This piece of legislation supersedes House Bill 180, which I wrote about in an earlier column. The senator says time is running out on his bill. The General Assembly's law-making business usually ends May 31. If the bill doesn't become law by then, it will have to be reintroduced in January 1997. For some innocent child, that may be too late.
Child molesters are notorious repeat offenders.
Studies put their recidivism rates at anywhere between four and 10 times that of other violent criminals. To move things along, he's organizing a statewide letter-writing campaign. This is not the first time the social studies teacher turned superintendent has written about sex offenders. In February, the letter he sent home to his school district's parents was instrumental in outing a convicted child molester. The man, on parole after kidnapping and sodomizing a little girl, had quietly moved to Reading.