator pointed out, advertising itself is fundamentally about building trust and manipulating people. If the legal definition of grooming is broad enough to encompass ordinary kindness, mentorship, or community engagement, the potential for prosecutorial overreach is significant.

The Sting Operation Problem

Another criticism concerns the statistical justification for the bill. Proponents cite increasing frequency of online enticement and sextortion cases in Wyoming. But critics argue that this perceived surge is at least partly manufactured by law enforcement itself.

When police departments devote significant resources to sting operations, posing as minors in online spaces to catch potential offenders, they inevitably produce arrests. Those arrests generate statistics showing a “surge” in grooming-related crimes, which then becomes the justification for expanded criminal laws and additional law enforcement funding.

This creates a self-reinforcing cycle: sting operations produce crime statistics that justify more sting operations and new legislation, which produces more arrests, and so on. The question is whether these statistics reflect genuine criminal behavior occurring in the real world or are largely artifacts of proactive enforcement targeting behavior that might never have resulted in actual harm to a real child.

A Conservative State’s Contradiction

There’s an irony worth noting in Wyoming’s approach. The state has long maintained a conservative governance philosophy that every time legislators pass a new law, they should repeal five or ten existing ones. The idea is that government overreach is best prevented by keeping the criminal code lean and focused.

Yet House Bill 9 represents a significant expansion of criminal liability into the realm of pre-criminal behavior. Critics have asked which existing laws the bill’s sponsor plans to repeal to offset this expansion. The answer, they suspect, is none.

Who Is Uprising?

The organization most visibly pushing for House Bill 9 deserves some scrutiny. Uprising is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose stated mission is to empower communities, volunteers, and donors to confront human trafficking and exploitation through awareness, education, and outreach.

A review of their publicly available 990 tax returns shows the organization is financially healthy, bringing in and holding notable funds. However, the most recent 990 available is from 2023. While this doesn’t necessarily indicate a problem, as organizations can run non-calendar fiscal years and file for automatic extensions, it does raise questions about transparency for an organization actively shaping criminal legislation.

Key Takeaways

  1. Existing laws may already be sufficient. Wyoming has multiple statutes covering solicitation, enticement, exploitation, and obscene materials. Before creating new felony offenses, it’s worth asking whether more aggressive enforcement of existing law could achieve the same protective goals.

  2. Vague definitions create real risks. When ordinary human behavior like building trust, showing kindness, or mentoring youth can theoretically fall within a criminal statute’s language, the potential for unjust prosecution is not hypothetical.

  3. Follow the incentive structure. Sting operations, advocacy organizations, and expanded law enforcement budgets all benefit from the perception that grooming crimes are surging. Understanding these incentives is essential to evaluating the claims being used to justify new legislation.

As Wyoming’s governor weighs his decision on House Bill 9, the state finds itself at the center of a debate that will likely play out across the country in coming years. The question isn’t whether children deserve protection from predators. They absolutely do. The question is whether criminalizing pre-criminal behavior is the right way to achieve that goal, or whether it opens doors that will be very difficult to close.