AUGUSTA, Maine – Soliciting sex with a child, however it is done, would be a crime under a measure that received the unanimous support of the Legislature’s Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee on Thursday.
“In today’s world there are a lot of different ways to do solicitation,” said Sen. Garrett Mason, R-Livermore Falls, co-chairman of the committee. “We need to try and look into the future and cover as much as we can.”
The original legislation, sponsored by Sen. Barry Hobbins, D-Saco, was the result of an incident in Corinna last summer and was narrowly drafted. Rebekah Troyer was shocked to find it was not a crime for her neighbor to ask her 14-year-old daughter to have sex with him.
“Our 14-year-old daughter was explicitly propositioned by our 30-something-year-old neighbor,” she wrote in an email to Hobbins. “We called the police and we were informed there was nothing illegal about what he did, even after the trooper spoke to him and he confessed.”
Hobbins, an attorney, was surprised to find that Troyer was right and that the Attorney General’s office said there was a loophole in the law covering sexual exploitation of a minor. He introduced the legislation last fall that would make it a crime to verbally solicit sex with a child, but the panel has amended that to cover solicitation by any means.
“We were told by CLAC [the Criminal Law Advisory Commission] that we should not only close that loophole, but change the law to cover any solicitation in any form,” said Rep. Ann Haskell, D-Portland, the lead Democrat on the panel. “That’s what the amendment does.”
John Pelletier, chairman of CLAC, said it would be better to address the criminal behavior in the law and not the means of committing the behavior. He said, for example, it’s not clear if sending an email from a phone is a crime under the current computer solicitation statute.
“If you focus on the conduct and not how it was done, it becomes a matter of was the conduct done and can the state prove it,” he said. “It really is an amendment to the existing computer statute.”
Haskell said the committee during its discussion was concerned that other forms of solicitation of a minor might not be covered by existing laws. She said lawmakers are always trying to keep up with changes in technology.
“It’s sort of like the bath salts issue,” Mason said. “No one had heard of it two years ago and then we have this new, dangerous chemical we had to deal with.”
Haskell said she liked the approach suggested by CLAC instead of trying to list all of the methods by which an adult could solicit a minor.
“The concept here is that you should not be able to aggressively solicit a child,” she said.
“I find that it is much more appropriate to say by whatever means, whether it is verbal, whether it is on your cellphone or iPad or whatever new piece of electronic equipment that is going to come down the line.”
Haskell said the committee goal was not to expand the crime, but expand the ways the crime can be done so that methods of solicitation are not left out. Sexual exploitation of a minor is a Class B crime which carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison. If the child is under 12, the penalty increases to a Class A offense with a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.
“I think we took the right approach by not trying to define all of the various ways people can communicate,” Mason said. “You always run the risk of leaving something out, like Facebook or even something simple like just passing a note.”
The measure now goes to the full Legislature for consideration and could have its first votes next week, as lawmakers speed up the pace of the session.
Geeze. I know this: I know that living a life of a lie is traumatic and damaging. I know this can be the consequence of these types of pedophilic encounters. I believe what bothers people the most is the lie and the cover up and the willing duplicity of the older individual in the encounter. I know I’ve held myself to our strict standards of law around this subject. But we focus so much on the negative in this society rather than the positive. It just becomes more and more evident that government cannot ever be the role model for society because they simply set the standards and sometimes the standards are unreasonable to people who don’t read the BDN and who live off the grid and according to their own standards and the potential disaster of all this legislation and focus on avoiding the negative is simply the increase of the incentive to cover-up the crime, the silence the (now) “victim” and it increases even the victim’s feeling of culpability in crime or shame. Human feelings, desires and instincts can’t be programmed out of the body overnight with laws. There has to be steps taken to seperate young kids from older men across the spectrum. Simply outlawing something that if two people are left in the vicinity of each other are likely to commit doesn’t change prevailing factors that contribute to these situations. It may, make the consequences worse. But that’s the problem when people with the right ideas try to change the world by getting into the political process rather than just living the difference in their own lives and showing the way to better example.
Hey downeastahhh, I believe we should take children away from their mothers at birth, so with your idea of, “There has to be steps taken to separate young kids from older men across the spectrum,” and mine together, we shouldn’t have to worry about any more sexual exploitation of children. Problem solved.
