Pennsylvania cannot politicize child protection

In 2023, administrators at a Lancaster County school discovered that male students had used artificial intelligence to create sexually explicit images involving dozens of their female classmates, and yet the school did not make a timely report to ChildLine or law enforcement.  

The Lancaster County District Attorney said the school did not break the law because, legally, reporting is not required when a minor produces child pornography involving another minor. 

In 2023 and still today, the sexual abuse of children when all parties involved are minors is not required to be reported to authorities, so that swift investigations can happen and pornographic images can be taken down. 

Pennsylvania still hasn’t closed this loophole even as the technology that exploits it has grown faster, become cheaper, and become available to anyone with a phone. 

For the families living through this nightmare, they don’t have the luxury of waiting for the legislative process to catch up. The crisis is real and happening regularly in Pennsylvania schools.

The question in front of the General Assembly is, at its core, a simple one: Does Pennsylvania consider AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM), including material created by children themselves, to be reportable child abuse? 

For too long, the answer has been unclear, and that uncertainty has a cost.

Fifty-nine children were victimized in that single case in Lancaster. Families searched for answers that did not yet exist, and educators were forced to respond to a brand-new form of abuse using guidance written for a world that no longer exists. 

One Lancaster County survivor supported by PCAR remembers the confusion all too clearly: 

”We need action. We need accountability. We need laws that recognize AI-generated sexual abuse for what it is: real abuse with real victims and lifelong consequences.”

This technology serves no positive purpose that could ever outweigh the damage it causes. It strips people, especially young girls, of safety, dignity, and control over their own bodies. For the young people caught in the middle, the technology may have been new. The harm was not.”

It should have been Pennsylvania’s wake-up call. 

Instead, it proved to be an early warning of something far larger: a crisis spreading faster than our laws, schools, and support systems can adapt. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children received more than 145,000 reports involving the use of AI to alter or engage with child sexual abuse material last year, along with more than 133,000 additional reports indicating an AI connection. 

The technology is evolving rapidly. 

Our response must keep pace. 

Pennsylvania lawmakers have advanced a series of bipartisan reforms, including Act 125 of 2024, Act 35 of 2025, Senate Bill 1050, and House Bill 2474, each designed to strengthen protections for children and ensure abuse is reported and addressed more quickly. 

Each accomplishes the same goal: require mandated reporters to immediately report incidents of AI-generated CSAM and deepfake exploitation of minors, including when perpetrated by minors themselves. 

The only significant difference is whether Pennsylvania needs another year to implement closing the loophole or could get it done sooner. PCAR and Pennsylvania’s 47 rape crisis centers strongly support closing this reporting loophole, and the bipartisan weight behind them reflects a truth that does not bend to party. 

Sexual violence reaches every community, regardless of who represents it.

The bipartisan work is being led by Lancaster County lawmakers, including Senators Scott Martin (R-13) and James Malone (D-36), and Representatives Nikki Rivera (D-96) and Ismail Smith-Wade-El (D-49). They join Senator Tracey Pennycuick (R-24), who has demonstrated important victim-centered leadership. 

PCAR celebrates that each of these bills incorporates the policy change suggested by one of the impacted female Lancaster Country Day School students. Her bravery and lawmakers’ willingness to lead across the aisle are precisely the model this issue demands, and we believe they can deliver.

But a reporting law, however strong, is only the beginning of what survivors need. For a child whose image has been manipulated and passed around, the harm does not end the moment the file is created. It lingers in the uncertainty of not knowing if and how to get the images taken down. 

Trauma for the child and family stretches on through investigations, courtrooms, and the exhausting work of telling the story again and again, to school officials, to detectives, to advocates, each retelling reopening the wound. 

The Lancaster case is only a glimpse of what is unfolding across the state every day, and the cases are growing more complex and more technology-driven, even as the organizations built to respond are asked to do more with less. Federal cuts to the Victims of Crime Act and the funding instability that has followed have forced survivor-serving agencies into impossible choices.

Sexual assault centers like YWCA Lancaster are adapting to new forms of abuse while scaling back the very prevention work that could stop the next case before it begins. Without sustained investment, the outcome is easy to predict: long waitlists for services whose entire value depends on being available right now. 

At some point, lawmakers have to name the real choice in front of them. 

This was never a partisan issue, but rather a test of whether we are willing to move with the urgency our children deserve. 

Pennsylvania cannot afford to keep treating child protection as something to win rather than something to do.

Delaying clear protections while underfunding the services survivors rely on is not merely inefficient. It is dangerous, and the price will be paid by children and families in every county in Pennsylvania.