IL- Senger’s sex offender bill becomes law

8-20-2009 Illinois:


Legislation introduced by state Rep. Darlene Senger (R-Naperville) to make it easier for police departments to catch sexual predators targeting children was signed into law recently.

House Bill 1348 (now Public Act 96-0547) allows police departments to secure recorded phone conversations of child sexual predators easier and faster than they can today.

Senger worked with Rich Wistocki with the Naperville Police Department Computer Crimes Unit to craft this legislation. Wistocki, who works on the Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforce, deals with hundreds of child exploitation cases and said Illinois is one of 12 states that ties the hands of law enforcement on these cases due to Illinois' two-party consent statute.

According to Wistocki, sexual predators often seek children out through social networking Web sites like MySpace and Facebook where they can hide or fake their identity. Then, the predator seeks to call the child on a cell phone in order to arrange a meeting.

Again we see a lawmaker who has no idea of who is committing these crimes. She automatically associates "sexual predator" with "registered sex offender" and if she would take the time to do research she would know there has not been any substantiated reports of RSOs targeting minors on any social networking sites. Further, current research shows that those targeting minors are people who have never before been convicted of a sex crime, hence her legislation is worthless. Finally, even those committing the crimes do not fake their IDs according to research. This is a legislator who has failed to do her homework beforehand.

"This new law is a huge victory for Internet investigators and advocacy centers who are involved in conducting child exploitation cases throughout the state," Wistocki said in a press release.

Gov. Pat Quinn also signed a series of legislation co-sponsored by Senger to strengthen laws against sex offenders, including:

House Bill 1314 (P.A. 96-0262) which makes it a Class 4 felony for a registered sex offender to access social networking Web sites during the period they are required to be registered as an Illinois sex offender.

House Bill 327 (P.A. 96-0236) broadens the number of sex offenders who can be ordered to wear GPS tracking as a condition of their parole.

House Bill 550 (P.A. 96-0362) provides that as a condition of mandatory supervised release, probation or supervision, a sex offender refrains from using computer scrub software that can erase evidence of a sex offender accessing a sexually explicit Web site. ..Source.. by From Staff Reports