Dear Editor:
The Safe Kids Coalition and other child safety advocates are
stunned by the Legislature’s recent action to decimate a package of
bills meant to protect children from sexual predators and
pornographers.
Dear Editor:
The Safe Kids Coalition and other child safety advocates are stunned by the Legislature’s recent action to decimate a package of bills meant to protect children from sexual predators and pornographers.
Despite backing from the California District Attorneys Association and many prosecutors’ individual offices statewide, the bills, which were nicknamed “Project KidSafe,” were nearly all defeated in committees. The logic-free zone which gave us MTBE gas additives, Soviet-style public transit and deregulated utilities, opening the Pandora’s Box that I warned Peter Frusetta about in 1995 and 1996, has proven once again how wrong our Legislature can be, how out of touch with reality. As Daily Journal reporter Hudson Sangree wrote, “In the Senate Public Safety Committee, only one of nine bills,” from Project KidSafe was passed by the Committee “which is dominated by powerful liberals and long known as a roadblock to many tough-on-crime measures”.
The bills that died included one to make killing a child under age 14 a special circumstance allowing prosecutors to seek the death penalty (SB880). At present our law makes murders of judges, prosecutors and other classes of victims death-eligible offenses, so why shouldn’t society have this added protection for our children? Ask your Legislator.
Similarly, Project KidSafe child safety bills killed by our Legislature included proposals to increase penalties for sex crimes against children and for the possession of child pornography. Amazingly, they even defeated a bill that would have imposed life in prison for kidnaping a child for lewd conduct, which would have also made repeated sexual abuse of a child a “one-strike” crime, eligible for life imprisonment after one conviction (SB884). In the Assembly, former Orange County prosecutor Todd Spitzer’s bill (AB730) to make anyone convicted of one sexually violent predator law was killed in the Public Safety Committee. I urge Safe Kids Coalition members and concerned parents and grandparents to let our Legislators know how you feel about this failure to add protection for our children to our law. Of all the mistakes coming out of Sacramento, this must rank as the worst legislative offense yet.
Joseph P. Thompson, Gilroy
Submitted Satruday, April 5, to ed****@****ic.com
