Rep. Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison), who has long advocated for a bill to create a task force on to examine the issue of missing and murdered Black women and girls, read testimony on behalf of Tanesha Howard, the grieving mother of Joniah Walker. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

At a Tuesday hearing, Wisconsin Rep. Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison), who has long advocated   creating a task force on missing and murdered Black women and girls, read testimony on behalf of Tanesha Howard, the grieving mother of Joniah Walker.

Walker went missing in 2022 at the age of 15 in Milwaukee and has not been found.

“They refused to issue an Amber Alert to allow the community to help search for her. They were telling me Joniah did not fit the requirement of anything,” Stubbs said. Howard sat next to her with her eyes closed. “What are the requirements to get help from your local police department when your Black… daughter [is] missing?”

SB 404, coauthored by Stubbs (D-Madison), Rep. Patrick Snyder (R-Weston) and Sens. Jesse James (R-Thorp) and LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee), would establish a 17-member task force to examine the issue of missing and murdered Black women and girls and produce a report.

“To help prevent other families from experiencing what my family and countless other families endured … this bill for missing and murdered African–American women and girls … needs to be passed into state law,” Stubbs read on behalf of Howard. “Help us. Find us. Give our families closure. We matter.” 

This is the third legislative session in a row that Stubbs has introduced legislation to create the task force. She was inspired in part by the Department of Justice’s task force on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, which was established in 2020 by Attorney General Josh Kaul after the Legislature failed to pass a bill to create that task force. Kaul has said that the funds don’t exist to take a similar path with this task force. 

Stubbs said during the hearing in the Senate Mental Health, Substance Abuse Prevention, Children & Families committee that the bill is “necessary to improve the mechanisms for preventing, investigating and healing for all forms of gender-based violence in our state, which impacts women and kids of all racial backgrounds, but which affect Black women and girls at the highest rate.”

Members of the task force would include four lawmakers and other stakeholders, including law enforcement representatives and representatives from advocacy or legal organizations that focus on Black women and girls.

The task force would be responsible for examining a number of issues related to the violence that Black women and girls face including systemic causes, the appropriate methods for tracking and collecting data, policing related to investigating and prosecuting crimes, measures that could reduce violence and ways to support victims and their families.

Under the bill, a final report would be due by 2027. It would need to recommend policies and practices that would be effective in reducing gender violence and increasing the safety of Black women and girls and help victims and communities to heal from violence.

Stubbs highlighted a 2022 report from the Guardian that found that in 2020 five Black women and girls were killed every day in the U.S. Wisconsin had the worst homicide rate for Black women and girls in the nation that year. Stubbs said data on the extent of the issue is incomplete, and the task force could help fill in the picture. 

“We are lacking crucial data, especially in Wisconsin,” Stubbs said. “The data already gathered is insufficient and lacks critical detail to understand the circumstances of violence.”

Johnson said the bill is a “necessary step toward understanding why African-American women and girls are so vulnerable to violence and disappearance and where our public safety systems are falling short.”

Sheena Scarborough, mother of 19-year-old Sade Robinson, who was murdered last year, also testified at the hearing. Johnson noted that both mothers are from her district.

“I think that speaks volumes to how serious the issue is and how it impacts communities, not just in the city of Milwaukee but across the state, but disproportionately it affects African-American women, especially in the city of Milwaukee,” Johnson said. 

The bill would provide one position in the Department of Justice to support the task force as well as $80,200 in 2025-26 and $99,500 in 2026-27 to fund it.

Last session, the bill passed the Assembly but never received a vote on the Senate floor. It received a public hearing but not without encountering roadblocks due to opposition from former Sen. Duey Stroebel (R-Saukville). Stroebel said he didn’t support the legislation because he didn’t support passing laws based on race or gender. 

Snyder, who described himself as “the Republican who likes to do what is right” said the bill is “the right thing to do,” and expressed frustration with the bill getting hung up last session. 

“I get really irritated when one person thinks that because they don’t like it, that they can kill it. That bugs me a lot,” Snyder said. 

Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) asked the lawmakers if there are other groups, noting Hmong and Indigenous groups, that face disproportionate amounts of violence and suggested changing the bill to include them. 

