Omnibus Sex Offender Bill Filed, Victims Repeat Their Calls for Action
By Cyndi Roy for the State House News Service
       A bipartisan group of lawmakers unveiled their latest attempt to crack down on sex offenders Monday, as victims and families of sexual abuse chastised Beacon Hill leaders for dragging their feet on the issue.
       Legislation filed Friday by Rep. James Vallee (D-Franklin) and cosponsored by Sen. Scott Brown (R-Wrentham) and 38 other lawmakers would tighten the management, classification, and oversight of thousands of sex offenders living in Massachusetts neighborhoods.
       The bill calls for offenders to receive a risk classification before they leave prison and would expand the online sex offender registry by adding Level 2 offenders to the system. The legislation also increases penalties for offenders who fail to register and creates an intensive parole program that would include unannounced visits, counseling, electronic monitoring, random drug testing, and polygraph testing.
       Joined by Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey and half a dozen other lawmakers at a press conference to highlight the 80-section bill, Brown called sexual abuse the "number one public safety issue affecting us here in the Commonwealth."
       Abuse victims and their family members who turned out to support the bill said the Legislature has been slow to comprehensively address the topic.
        "This madness has to stop," said Michael Kennedy, who said he was abused as a young boy. "And why this state has dragged its feet for so long is something I do not understand."
       During the last two years, lawmakers have passed several sex offender-related laws, including satellite tracking of certain offenders and an expansion of civil commitment laws to allow judges to keep sex offenders behind bars after their sentence is finished. Lawmakers are also working to resolve differences over a bill that would make Massachusetts the last state to join an interstate compact to track offenders.
       Robert Curley, whose 10-year-old son Jeffrey was raped and murdered by two men in 1997, has advocated at the state capitol for stricter sex abuse laws since his son's death. He urged lawmakers act quickly on the omnibus bill.