In addition, Senator Torricelli has joined with his colleagues in urging that Congress build on the current Federal hate crimes law by enacting a measure that would expand the cases in which the Justice Department can prosecute individuals for violent crimes motivated by race, color, religion and national origin. This bill would also expand the scope of the law to include crimes motivated by the victim s sexual orientation, gender and disability. Recent crime statistics indicate that this common sense legislation is long overdue. More importantly, as overall serious crime continued to decrease for the eighth consecutive year, some hate crimes have continued to rise. In 1997 alone, older Americans were victimized by violent crime over 680,000 times.
Seniors are the targets of fraud and abuse at much higher rates than the rest of the population.
The Seniors Safety Act will protect this vulnerable group by increasing the penalties for fraud that results in injury or death and creates new civil and criminal penalties for fraud related to retirement funds. In addition, it authorizes the Attorney General to effectively put fraudulent telemarketers, even those operating in foreign countries, out of business by blocking or terminating their telephone service. The bill was named for seven year old Joan D Alessandro who left her home in Hillsdale, New Jersey twenty-five years ago to deliver Girl Scout cookies to a neighbor and was raped and murdered by that same neighbor. Although her killer was convicted and sentenced to twenty years in state prison, he has repeatedly been granted parole hearings. And while parole was not granted, no family should have to suffer the tragedy of the loss their child and then be forced to relive it again and again through parole hearings and appeals.