Push to Strengthen Sex Offender Laws in Mass, NECN, July 1, 2009

Push to Strengthen Sex Offender Laws in Mass.

NECN
July 1, 2009

http://www.necn.com/Boston/New-England/2009/06/30/Push-to-strengthen-sex/1246394097.html

[with video]

(NECN: Brad Puffer, Boston, Mass.) - There is a push in Massachusetts to tighten the state's sex offender laws. One bill would eliminate a 27-year statute of limitations on rape for victims under the age of 18. Today, a House committee heard from a woman who was raped 19 years ago when she was just a teenager.

House Minority Leader Bradley Jones's measure would include adoption relationships in the state's incest laws and a Rep. Lantigua bill would ban spying on another person in order to derive sexual gratification, as well as nude trespassing.

Less than two years ago Elizabeth Holmes began dealing with the emotional trauma of a brutal rape by a stranger in a park. It happened one week after her 16th birthday,. Now 34, she had found the strength to tell lawmakers exactly what happened.

"Here I was just enjoying a walk I had done a million times before and thinking about the special birthday I had just celebrated and second later I was being dragged into the woods fearing for my life," Holmes said.

This is the latest push by advocates like Holmes to eliminate the statute n of limitation on sex abuse cases involving children.

"The effects this rape had on me physically and emotionally were too much for my brain to process and I had to live in avoidance for years in order to function in life," Holmes said.

In 2006, victims of clergy sex abuse pushed hard for a change in the same law. Following that effort, and high profile case like the prosecution of defrocked priest Paul Shanley, legislatures increased the statute of limitations from 15 years to 27 years in cases of child rape. But many, including Senator Michael Morrissey, say it’s not enough.

"The technology has changed the DNA and the testing but what has not change is how difficult it is for someone who had been assaulted step forward whether it was twenty years ago or yesterday," Sen. Michael Morrisseay (D-Quincy) said.

Holmes finally filed a police report in 2008. She says her chance to hold someone accountable has long passed and that needs to change.

"Our laws simply cannot continue to tell our children that when they do find the superhuman strength to come forward and confront their rapists ‘sorry but it’s too late'," Holmes said.

NECN's Brad Puffer reports.