| January 4, 2006
OLYMPIA…State Sen. Don Benton, R-Vancouver, in
keeping with his history of protecting children, will introduce legislation
the first day of session to enact key provisions of Florida’s “Jessica’s
Law” to protect Washington’s children from sexual predators.
Jessica’s Law is named for Jessica Marie Lunsford, a
9-year-old Florida girl who was abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered on
Feb. 23, 2005, by a previously convicted sex offender who was in violation
of his probation and had failed to register his change of address with local
law enforcement.
“We must do everything in our power so that what happened
to Jessica will never happen to another child,” Benton said. “My bill for
Washington’s children has six key provisions – all of which are absolutely
necessary to protect our children from sex offenders.”
Benton’s bill will:
Increase the penalty for lewd and lascivious
molestation of a child to life in prison or a split sentence of a
mandatory minimum 25-year prison term, followed by lifetime supervision
with electronic monitoring.
Make sexual predators who murder their victims
eligible for the death penalty in capital cases.
Designate failing to re-register as a sexual
offender/predator or harboring or assisting a sexual predator/offender a
third degree felony.
Require those already convicted of sex crimes to have
electronic monitoring for the remainder of their probation.
Require community corrections officers to check the
sex offender registry to note whether an offender newly assigned to them
is a sex offender and if all reporting requirements are met.
Require offenders to report twice yearly to verify
and update registration information with the county sheriff.
During the 2005 session, Benton won significant changes to
state laws to protect children from teachers and coaches who abuse their
positions of trust in order to prey on students.
For a first offense, Benton’s proposal requires the Office
of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) to revoke or suspend
certificates of teachers found intentionally viewing unauthorized sexually
explicit material on school grounds. A second offense requires OSPI to
permanently revoke a teacher’s certificate.
Benton sponsored this legislation because of allegations
against Bethel Junior High School teacher Chad Maughan that he engaged in
sexual misconduct with a 14-year-old female student. Maughan previously
worked as a science teacher at North Thurston High School, but resigned
after the North Thurston School District filed a complaint with the state
alleging that he had accessed Internet pornography from his computer at
work. OSPI suspended his teaching certificate for 60 days.
“These are not the kind of people we want to give full and
unsupervised access to our children and these are certainly not the kind of
people we want to be teaching our children,” Benton said. “It’s not just
parents who don’t want these people in the classroom, teachers don’t
either.”
During the 2004 session, after reading The Seattle
Times series “Coaches who prey,” and learning that Washington had nearly
100 teachers who had committed sexual acts with students, only to move on to
other school districts without as much as a note in their personnel file,
Benton worked with Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, to pass the following
legislation to protect schoolchildren:
Senate Bill 6171 speeds up
and requires the conclusions of investigations of school employees;
Senate Bill 5533 requires
school districts to share information regarding school employee misconduct;
and
Senate Bill 6220 outlines and
clarifies misconduct reporting requirements.
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For more information contact Penny Drost
at (360) 786-7522
or
drost.penny@leg.wa.gov
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