Push to Strengthen Sex Offender Laws in Mass, NECN, June 30, 2009

Push to Strengthen Sex Offender Laws in Mass.

NECN
June 30, 2009

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

(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