Boston — Senate lawmakers moved Massachusetts one step closer to joining 48 other states in outlawing the act of circulating explicit photos of someone without their permission, a policy on so-called “Revenge Porn” that supporters say protects people from online harassment.

The legislation that cleared the Senate on a unanimous vote Thursday afternoon is likely on its way to a six-person panel of legislators who will be tasked with hashing out the differences with a proposal the House passed earlier this year.

Sen. John Keenan, a Quincy Democrat, said the Senate bill closes a loophole in Massachusetts law and gives closure to people who have been victimized by “this crime.”

“Let this legislation make a difference so that everybody knows this is not acceptable. It is criminal, and there will be a consequence,” Keenan said from the floor of the Senate. “If there’s a young child involved, we recognize that they’re young and young people make mistakes. Let them know that we are there to help them get through this with this diversionary program.”

Both the Senate and House versions of the bill call for the development and implementation of a “comprehensive” educational diversion program for teenagers on the consequences of sexting and posting explicit images or videos online.

The House tasked the Attorney General’s Office with creating the program whereas the Senate tapped the Office of the Child Advocate to lead the efforts.

Senators did not include in their version House-backed language that extends the statute of limitations for assault and battery on a family or household member, or against someone with an active protective order, from six to 15 years.

An amendment from Sen. Joan Lovely would have restored that language to the Senate bill. It was initially rejected on an unrecorded vote without debate but a few minutes later, Lovely successfully petitioned for it to be withdrawn.

“It was a withdrawal so I went along with it. It was a no so I went along with it. So that’s why,” Lovely told the Herald while entering an elevator just outside the Senate Chamber.

Keenan said the statute of limitation has more to do with domestic violence cases than “anything relating to revenge porn.”

“I think its outside the scope, yeah,” Keenan said. “I think it’s something we have to absolutely look at.”

Both bills would divert a child who violates laws banning the possession or dissemination of explicit visual materials from the criminal justice system to the education program. The two versions also boost the fine for criminal harassment from $1,000 to $5,000.

Lawmakers in both branches agreed to add “coercive control” to the state’s definition of abuse, a change that has been cast as a way to allow abuse prevention orders to cover non-physical forms of abuse like financial, technological, or emotional.

Senators look to create a new criminal offense for the distribution of visual material depicting another person who is nude, partially nude, or engaged in sexual conduct without their consent. Their bill also puts on the books a juvenile offense for similar crimes that is eligible for expungement.

Like the House bill, senators also looked to tackle non-consensual deep-fake pornography, or computer-generated images of a person that are shared without their permission.

Keenan said the provisions on deep-fakes put Massachusetts “in the forefront” in trying to address explicit digital images.

“It also highlights that there’s a whole lot more we have to do in this area of digitization,” Keenan said. “We have to address digitization that results in artificially created child pornography, we have to address with time the issues of sexting, we have to address the issues of images being created and profiles being created. That’s the next step.”

Versions of the bill the Senate passed Thursday and the House approved in January have floated on Beacon Hill for years. Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr said former Gov. Charlie Baker filed a similar proposal at least as far back as 2017, again in 2019, and a third time in 2021.

Both the House and Senate passed versions of the bill during the 2021-2022 legislative session but lawmakers could not get a compromise version to Baker in time before the term was up, something the former governor lamented at the end of his time in office.

Sen. Jamie Eldridge, a Marlborough Democrat, acknowledged how close legislators came last session.

“This is a tightly crafted bill because we are establishing a new crime in an era where we are repealing or often reforming our criminal statutes,” he said. “In addition, we are discussing social media and messaging activities where the First Amendment, the right of free speech, including protecting even offensive speech, is often a factor.”

Massachusetts and South Carolina are the only two states in the country that do not have a law on the books addressing so-called revenge porn. Sen. John Velis, a Westfield Democrat, said many states that have addressed the issue “haven’t had this holistic approach where we capture this AI.”

“We capture this new technology,” he said.