Geneva, N.Y. - This week the New York State Senate passed legislation that would create a violent felon registry. It's called Brittany's Law and it is named after a 12-year-old Geneva girl who was killed by a violent felon who wasn't truthful about his past. "She would run up to me and wrap her arms around me, they called her "Shorty" so she'd wrap her arms around my legs," said Brittany's Grandmother Dale Driscoll.
"And then I'd hear Helen in her room, "hey, Mama!" I missed being called Mama." In November 2009, Brittany and her mother, Helen, were brutally murdered in their home by Helen's boyfriend John Brown. Helen had only been dating Brown for five months. Brown, a convicted violent felon, told Helen he had been in jail for a barroom brawl while protecting a girl.
Driscoll says her daughter attempted to look into Brown's criminal history but the details were scarce. "All it said was 'Assault in the 2nd,' which fit the crime that he gave that he was in a barroom brawl," said Driscoll. "It says nothing about domestic violence, nothing about child abuse, yet he was in there for throwing his infant baby up against the wall."
Driscoll has now put all of her energy into Brittany's Law, legislation that would create a violent felon registry. Much like Megan's Law created the sex offender registry. The NYS Senate has passed Brittany's Law five times, but the assembly has never considered it. This frustration prompted Driscoll to do something she's never done by sharing details about her daughter and granddaughter's deaths with assembly members.
"They needed to see or at least try to visualize what the reality is that these guys are really violent, this was gruesome, there was an officer, one of the first responders who retired because of this as soon as his retirement came up he retired, worse thing he'd ever seen he said, especially with a child," Driscoll said. Brittany would have graduated from high school this year. ..Source.. by WHAM.com
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