BishopAccountability.org
	Legislation Would Toughen Sex Offender Laws By Lindsey Parietti MetroWest Daily News May 21, 2008 http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/x1880507231/Legislation-would-toughen-sex-offender-laws BOSTON — Flanked by district attorneys and Attorney General Martha Coakley, lawmakers unveiled legislation yesterday that would impose minimum mandatory sentences for repeat and violent sex offenders. House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi ensured that the bill - a tougher version of which is backed by Republicans, including state Rep. Karyn Polito of Shrewsbury and former Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey - would pass before the session ends in July. "We must do something here ... to strengthen the law to make sure that sexual predators on children in Massachusetts will be prosecuted, will be sent to jail and we are giving the tools to the prosecutors who are addressing this," DiMasi said during a press conference. The legislation attaches minimum sentences to three categories of crimes: 15 years for aggravated rape of a child using force or a weapon, 10 years for indecent assault and battery on a child under 14, and 10 years for statutory rape. The proposed legislation has age requirements in the statutory rape category: the perpetrator must at least five years older than a child between 12 and 16 and at least 10 years older than a child younger than 12. Offenders who are in a position of authority and trust, including doctors, psychologists, clergy and teachers can also be prosecuted under the aggravated rape category. Repeat offenders face up to 20-year mandatory minimum sentences. Massachusetts is joining several states that have adopted harsher sex crime penalties following Florida's passage of Jessica's Law, named after 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford, who was raped and killed by a convicted sex offender in 2005. Wendy Murphy, a victims rights advocate and former assistant Middlesex County district attorney, called the (House) legislation "watered down" and "a joke." "They created a menu of choices so it remains the case today that a 50-year-old man can rape a 3-year-old child and be charged under one of three laws," she said. "One of those carries a mandatory sentence." Murphy said she never prosecuted a case in which the offender used a weapon, and estimated that about 85 percent of cases would not fall within the aggravated forcible rape category. "If you say you are going to adopt a mandatory law, you can't make it discretionary - that's the opposite of mandatory," she said. "There's something wrong with a legislative body that can't see that raping kids is more serious than selling drugs." Michael O'Keefe, president of the Massachusetts District Attorney's Association, said the legislation gives prosecutors more room to negotiate plea bargains than the Florida law, which imposes 25-year mandatory minimum sentences for raping a child. "This is a very easy issue to shout from the rooftops about 25 years to life for everybody who victimizes a child, but the reality is that...it is often someone who is very close to the child, even family members, and some of these victims are barely competent to testify in the court of law if they're young children and the older children are terribly embarrassed about what happened and fearful of facing their accusers," O'Keefe said. "Perhaps we can use the leverage that is built into this statute to get the kind of resolution that is just." Polito, who was not invited to the press conference, said that although she is happy to see the bill advance, the Democratic-backed version lacks crucial minimum sentences for first-time offenders who don't use force or weapons. "Those aggravated circumstances do not address the day-to-day kind of rape that occurs and harms children...the prosecutors want leeway and flexibility built into the system, but I feel that children that can stand up and tell their story ought to know that their perpetrator will do jail time," Polito said. Polito, who has proposed 10-year mandatory minimum sentences for rape of a child, said Judiciary Committee Chairman state Rep. Eugene O'Flaherty, D-Chelsea, has not accepted her calls to discuss the legislation. "I've worked very hard on this for a long time, and I don't want to give the public the perception that this is going to do the job when it's weaker than I think it should be." The legislation still allows prosecutors to charge a defendant with rape of a child, which carries no minimum sentence, while also giving them the ability to convince offenders to accept a plea bargain by threatening them with a mandatory minimum statute if they choose to go to trial, said O'Flaherty's chief of staff, Alexis Finneran. Daily News staff Lindsey Parietti can be reached at lindsey.parietti@cnc.com.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.