§ 98A.006.Liberal Construction and Application

The compelled prostitution chapter’s construction directive, in the same form as the trafficking chapter’s.

The chapter shall be liberally construed and applied to promote its underlying purpose to protect persons from compelled prostitution and provide adequate remedies to victims.

The parallel drafting is deliberate. The two chapters were built to work together — conduct that is trafficking is frequently also compelled prostitution — and identical construction directives keep them from being read against each other.

Which provisions it affects most is worth naming. This chapter reaches beyond the person who compelled the prostitution to those who engaged in promotion of it, and to a defendant who purchased the services — categories whose boundaries are exactly where a liberal construction operates.

The definitions provision borrows from the Penal Code, as the trafficking chapter does, so the same concern arises: a defendant would otherwise argue that criminal-law strictness travels with the imported definitions. This forecloses it.

"Adequate remedies" supports the damages provision, which allows actual damages including mental anguish, exemplary damages, and fees and costs.

Note what this chapter lacks that the trafficking chapter has: there is no confidential identity provision here. A claimant needing anonymity looks to the trafficking chapter, or to the general provision for actions involving sexual abuse of a minor.

The cumulative remedy provision means the two chapters can be pleaded together, which is the usual course.