Posted on 04/06/2008 1:00:21 PM PDT by TornadoAlley3
Officer, lawmaker team up
Those who peer at children in public could find themselves on the wrong side of the law in Maine soon.
A bill that passed the House last month aims to strengthen the crime of visual sexual aggression against children, according to state Rep. Dawn Hill, D-York.
Her involvement started when Ogunquit Police Lt. David Alexander was called to a local beach to deal with a man who appeared to be observing children entering the community bathrooms. Because the state statute prevents arrests for visual sexual aggression of a child in a public place, Alexander said he and his fellow officer could only ask the man to move along.
"There was no violation of law that we could enforce. There was nothing we could charge him with," Alexander said.
He attended a talk with Hill a week later and brought the case to her attention. Hill pledged to do what she could, Alexander said, and the result was a change through the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee in the House, which made the law applicable in both private and public places.
Alexander said he's grateful Hill was willing to take up the cause, and is hopeful the measure will clear the Senate.
"I'll be pleased that we were able to identify this flaw and take steps to rectify it," he said.
Under the bill, if someone is arrested for viewing children in a public place, it would be a Class D felony if the child is between 12 to 14 years old and a Class C felony if the child is under 12, according to Alexander.
Hill said she believes the move was necessary to correct what she called a "loophole" in the state's criminal law statutes.
"I told Lt. Alexander that I would be happy to work with him and sponsor a bill that would correct this in the 2008 session," Hill said. "And so we did."
In arguing for the bill, Alexander said she cited public rest rooms as places where the people using them should have a reasonable expectation of privacy. She said the committee determined that there would not be any major side effects from expanding the statute to include public places.
The bill recently cleared a fiscal review, done because of the state's major prison budget crunch, and Hill said it should be heading to the Senate before long.
York Police Chief Doug Bracy said the statute would represent a fairly minor change that would help keep the public safer, especially children. He noted that York police respond fairly regularly to reports of public peepers on the town's beaches.
With ever-growing concern over sexual predators, Bracy said the arrests will also allow police to check backgrounds and determine if there is a criminal history involved.
"There is a growing outcry by the public to protect our children," Bracy said, noting that tourists from all over the country visit York.
Next stop: visual sexual aggression against women by men in the workplace. Punishment: termination. No appeal. Just great. Man, am I glad I kissed corporate life goodbye years ago.
In the old days, fathers of small children understood the secondary purpose of a Louisville Slugger - so no legislation was necessary.
Something out of Orwell???? Don't get me wrong, I'm all for getting the Pervs but Jeeeeez! This is really a stretch.
What's next, I get locked up for giving my neighbor a bad look!
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Good Law. Now a father waiting for his daughter to come out of the bathroom will be tazered and carted off to jail, while his daughter is left to the child molesters at the beach.
What we need to do is start putting convicted child rapists, murderers, etc. to death - and start giving major penalties (not 1 yr probation) to people who have been convicted of less violent forms of child molesting, including family members.
For a project I’m working on, I had to go out and take some photos of an area that included a playground, and then I spent hours blurring the faces of the children or positioning the photo so that no children were identifiable. This is because child molesters actually look at photos to pick out future victims, and parents are so freaked out now that nobody wants their child’s picture appearing anywhere. We were going to publish a parish yearbook, but nobody wanted it because they didn’t want their kids’ pictures to appear.
A very sad state of affairs. And once again, we are adapting to the criminals and evil people, rather than simply exterminating them and making anybody who considers doing this think long and hard about the possible risks to his future bodily integrity and liberty.
The US no longer exists. It was conquered and taken over by jackels and crows.
What’s Rep Dawn Hill, D-York gonna do about the 12- or 15-year-old who has “Pretty Baby” printed across the butt of her sweat pants. That is designed to draw attention.
...I sure hope some dad never goes to the playground and watches the kids scamper around....He’d be facing life in prison.
Nothing that comes from a democrat will ever surprise me.
This really shouldn’t surprise anyone, the goal and focus of most politicians is to criminalize nearly everything, by doing so they eventually turn us all into criminals with records, now on probation with reduced rights to privacy etc... which in turn gives them greater control over our lives.
LOL For sure!!! Also, the time honored avocation of the old folks, People Watching, just became a class B or C felony.
Yup. And best not wear sunglasses in public any more — too obviously an attempt to skirt the law.
...visual sexual aggression of a child...
!!!!!!WHAT!!!?????
Now we have to avert our gaze from all children when in public?
This is nutzzzzzzz!!!!!!
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