CA Politics 360
Source: KCRA
"These laws are only as good as the enforcement of them,"
Assemblymember Maggy Krell, a former sex crimes prosecutor for the California Department of Justice, weighed in on the gang rape investigation underway at Cornell and how California laws either attempt to hold perpetrators accountable or prevent the crime in the first place.
"What happened at Cornell is absolutely horrific," Krell said in an interview on California Politics 360. "It’s something that is a moment of reckoning that we’ve had many, many times. You know, it happened in California, at Stanford. It happens at universities all across the country and in California, too."
Krell noted that California has a strong legal framework for addressing rape, including offenses involving unconscious victims, which are classified as felonies. However, she acknowledged that enforcement remains a challenge.
"These laws are only as good as the enforcement of them," Krell said. "We still see gaps sometimes. We still have women who have come forward and haven’t been treated with dignity and respect, even though we had a survivors Bill of Rights passed years ago." She added that some victims, regardless of gender, still face challenges in reporting assaults or having their cases taken seriously, citing untested rape kits as an ongoing issue.
