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July 27, 2006
A Good Start
President Bush signed the Adam Walsh bill into law today.
Child advocates have called the bill the most sweeping sex offender legislation to target pedophiles in years. It would:
—Establish a comprehensive federal DNA database of material collected from convicted molesters, and procedures for the routine DNA collection and comparison to the database when someone has been convicted of such an offense.
—Provide federal funding for states to track pedophiles using global positioning devices.
—Allow victims of child abuse to sue their molesters.
The law imposes a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 years for raping a child; a mandatory 10-year penalty for sex trafficking offenses involving children and for coercing child prostitution; and increases minimum sentences for molesters who travel between states.
......
The new law dramatically increases penalties for anyone who downloads child pornography off the Internet, raising the civil penalties from $50,000 to $150,000. It will also change existing law to allow victims ages 18 or older to recover damages from those who downloaded images of them taken while they were children.
Don't faint, but this is one time I agree with John Kerry.
"It's an absolute outrage that the penalty for downloading songs illegally off the Internet was three times the penalty for downloading disgusting images of children," Kerry said. "We need to do everything we can to end the disgrace of child pornography. This is a start."
If they'd included an automatic death penalty for anyone convicted of killing a child in those circumstances, it would've been a much better start.
Posted by Rita at July 27, 2006 04:09 PM
Comments
Good on 'em. Long time overdue.
Posted by: Keith at July 28, 2006 08:36 AM