A woman whose teenage abuser received a reduced plea deal is now the namesake of legislation she hopes will spare other survivors from returning to court again and again to defend protections they believed were permanent.
Kayleigh Kozak, now senior manager of the America Combats Child Exploitation Initiative at the America First Policy Institute, wrote in an essay for The Daily Wire that she was 12 years old in 2003 when a PE teacher began abusing her. The abuse continued for two years. At 14, she told someone and trusted that the legal system would deliver consequences.
Her abuser faced multiple sexual-abuse charges, including crimes against a child committed while in a position of trust, carrying a possible sentence of 25 years to life. Instead, he accepted a reduced plea: two Class 3 felonies, nine months in jail and what she was told would be “lifetime” probation.
Kozak wrote that she was assured the plea deal would spare her the trauma of a trial. In her account, it did the opposite, prolonging her suffering for years.
A closed case that refused to stay closed
Nearly 15 years later, in 2020, Kozak was summoned back to court. Her abuser was seeking to terminate his lifetime probation. That hearing exposed a gap she had never been told about: if his probation ended, the protections tied to it could end too.
That realization became the catalyst for Kayleigh’s Law. Working with Arizona lawmakers, Kozak helped design a lifetime no-contact injunction that can be issued at sentencing and is based on the conviction itself, not on how long an offender remains under supervision. The order does not expire unless the victim chooses to lift it, and violating it is a new crime.
Arizona became the first state to enact the law in 2021. In its first full year, more than 1,000 victims received permanent protection from their abusers, according to Kozak. Wisconsin followed in 2023, and Missouri has since enacted its own version.
Most survivors nationwide still do not have that protection, which is why the fight has now moved to Washington.
The federal bills and the argument behind them
The Kayleigh’s Law Act of 2026, H.R. 8481, was introduced by Rep. Abe Hamadeh (R-AZ), while S. 5372 was introduced by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT). The legislation would require federal courts to issue natural-lifetime no-contact injunctions at sentencing for covered violent and sexual offenses, with the victim’s consent or at the victim’s request.
Kozak frames the policy around a single principle: if the harm can last a lifetime, the protection should last a lifetime.
Her argument rests on the ubiquity of plea deals in the justice system. Plea agreements are not an exception, she writes; they are the norm. Survivors are often told a plea will spare them additional trauma. But a plea, in her view, does not erase the crime, and it should not leave a survivor’s future safety dependent on how long an offender remains under state supervision.
Kozak’s own case illustrates the cycle. She says she has been brought back to court repeatedly because her abuser wanted the terms governing him changed. In February 2026, she returned once more. This time, before the hearing, she watched her abuser be served with a lifetime no-contact injunction under the law bearing her name.
For the first time, she wrote, something permanent stood between them, something that did not hinge on whether his probation continued.
From a single state to a national question
The push for Kayleigh’s Law arrives amid broader political attention to child exploitation and victim protection, an issue that has drawn interest across party lines even as federal legislation on the subject often stalls. The Arizona law is unusual in that it ties protection to the conviction rather than the duration of probation, supervision or parole, which means a victim’s safety is not automatically extinguished when an offender completes a sentence or wins a modification.
Under the state model, only the victim can choose to lift the order, and any violation is treated as a new offense rather than a technical breach of supervision. Kozak’s federal proposal would import that framework into federal sentencing for covered offenses.
Whether the bill advances in the current Congress is unknown, and neither Hamadeh’s nor Lee’s offices offered additional comment in the essay. The text as described is narrow in scope: it applies to federal courts, not state courts, and it hinges on victim consent or request rather than automatic imposition.
For Kozak, the issue is personal and unresolved. Nearly two decades after her case was “closed,” she is still fighting. She says she can’t protect the 12-year-old she once was, but she can advocate now for children and survivors who should not have to keep returning to court to defend protections they thought they already had.
“A closed case should not mean closed protection,” she wrote, urging Congress to pass Kayleigh’s Law so survivors never have to choose between moving forward with their lives and fighting, again and again, for the right to be left alone.
Kozak serves as senior manager of the America Combats Child Exploitation Initiative at the America First Policy Institute and is the namesake of Kayleigh’s Law.
Source: www.dailywire.com — https://www.dailywire.com/news/robbed-of-innocence-not-of-my-voice-congress-should-pass-kayleighs-law