10/21/2026
𝐀𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐚’𝐬 𝐋𝐚𝐰 𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐆𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐨𝐫
HARRISBURG – This week, the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed Alicia’s Law, a landmark piece of legislation that creates a dedicated state grant program to fund law enforcement task forces focused on investigating and prosecuting internet predators who target children.
The bill now heads to the governor’s desk for his consideration.
House Bill 1098 is sponsored by Reps. Jason Ortitay (R-Washington/Allegheny) and Rep. Jessica Benham (D-Allegheny) and was carried in the Senate by Senator Devlin Robinson (R-Allegheny), who introduced a companion measure, Senate Bill 1335. The House bill passed with dedicated funding attached to ensure the program can be put to work immediately.
The road to passage began not in Harrisburg, but over lunch in Pittsburgh. Lena Hannah, a former South Fayette school board member who started the Girls Night Out Program at South Fayette, brought Alicia Kozak (Kozakiewicz) to meet with Ortitay and introduced the idea of pursuing the legislation in Pennsylvania. From that conversation, a coalition was built – a survivor, a parent from Ortitay’s own district, advocates and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who refused to let this fall through the cracks.
“I’m pleased that after more than two years of advocacy, we have been able to get Alicia’s Law to the finish line,” Ortitay said. “Alicia’s experience isn’t some relic from the early days of the internet. It’s a warning about what happens when kids can freely interact with strangers online while law enforcement lacks the tools to keep pace. With elementary-aged children on social media, these crimes aren’t diminishing. They’re growing. This legislation puts Pennsylvania on the offensive.”
Alicia’s Law is named for Kozak, a Pittsburgh-area survivor who was abducted at age 13 on New Year’s Day 2002 by a man she met online. She was chained in his basement and sexually assaulted, and her abuse was livestreamed on the internet. She was rescued after a stranger who saw the stream called the FBI. She was the first known case of an internet-related child abduction in the country.
Rather than walk away, Kozak turned her experience into a life’s mission. She testified before Congress, founded The Alicia Project to teach internet safety to kids and families across the country, earned a master’s degree in forensic psychology, trained the FBI, and has worked for years to get this law passed in every state in America. Pennsylvania is the latest to answer that call.
“My rescue felt like a miracle, but no child’s safety should depend on a miracle. That's where Alicia's Law comes in,” Kozak said. “After serving 19 years in prison, the man who kidnapped me was released in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. In July 2024, I stood at the Pennsylvania Capitol advocating for Alicia's Law knowing he lived just 2 miles away. Then, just a few weeks later, in a stranger-than-fiction turn of events, my boyfriend and I discovered he was re-offending: targeting a local woman and in possession of child sexual abuse material.
“Last week, I sat in a Pennsylvania courtroom and watched him be convicted,” Kozak added. “Less than a week after his conviction, my home state has become the 14th state to pass Alicia’s Law! The timing is deeply personal, but this law is not about one offender or one survivor. This is not just my story. Predators are in every community, and they are targeting our children. Protecting children takes all of us working together, and this week, Pennsylvania did exactly that. With the passage of Alicia’s Law, Pennsylvania has made clear that protecting children cannot be left to chance.”
The legislation was also deeply personal for Jill Sodini, a South Fayette mother whose daughter was one of many girls targeted by an online predator who turned out to be a student in her own school. He spent five months operating anonymously, creating fake social media accounts, some in the names of real male students, and used them to harass, stalk, manipulate and even threaten girls to solicit n**e images. He sat at a lunch table across from Jill’s daughter the entire time. He was caught only because of the dedication of a single detective who worked the case on his days off and in the evenings after putting his own kids to bed.
Sodini became one of the driving forces behind this legislation, standing alongside Kozak and pushing lawmakers to act.
“This is a huge victory for families that I know will save lives,” Sodini said. “Having these resources allocated means perpetrators will be caught earlier thus sparing future victims. It will also be a deterrent to these perpetrators when they know they can no longer fly under the radar. In addition, I encourage parents to have a conversation with your tween or teen urging them to come to you no matter how scary or embarrassing something is even if they think they did something wrong.”
“The journey to get here has been long and, at times, challenging,” Hannah said. “But if this experience has reinforced one thing for me, it is the importance of never giving up. Meaningful change does not always happen quickly or easily. It takes patience, perseverance, relationship building and collaboration with our legislators and others. Alicia’s story reminds us that one voice can plant a seed, one conversation can open a door, and people working together, refusing to give up, can make a difference for generations to come.”
“Children deserve better protections from predators online, and our laws must keep pace with the rapid growth of technology,” said Benham. “Alicia’s Law is designed to strengthen Pennsylvania's capacity to prevent and identify these crimes, support investigations, and hold perpetrators accountable. I’m excited it will soon be signed into law.”
“As more children have access to the internet at a young age, the predators we once worried about on our streets are now sitting behind computers and smartphones interacting with innocent children,” said Robinson. “By providing the funding and tools needed to better investigate and prosecute these horrendous crimes, our children will be safer and better protected.”
Right now, Pennsylvania has just one federally funded task force dedicated to investigating internet crimes against children. Alicia’s Law would create a state grant program, administered through the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, to fund additional task forces, train investigators and supplement existing federal resources. Thirteen other states have already passed similar legislation. If signed by the governor, Pennsylvania would join them.
The 46th Legislative District includes South Fayette Township and McDonald and Oakdale boroughs in Allegheny County. It also encompasses Cecil, Chartiers, Mt. Pleasant and North Strabane (Districts 6,7,8 and 9) townships and Canonsburg, Houston and McDonald boroughs in Washington County.
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