STATE LAWMAKERS TARGET SEX OFFENDERS WITH LEGISLATION

STATE LAWMAKERS TARGET SEX OFFENDERS WITH LEGISLATION
State Lawmakers Target Sex Offenders With Legislation POSTED: 8:10 am EST March 30, 2006 COLUMBUS -- State lawmakers turned the spotlight on sex offenders this week before heading for a pre-primary election break, passing a slew of bills to toughen sentences and tighten monitoring. The topic gained traction this month amid the uproar over a judge who sentenced a man to five years of probation for two counts of sexual battery involving two boys, ages 5 and 12. The sentence that Franklin County Common Pleas Judge John Connor gave defendant Andrew Selva had top state Republicans calling for his removal from the bench. Silva was in a Cincinnati halfway house briefly before moving to Dayton after his release. Yet the Legislature's own Correctional Institution Inspection Committee published state and federal statistics in January that indicated the problem may not be as dramatic as the election-year rhetoric suggests. Nearly 90 percent of the 879 sex offenders released from Ohio prisons in 1989 had not committed another sex offense 10 years later, the CIIC review showed. Quoting statistics gathered by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, the report showed 34 percent of the sex offenders committed another crime within a decade of leaving prison, and 11 percent were sex-related. CIIC Director Shirley Pope said even one repeat offense is too many, and emphasized that her committee does not take stands on sentencing bills, such as one sent to Gov. Bob Taft on Wednesday calling for mandatory minimum sentences for those who commit sexual offenses against children under 13. She said the CIIC's interest in the study related to the effectiveness of the Ohio prison system's treatment programs for sex offenders. None of the bills passed during the week's flurry of legislative activity addressed treatment options for sex offenders. The same CIIC report, quoting U.S. Justice Department figures, showed only three states housed more sex offenders in 2000 than Ohio -- Texas, California and Michigan -- yet Ohio employed half or one-third as many staff to provide treatment. "The goal of treatment would be that they don't leave our system and commit the crime again," Pope said. The week's sex offender crackdown unfolded as one particular category of victims, those abused by priests, grew increasingly outraged. A House committee stripped language at the last minute Tuesday from a bill victims sought for four years that would have opened a window for filing civil lawsuits in expired cases up to 35 years old. The Ohio House passed the revised bill 77-16 after an unsuccessful attempt by Democrats to reinsert the lawsuit provision. The bill went back to the Senate, where Sen. Marc Dann, a Youngstown Democrat, accused the House of "siding with the rapists." The vocal Survivors' Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, called the edited bill "a hollow, empty shell" that gives victims no power to bring action against their abusers. Senate President Pro Tem Jeff Jacobson, a Dayton-area Republican, said he was saddened that the lawsuit provision had been watered down, but still favored the bill as a whole. He said the bill still extends the statute of limitations for filing future lawsuits from two years to 12 years and strengthens penalties for church officials who fail to report known abuse. It cleared the chamber 18-13. Copyright 2006 by ChannelCincinnati.com. http://www.channelcincinnati.com/news/8357247/detail.html?rss=cin&psp=news

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