Rep. Mace introduces bill seeking death penalty for child rapists

Even if it is unclear if the GOP would support Mace's bill, the debate over the Epstein files opens doors for a bipartisan deal among backbenchers.

Mace’s bill opens the door to similar bills at the state level and will force debates over death penalty all over the world.

By Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez

In the whirlwind of effects of the so-called Epstein Files, GOP Representative Nancy Mace (R-SC) entered this Thursday February 26, a bill portrayed as an “unmistakable message” to child rapists, pedophiles and the networks supporting that kind of crime: the death penalty.

It is unclear if there is support for such a legislation within the Republican party itself, but Rep. Mace proposal hit Capitol Hill at a time where many have already floated the idea of stricter laws to prevent any more victims of this crime.

Rep. Mace bill titled Death Penalty for Child Rapists Act, “would authorize capital punishment for individuals convicted of aggravated sexual abuse, sexual abuse of a minor, and abusive sexual contact offenses against children under federal law and the rape of a child under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.”

According to Rep. Mace’s press release the bill seeks to amend Title 18 of the United States Code to authorize capital punishment for the following federal offenses:

• Aggravated Sexual Abuse of a Child (18 U.S.C. § 2241(c))
• Sexual Abuse of a Minor (18 U.S.C. § 2243(a))
• Abusive Sexual Contact Against a Child (18 U.S.C. § 2244)

The legislation also amends the Uniform Code of Military Justice to authorize the death penalty for rape of a child under Article 120b (10 U.S.C. § 920b).

Rep. Mace’s bill is available over her official website here.

GOP members asking for tougher laws including the death penalty is nothing new in the United States, but the idea of elevating the punishments for this crime is somehow unexpected as the debate around the Epstein Files has given rise also to a cases where political figures and even media personalities do their best to minimize the effects of sexual abuse.

It must be noted that the very “release” of the Epstein files was not the product of a Republican bill, but one successfully passed by a bipartisan coalition of Republican backbenchers unwilling to follow the White House lead on the issue. Mace was, already in 2025, a member of a bipartisan effort to release the Epstein files, when she joined other three Republicans and the then 214 Democrats in the House.

Despite Speaker Mike Johnson’s deep loyalty to Donald Trump, he was unable to force a small group of Republicans willing to support the Democrat-led bill to force the publication of the Epstein files.

Notably, by the end of 2025, Megyn Kelley, a former TV host at Fox News and other legacy outlets, was willing to minimize the damage of some of the main characters in the Epstein files by raising questions about the ages of some of the alleged victims of people seen as close to the deceased financier.

Back in November 2025, Kelly argued there was a “difference between a 15-year-old and a five-year-old,” suggesting Epstein's victims were in the “young teen” category who could “pass for even younger than they were, but would look legal to a passerby.”

Kelly, a favorite of the MAGA crowd faced backlash as she went further to claim or at least to imply that Jeffrey Epstein was not a “true” pedophile and that he was mostly into “the barely legal type.”

Kelley’s willingness to go to war on Epstein’s behalf was perceived as a proxy for going to war for potential accomplices of the financier and it saw former child performers outrage over social and legacy media. The hashtag #IWasFifteen trended, with actors and survivors pointing out that the ability to “pass” for older on screen and how that was irrelevant for their legal status or the nature of the abuse they suffered.

However, given the current political climate in the United States, it would not be surprising if Mace’s proposal was only the spark of a series of changes to state legislation in the United States, while also prompting similar attempts even in countries where the death penalty has been abolished.

On the other side of the Atlantic

By the end of 2025, the Italian Parliament saw some progress with a similar law proposing chemical castration as punishment for convicted criminals of this kind of practice and in the United Kingdom criminals already in jail have a chance to decide on their own if they want to petition this kind of procedure performed on them.

However, as of February 2026, the Italian bill seems to be unable to overcome the baroque legislative procedures in Rome, but it has become a banner of sorts for abuse survivors all over the world tired of the ineffectiveness of their national governments to address and solve their grievances.

It also must be noted that the Italian bill is part of a broader Security Bill (the Ddl Sicurezza) pushed by the Meloni government since 2024. It is not a standalone “chemical castration” law, driven by the “law and order” approach that the conservative and identitarian parties Lega Nord and Fratelli d'Italia try to present as an avatar of sorts.

Even if approved by both Houses of the Italian Parliament, the law would be the immediate target of Human Rights advocates who have repeatedly expressed their concern with laws taking that kind of invasive measures against individuals, even when they have been declared guilty by the courts, more so in the European Union as there is legislation on similar issues already in place and supported by Constitutional courts in the Union.

As of early 2026, the Italian Constitutional Court called attention on the “principle of proportionality” when sentencing crimes. In a January 2026 ruling, the Court reiterated that any punitive measure must be proportionate and respect the individual’s physical integrity. Mandatory chemical castration—which is what the Lega has floated—is widely seen by Italian jurists as a direct violation of these articles.

Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR opens a pdf file), prohibits torture and degrading treatment and the European Court of Human Rights has a long-standing position that medical procedures performed without “free and informed consent” are a violation of physical and mental integrity.

Also, the Council of Europe’s Anti-Torture Committee (CPT) conducted an ad hoc visit to Italy in September 2025. Their preliminary findings (which became a major talking point in Rome this January) specifically warned against “medicalized” punishments that bypass the prisoner's consent, calling them “degrading” and inconsistent with EU standards.

This happens while other countries have witnessed recent reforms to their laws, both national and subnational, as to facilitate denunciation of sexual abuse, end the so-called statute of limitations on this type of crimes, and broaden the definition of sexual abuse as to avoid the kind of losses victims of sexual abuse have suffered since the 1980s when the clergy sexual abuse crisis exploded in the Catholic Church in the United States.

Recently, Los Angeles Press went over the cases of former Jesuit clerics Felipe Berríos del Solar and Marko Rupnik who have been accused of sexually abusing females. Even if their former order, the Society of Jesus, saw fit to expel them from the order, the Vatican was unable to find a way to defrock them

In Berríos’s case his victims included minors, but the Chilean justice was unable to punish him due to the prevalence of the statute of limitations in the cases involving him. In Rupnik’s case, his victims were adults and the statute of limitations prevents civil authorities in his native Slovenia from any meaningful action.

Historically, the Catholic Church has opposed on principle the death penalty. Most recently, Pope Francis amended the Catholic Catechism as to reflect what has been a doctrinal position originally set by John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae, a document published in 1995, usually translated as The Gospel of Life, where the Polish Pope set what Pope Francis formalized as doctrine in 2018.

Despite those reforms, recently, for the first time since there are records available, more Catholics than other Christians supported the use of capital punishment in the U.S. system of justice, as the date from Ryan Burge’s analysis of the U.S. General Social Survey proves in the message posted at what used to be Twitter after this paragraph.