Advocates Seek Tougher Laws

A proposed Molly's Bill, named after Molly Bish, would add symbols to license plates to help adults and children remember them more. The bill will be refiled in January. Last year, residents of a quiet Shrewsbury neighborhood discovered a man living and working amongst them, just steps from a school bus stop, was a convicted sex offender.

And, like most residents who are dealt this shocking blow, they reacted - posting signs on telephone polls and sending him letters. The scare tactics worked and the man moved. But the story got some people, including Shrewsbury's state Representative Karyn Polito, questioning the state's sex offender laws.

"I did a lot of reading and research," said Polito, "and I was surprised to find out that Massachusetts is in the bottom 10 states when it comes to protecting children from sex offenders."

She learned that many people charged with sexual abuse in Massachusetts receive probation or have their cases dismissed without a finding. In response, she filed a bill establishing mandatory minimum sentences for charges of sexual abuse against children. She said she hopes the legislation will keep pressure on legislators to protect "our most vulnerable and youngest population."

"We're becoming a magnet for offenders because we're not tougher with these laws," she said.

Polito was one of many Massachusetts legislators who fought to toughen laws pertaining to sexual abuse this session. While politicians filed more than three dozen bills on the topic - everything from convening a commission to study the classification process to barring sex offenders from living within one mile of a school zone-- the Joint Committee on the Judiciary advanced just one piece of legislation. Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, on Sept. 21, signed a law toughening the state's position on sex offenders.

The law requires more people convicted of a sex offense to wear GPS tracking devices while on probation or parole. The devices allow probation officials to track an offender's whereabouts and sound an alarm should something be amiss.

The law also removes certain statutes of limitations, ensuring that child victims can report abuse later in life and have the perpetrator prosecuted.

Finally, the law requires that all sex offenders be classified and registered at least 10 days before they are slated to get out of jail. Before, offenders had to register at least 48 hours after their release, but the lengthy appeals process guaranteed during classification meant an offender could go unclassified and unregistered for some time.

The law comes after years of advocacy by people like Deb Savoia, a mother of two from North Andover. Savoia points to the fact that Massachusetts was the last state in the country to adopt a sex offender registry as an example of the state's track record.

Savoia and other advocates have tried to gain grassroots support for a number of new laws, including one name for a Woburn mother and daughter killed in 2004 by a convicted sex offender. The Joanne and Alyssa Act was filed by Sen. Scott Brown (R-Wrentham) and Rep. James Vallee (DFranklin) and includes language to ban sex offenders whose crime involved a child from living within 1,000 feet of a school or child care facility. The bill would also ban Level 2 and 3 offenders in state-owned or statefunded housing from living within a mile and a half of a schools, childcare facility or residence of a minor. Some cities and towns are taking the matter into their own hands and instituting bans by ordinance or bylaw. "You don't want to have to sit there being worried constantly," said Carol Willoughby, who runs Child Dynamics Family Day Care out of her Southborough home. A sex offender, who has been arrested four times on charges including exposure, lives two doors down from her facility. Willoughby is hoping for new rules regulating where offenders can live. "If he just decides 'Jeez, I want to do it again,' we're nearby," Willoughby said. "Something has to be done."

Molly's Bill

Another measure building grassroots support is aimed at making it easier for the public and law enforcement to crack cases of abuse or abduction by simplifying Massachusetts license plates. The bill, called Molly's Bill after Molly Bish, who disappeared in 2000, would add easily recognizable symbols to plates so that children and adults could more readily remember them.

"It would make any of the bad guys pause about whether to commit that crime," said Gary Richard, who invented the EZ-ID License Plate Program after watching news stories about Bish and Elizabeth Smart, the Utah teen who was kidnapped by a homeless couple in 2002.

Currently, there are 5.2 million registered vehicles in Massachusetts, 90 percent of which would be eligible for the program (vanity plates are already identifiable and are exempt). Massachusetts plates feature six alphanumeric characters; if a witness remembers three of those characters in the correct order, police can winnow down the search to 1 in 4,300 vehicles. With a system of four alphanumeric characters and one randomly assigned symbol, knowing the symbol, two characters and the color of the vehicle narrows the search to about 1 in 123 vehicles. If a witness also knew the vehicle was an SUV, the odds for identification are closer to 1 in 33.

The symbols - now proposed as a star, diamond, circle, heart, square, and triangle - also help in situations where someone is looking for a plate number in the rearview mirror, since the symbols will appear the same backward. Fewer numbers on the plates mean the numbers can be bigger and possibly, easier to decipher.

The plan, which has been endorsed by a number of groups including the Massachusetts Safety Officers' League, will be re-filed in January and Richard urged parents to contact their legislators to ask for their support. While they have different approaches and legal goals, all of the advocates agree that it will not be possible without a groundswell from parents and other concerned citizens.

"We have a chance to make history, to truly change society in a positive way," Richard said. "We have an opportunity to make the streets safer for everybody, but it's going to take a lot of people speaking up."

For more information on the EZ-ID program,

visit www.ez-idprogram.com.