It’s really hard to pick up a tabloid these days that doesn’t feature a photo of Sandra Bullock with her adopted 3-year-old son, Louis Bardot. Now, Bullock is praising the fight against harrassment and is speaking out in support of a new law that increases penalties for paparazzi that terrorize the children of celebrities.
California Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday signed the bill, which increases the penalties for intentional harassment of a child because of their parents’ employment, according to CNN.
According to a release from the governor’s office, the new law “increases the maximum jail time for harassment of a child or ward because of the person’s employment from six months in the county jail to a year in the county jail.” It also imposes some pretty stiff fines: For a first violation, a fine not to exceed $10,000. For a second violation, it’s $20,000. For a third violation, it’s $30,000.
“We are fair game, I get it,” Bullock told CNN at her handprint and footprint ceremony outside the TCL Chinese Theatre on Wednesday. “Children should be allowed to be children and not be sold. You’re taking a picture of a child and selling it!”
The effort gained a ton of momentum after Hollywood heavyweights Halle Berry and Jennifer Garner testified before the California Assembly Judiciary Committee in August to support the bill. The pair opened up about the conditions suffered by their children as a result of the aggressive paparazzi.
“I love my kids,” Jennifer Garner says. “They’re beautiful and sweet and innocent, and I don’t want a gang of shouting, arguing, law-breaking photographers who camp out everywhere we are, all day, every day to continue traumatizing my kids.”
“We aren’t just whiny celebrities,” Halle Berry says. “We’re moms here, who are just trying to protect our children.”
“I think it’s brilliant,” Sandra Bullock said about the fight that Berry and Garner are posing. She explains,”The girls worked so hard, the attorney worked so hard, and I think it’s a good sign.”
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