MY COMMITTEE finished its work on and passed S.125 An Act Relating to Expanding the Sex Offender Registry. This is a Senate bill. The bill goes beyond the registry and is a culmination of many years on community safety issues and my most recent work on sex crimes that I started last summer after Brooke Bennett's tragic death. Below is a summary of the bill.

New Crimes: The bill creates a new crime of sex trafficking of children and sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion of children and adults. Sexting is now a crime.

Federal Crimes as Factors for Entry onto the Registries: Currently our sex offender registry defines a sex offender as someone who has been convicted of certain Vermont laws. The bill adds to the underlying sex offender registry and the Internet registry a number of federal sex crimes. Under current law, some one who commits a federal or state sex crime is only on our underlying and sex offender registries if the elements of the federal or out of state crime match up with our crime. S.125 states if an offender has been convicted of certain federal crimes, the offender will automatically go on the registries.

Out of State Offenders: Another important part of the bill states that if someone is on a sex offender registry in another state, then he or she will be on our registries. This eliminates the standard discussed above that someone would only be on our registry if the elements of the crimes match up. Vermont is perceived as a magnet or haven for sex offenders because our Internet registry is less restrictive or not as broad. My committee wanted to respond to this and put this issue behind us. We heard testimony that the registry administrator gets about 20 calls a week about our registry requirements. There is speculation that these calls may be from sex offenders "registry shopping".

Name Changes: S.125 will require probate courts to determine if a petitioner for a name change is on the sex offender registry. We heard testimony from probate judges that sex offenders have come from out of state and attempted to change their names, arguably in an attempt to avoid the registry.

Offense based classification: One of the big changes this bill does is it puts those convicted of sex offenses on the registries based on the offense committed, not the offenders risk to reoffend. Basically if you are convicted for a certain sex crime, you are on.

Posting of Addresses: The Senate also passed S.125 with addresses of all sex offenders be posted on the Internet. We heard conflicting testimony as to the public safety effectiveness of posting addresses. The Commissioner of the department of corrections stated that the department is currently having a difficult time releasing offenders into the community and getting them employment. He stated that posting addresses might make it more difficult for offenders to find housing and reintegrate into the community. It is very well documented that the closer offenders are to services and transportation, the more likely they are able to reintegrate and their risk to reoffend is decreased.

The victims advocates are concerned that addresses could have an adverse impact on children if a parent or relative is identified on the Internet, especially if the family has reconciled. We therefore are proposing to the Senate to list addresses of those offenders from out of state, are deemed a high risk to reoffend, have a warrant out for them, and are repeat offenders.

Statute of Limitations: The law requires that suits must be brought or a criminal case be charged within a certain time or the claim will be barred. This is called the statute of limitations. There was a proposal, which is H.17, of which I am a cosponsor to eliminate the statute of limitations for civil and criminal actions based on childhood sexual abuse. I received many emails from victims of child abuse, some where the abuser was a priest and the victim is now barred from bringing an action.

This civil part of the proposal was strongly opposed by lobbyists for out of state insurance companies that testified that they represent the Catholic Diocese. Enough members of my committee were persuaded that the premiums that are being charged now could not cover the costs of litigation if these suits were allowed to be brought forward.

The insurance companies had no position on the elimination of criminal statute of limitations because that is not a financial issue that affects them. We therefore adopted the elimination of a statute of limitation in the criminal area for certain sex crimes committed against adults and children. I hope we can revisit the civil issue.

Applicability: The bill if passed would put all sex offenders currently under DOC supervision but not on the Internet registry on the Internet. It would keep those serving their current 10- year time on the Internet registry unless the offender can demonstrate that he or she should not be on the Internet registry.

The bill passed the House and has been sent to the Senate. I expect it to go to a committee of conference to work out the differences in the House and senate versions.

Thank you for your calls of concern about the budget, transportation budget, teachers retirement fund, small schools and support of the raw milk bill (I did not receive any call in opposition). We are all watching the committees of conference as they make tough choices about our economic future and how to best deliver services to Vermonters while balancing the budget.

maxjg@wcvt.com/828-2228.