“Instead of focusing on just one specific group… I would really love to see each one of these groups kind of meld together, so there’s representation so information can be shared,” Wanggaard said. 

James, who is the only member of the Legislature actively serving in law enforcement, answered Wanggaard’s question by pulling from his own experience. 

“Back at home, I mean, we have a high Hmong population. I don’t recall ever taking any cases involving any missing Hmong individuals to be honest with you. …I’ve had more white and African-American missing type cases,” James said. He said that a “caveat” to the issue is that “the data collection hasn’t always been prevalent and adequate… especially if we have agencies where they’re not even taking cases on missing persons, that data is not going to be collected.”

“My concern is that if they’re targeting young women — just young women in general, I’m not concerned what race they are — if they’re targeting these young women, is there a connection between some of the missing… say on the Menominee reservation as opposed to Milwaukee County,” Wanggaard said. “I’m just thinking about getting the most information to as many people as we can to help the process.”

Supporters of the bill addressed questions about why it was important to have a task force specifically focused on Black women and girls. 

Madison Police Chief John Patterson was asked whether he saw any value in creating one big task force.

“We shouldn’t be afraid to be surgical at times when it comes to disparities that we’ve identified in our system and, certainly, I believe this is one,” Patterson said. “In my almost three decades, I can tell you work that started off being very focused and surgical in nature to try to address a disparate impact in our community has led to greater communication, greater collaboration across all communities.”

Barbara Sella, executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference, said it’s “so important to understand dynamics within communities and different communities have different dynamics.” 

“To just say, well let’s include everybody — could make the task almost impossible… It’s really important to have a laser focus,” Sella said.

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Gov. Tony Evers signed “Bradyn’s Law,” which creates a new crime for sexual extortion and the “Swenson Starkie Act,” which extends the statute of limitations for hiding a corpse. Evers addresses the Legislature in his 2024 State of the State message. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)

Gov. Tony Evers signed two bills this week introduced in response to crimes, including “Bradyn’s Law,” which creates a new crime for sexual extortion and the “Swenson Starkie Act,” which extends the statute of limitations for hiding a corpse. 

AB 201, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 48, was introduced by Rep. Patrick Snyder and Sen. Jesse James after the death of 15-year-old Bradyn Bohn from Kronenwetter, a village outside of Wausau. Bohn died by suicide in March after being targeted online by a perpetrator who convinced him to send photos of himself and told him that he needed to send money or face major consequences. He suffered through hours of threats and was coerced into sending money before his death.

“Today is an important day to remember Bradyn as we honor him and his memory, because now, moving forward, we will be able to hold bad actors responsible for reprehensible behavior, especially when they prey on our kids, and that is so important,” Evers said in a statement. “We wouldn’t be here today without Bradyn’s family and their relentless advocacy to keep kids safe online and hold predators accountable. We will be able to protect more of Wisconsin’s kids because of Bradyn’s family’s efforts to fight back.”

Sexual extortion, or “sextortion” is defined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a crime in which “an offender coerces a minor to create and send sexually explicit images or video and then uses that material to extort the victim by threatening to release it.” 

2025 Wisconsin Act 48 makes it a Class I felony to coerce someone to engage in sexual conduct or to produce “an intimate representation” by threatening to injure someone’s property or representation, by threatening to commit violence or by threatening to distribute intimate photos of another person. The crime would be a Class H felony if the victim does any of those acts or is under the age of 18, and a Class G felony if the defendant was previously convicted of a sexually violent offense, the violation was committed during the course of a child abduction or the victim is under age 18 and the defendant is more than four years older than the victim. 

A person can also be prosecuted for felony murder if the person commits extortion and it causes the death of the victim. 

Sexual extortion has become a growing threat in the U.S. in recent years. The FBI observed from October 2022 to March 2023 an increase of more than 20% in reports of financially motivated sextortion incidents involving minor victims. 

From October 2021 to March 2023, the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations received over 13,000 reports of online financial sextortion of minors that included at least 12,600 victims, mostly boys, and led to at least 20 suicides.

Rep. Brent Jacobson (R-Mosinee) said in a statement that the bill is the first step towards “protecting vulnerable Wisconsinites from exploitation.” 

