Marr Wants Tougher Child Sex Crime Laws
By Richard Roesler
Spokesman Review
February 28, 2007
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/local/story.asp?ID=176612
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| Cheryl Corrigan, of Spokane, testifies Tuesday before a state Senate panel on a bill by Sen. Chris Marr, D-Spokane, to do away with the statute of limitations for prosecuting sex crimes against children. At right is former Spokane County Prosecutor Don Brockett, another supporter of the bill. Photo by RICHARD ROESLER The Spokesman-Review |
Olympia — Sen. Chris Marr is running into some political headwinds in his push to change the law so all sex crimes against children can be prosecuted until the day the abuser dies.
Consider:
• A week after Marr, D-Spokane, had more than half the state Senate signed on as co-sponsors, a couple of Republicans have yanked their names off it, apparently on the grounds that their party, not Democrats, had long pushed unsuccessfully for similar changes.
• One conservative Democrat says he's worried that the bill will threaten lifelong criminal prosecution for a "youthful indiscretion," like a teen who has sex with an underage partner at a party.
• Prosecutors and rape victims' groups have concerns with the bill, saying that in many cases it's unrealistic for victims to expect a jury to convict a molester decades later.
• A key committee chairman is trying to also extend the deadline not just for prosecution, but also for lawsuits – a change that would draw fierce opposition from insurers.
Marr – backed by a vocal group of Spokane sexual-abuse victims, family members and advocates – says he'll press ahead. He feels he has to, he said, after making a campaign issue of a years-old vote by Sen. Brad Benson not to add clergy members to the list of people required by law to report allegations of sex abuse. (Benson later voted for a bill that added some religious officials to the law.) Marr ousted Benson in November's election.
"I didn't want people to feel I'd made political hay out of it and then just walked away from it," Marr said.
Several people from Spokane spoke Tuesday at a Senate hearing on the bill. It would do away with any statute of limitations for any sex offense against a child. Under current law, even first-degree rape of a child under age 14 generally cannot be prosecuted 10 years after the crime or after the child turns 21, whichever is later. For some child sex crimes, the deadline for filing is considerably less.
Former Spokane County Prosecutor Don Brockett – who's been trekking to Olympia every winter for years, trying to toughen the law – said the question is simple.
"Do we have the will to protect our children, or should we continue to sacrifice them to their molesters?" he said. The correct answer, he feels, is clear: "If you mess with our kids, then we're going to have you look over your shoulders for the rest of your lives."
One of those who testified was Spokane's Cheryl Corrigan, a mother of three whose husband, Tim, killed himself in 2002, apparently due to lasting horror over childhood abuse by a priest.
"We can't bring Tim back," she said. "But had he had the option at that time to pursue criminal justice, we don't know that he wouldn't be here and learning to cope with what happened to him."
Then came Mark Mains, an Everett man who struggled at times to remain composed as he recounted his own struggle to confront his abuse by a priest.
"Some people will never be able to talk about it," Mains said. "It takes a long time. It took me until I was over 40 to be able to come here and speak to you today."
Under current law, "child molesters have an incentive to destroy evidence, threaten victims and run out the clock," said David Clohessy, executive director of the St. Louis-based Survivors' Network of those Abused by Priests.
But some lawmakers and advocates have worries about the change.
"The way this bill is drafted, it could be any statutory rape between teenagers that could come up 60 years later," said Sen. Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam. Even if a person wasn't convicted in court, he said, they'd be vilified in the press. And false allegations of child abuse are "strikingly high" in divorce cases, he said.
Tom McBride, with the state prosecutors association, said that some changes have been made in the law to stretch out the statute of limitations.
For example, if police can get DNA in a rape case but can't identify a suspect, for example, they can file charges against the DNA. That stops the clock, halting the statute of limitations until someone eventually matches that genetic fingerprint.
But cases get very hard to prove beyond a reasonable doubt when the crime is decades old, McBride said. If lawmakers really want to help, he said, they should focus on changes like allowing prosecutors to tell juries about a suspect's past crimes.
Rep. John Ahern, R-Spokane, who has tried to pass similar bills since 2003, urged the senators to approve the bill.
"The victim gets a lifetime sentence under our current law," he said, "and the molester gets off scot-free for the rest of his life."
After the hearing, Marr said he doesn't know if the bill will survive. He's getting some pressure, he said, to turn it into a bill to study the issue – a move that is often Olympia's face-saving way of killing a proposal.
"I feel like this has been studied enough," Marr said.
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