Or did you forget about this:
http://bangor-launch.newspackstaging.com/2011/03/14/news/bangor/mars-hill-woman-gets-20-years-for-making-child-pornography-of-her-own-daughter/
Ya, I guess I was taking responsibility for speaking only for my gender. I don’t look too much into this stuff. We’re such a gotcha country. I made the law now you follow it or I will bring shame down upon you, all that. It’s not loving. It’s self-seeking. It’s the same types of gotcha by the balls rules that people who reach a certain age where they’ve forgotten the past four decades decide they are finally going to change the world for the better and they pass these types of laws and move to california…what i want to know is how did the proposition that triggered this law happen? Was the 14 year old spending lots of time by herself? Where was the mom? While she’s busy passing laws for us to follow, is she looking after her own kid? I wonder if we have the courage as a species to evaluate each situation individually to determine if the situation has net negative, net neutral or even net good. What is net negative? Like I said before living all your life with a lie damages a person’s ability to trust their senses. This is a BIG net negative. However, I see these laws as the cause for the secrecy around the situation. Think about it, if it wasn’t tabboo there would be no need for secrecy. I believe anything that is done openly in a group of humans that doesn’t cause physical pain or emotional discomfort for anyone involved, and which does not have tangible negative effects in the future disqualifies itself from being worthy of 10 years in jail. I hate secrets. I hate lies. I think they are bringing down this country, but I don’t see this as solving absolutely anything. I think it makes the weight of keeping the secrets worse. It borders on thought crime because nothing physical even has to happen. I just wonder if maybe the woman who is so satisfied about passing this law maybe spent a few more hours a day involved in her daughter’s life if we wouldn’t have to collectively pay for her mistake. Some people are frigid, mechanical and self-important beyond belief. To me this smacks of just another well-if-we-just-tell-men-not-to-do-it-everything-will-fix-itself effort. No we don’t work that way 100 percent of the time. We react to situations and you really have to have the blinders on not to realize this, but such is the case with most people seeking adoration in the public sphere. It leads all of us thoughtful ones to question our own senses and the guys who are complete morons and have no comprehension of the laws carry on as if nothing is amiss. The messed up ones meditate on the fact that it’s wrong and commit it anyway and these are the scariest individuals, the ones these laws were created to address. Wonderful things happen from this point forward. And look, nature built women to procreate as early sometimes as 12 or 13. Okay. I’m not a pedophile for saying that. That is a biological fact. Nature’s laws…Maine’s laws. Which one is older? That means nature designed women to begin to become sexually attractive at that age. Okay? That’s nature’s laws. We impose new laws that aren’t even .00000001 as old as our species with 10 years in prison for sexually speaking to a 14 year old girl, okay, without any effort to change the way we relate to one another or any attempt to thoughtfully regulate behavior that has net negative effects rather than a wide open ban for any situation between anyone of this age and that age, regardless of all other considerations. It’s just the limitation of government and a general intellectually lazy thoughtlessness among so-called activists.
It must be nice to have the unwavering, wholesome, commuity values that this lawyer, Rebekeh Troyer, no doubt posses in bounty as she has ever since she was born in a manger in bethlehem. I wouldn’t know because I’m just a guy. I have a feeling that if I took a hike with her the BDN would be reporting a different story: “The original legislation, sponsored by Sen. Barry Hobbins, D-Saco, was the result of an incident in Baxter State Park last summer and was narrowly drafted. Rebekah Troyer was shocked to find it was not a crime for men to pee while standing up. “Our beloved Maine state forest got peed on while he was standing up,” she wrote in an email to Hobbins. “We called the police and we were informed there was nothing illegal about what he did, even after the trooper spoke to him and he confessed.” Hobbins, an attorney, was surprised to find that Troyer was right. Hobbins had been accustomed to sitting while he peed ever since he entered the Legislature and that the Attorney General’s office said there was a loophole in the law covering urination.
The single most important job a man has in this world is to protect children. Anyone who attempts to exploit a child for money or sex should have his man card revoked.
Or a few holes punched in it.
Large caliper holes.
A La “Pulp fiction”
Once again more sexual Laws which do damn little, Every study known to man has concluded that the vast majority of sexual crimes 85% or more is committed within the family, and when reported the Mother simply will not protect the child, but rather will protect her husband, current boyfriend, or other family member, for fear of scorn by others, for what she brought into the house. Why not make some Laws to attempt to correct this group of children. Do they not count? Our Lawmaker fiddle, While Rome burns. Shame.