“As technology creates new avenues for exploitation, my colleagues and I have an obligation to make sure our laws protect our constituents, and that Wisconsin parents have the resources and awareness to keep their children safe from harm,” Jacobson said. “We must continue to come together to prevent these heinous crimes from claiming children in our state.”

Statute of limitations for hiding a corpse

SB 423, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 59, extends the statute of limitations for prosecuting the crime of hiding or burying a corpse by specifying that it only begins “once the victim’s remains are found and identified or when the crime occurs, whichever is later.” The current statute of limitations is six years in Wisconsin.

The legislation was introduced by Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) and Rep. Ron Tusler (R-Harrison) after the case of Starkie Swenson. Swenson disappeared in 1983 but his remains weren’t found until 2021, 38 years later. 

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, John C. Andrews accepted a plea in the case and was convicted on a charge of homicide by negligent use of a vehicle in 1994 and served 16 months in prison. He refused to reveal where Swenson’s body was. 

Police charged him with hiding a corpse after identifying the remains in 2021, but the charges were dismissed due to the statute of limitations. 

“The killer should’ve faced justice for hiding the remains in an attempt to conceal his crime. However, because of a loophole in Wisconsin law, Starkie’s killer was able to avoid charges,” Tusler said in a statement. “Although we cannot heal the wounds caused by the murder of Starkie Swenson, 2025 Wisconsin Act 59 ensures that no violent criminal will be able to exploit the corpse-hiding loophole again,” Tusler said in a statement.

Notifying parents of sex offenses

AB 74, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 57, requires Wisconsin schools to notify a pupil’s parent or guardian if the pupil is an alleged victim, target or recipient of alleged sex offenses while at school. The law also requires school boards to provide parents and guardians each year with information on their rights to access records regarding school employee discipline.

“Doing everything we can to keep our kids safe at school, at home, and in our communities is a top priority for me, as well as our schools and education professionals, who are frontlines of doing what’s best for our kids every day,” Evers said in a statement. “This bill will strengthen transparency by making sure parents and family members are notified if any misconduct at school affects their kids’ safety or well-being and bolster accountability by ensuring they know what their rights are and what their kids’ rights are.”

Evers signs several other bills this week

Under AB 136, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 55, the penalty for impersonating a peace officer, a firefighter, an emergency medical services practitioner or an emergency medical responder is increased from a Class A misdemeanor to a Class I felony. Sen. Jesse James (R-Thorp) and Rep. Chuck Wichgers (R-Muskego) introduced the legislation this year following an incident in New Berlin.

AB 388, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 75, creates a legal framework to establish a behavioral health hospital in Chippewa Falls using $10 million, which was set aside in the state budget this year to be used for Rogers Behavioral Health. Sen. Jesse James, who coauthored the bill, said in a statement that it “is extremely monumental for the people of northwestern Wisconsin” and provides “a renewed sense of optimism” to the community as it will provide mental health support for children and adults in the area.

Under SB 11, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 79, principals will now be required to allow youth membership organizations, including the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts, to schedule at minimum one time to visit their school to encourage students to join their organization. The visit can consist of both spoken and written information on how the organization helps students with educational interests and civic engagement. 

Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara (R-Appleton) celebrated Evers signing the bill, saying that the organizations “create more engaged, confident, and community-minded citizens” and the law “ensures the next generation of Wisconsin children will continue to benefit from these life-changing experiences.” She also criticized Evers for vetoing another bill that would have added new requirements on schools related to military recruiters, saying the state should “proudly support our military, not slam the door shut when they’re offering students legitimate career options, which is precisely what the governor did with this veto.”

SB 310, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 61, limits the amount of time covered by an emergency power proclamation by a local government’s chief executive officer to 60 days, unless extended by a local governing body. The bill was part of a controversy surrounding Rep. Sylvia Ortiz-Velez earlier this year who claimed that Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who is running for governor, abused his power during the COVID-19 pandemic when he issued emergency orders in 2021.

AB 265, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 56, requires judges to sentence offenders to a minimum of 10 years in prison if convicted of a human trafficking crime and 15 years for a child trafficking crime.

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