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Gov. Gavin Newsom signed several bills designed to enhance protections for victims of sexual assault, including legislation requiring California universities to improve human trafficking preventative training.
Assemblymember Maggy Krell, D-Sacramento, authored legislation that requires postsecondary institutions in California to improve processes to identify and report sexual crimes, with the goal of improving university employees’ ability to recognize human trafficking.
“As Deputy Attorney General, I prosecuted a case where the defendant stole the victim’s financial aid check and forced her into prostitution,” Krell said in a statement announcing the law. “Students can be particularly vulnerable to exploitation for a variety of reasons including financial insecurity and housing instability.”
A 2026 study of Southern California college students found that more than 40% of respondents reported that they knew a college student who was trafficked or sold sex.
The governor also signed legislation to avoid the dissemination of evidence documenting sexual assaults, inspired by the case of Denise Huskins Quinn and Aaron Quinn. Senate Bill 1056, authored by Sen. Tim Grayson, D-Concord, creates new privacy guardrails around sexually explicit images or recordings used as evidence in criminal cases.
Huskins Quinn, who was kidnapped and assaulted in 2015, has advocated for better protection of sexually explicit evidence after her and her now-husband’s case became a national news story. After Quinn reported Huskins Quinn had been kidnapped from their Vallejo home to authorities, the police accused him of her murder.
Only after a similar home invasion occurred in nearby Dublin did authorities investigate sufficiently to find the individual who was eventually convicted for Huskins Quinn’s abduction. The Vallejo Police Department issued a formal apology to the couple, and their story was the subject of the television series “American Nightmare.”
“This is a huge, huge thing for us, for survivors,” Huskins Quinn said in a video announcing the bill signing. Newsom said he hopes the new law gives the couple “a sense of empowerment” and “taking something back.”
