Vermont Pass Sex Offender Bill

Vermont lawmakers gathered in Montpelier Friday to announce they had finally fulfilled a promise made after the brutal kidnapping and murder of 12-year old Brooke Bennett last summer.



The bill builds on existing state laws and includes a 25-year mandatory minimum sentence for child sex offenders, and requires schools to focus more on prevention efforts.



As happy as I am about Vermont finally passing their version of Jessica's Law, I have to think that if they would have done this months or even years ago Brooke Bennett would still be alive and with us today.



How many other states have NOT passed their own version of Jessica's Law? How many more children will have to be sacrificed before lawmakers setp up and start making sensible laws that actually punish these predators?


Where does the state you live in stand in protecting children?

Victims' Advocates Praise Sex Offender Law

A new get-tough bill taking on sex offenders moves one step closer to becoming law this week.

Lawmakers are moving fast in response to public outrage over the rape and murder of 12-year-old Brooke Bennett. Her uncle Michael Jacques is accused.

The Senate Judiciary passed the new plan unanimously last week. The bill is currently in appropriations because there's money in it to fund special investigation units and prevention programs. It goes to the full Senate later this week.

And the bill is winning praise from victims' advocates.

The bill calls for program grants, funding to work with school kids and adults in communities.

After the Senate vote-- then the House needs to approve the bill. The hope is the Governor can sign it into law by Town Meeting Day in March.

Overhauling Vt. Sex Offender Laws

Attorney General, says a proposal to be introduced this week for a Jessica's Law for Vermont will probably get his support.

"The devil will be in the details but I'm hopeful that this is going to be a real step forward for us: prosecutors and police," Sorrell said.

The call for a Jessica's Law started this summer after 12-year-old Brooke Bennett was raped and murdered and the public discovered that mistakes in the criminal justice system helped the suspect Michael Jacques avoid prosecution for prior sex crimes.

Panel endorses stronger sex laws

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Friday approved a handful of recommendations for tightening the state's sex offender statutes, including a recommendation for a new law that resembles the controversial Jessica's Law and has a mandatory 25-year minimum sentence.

If approved by the Legislature, the proposed law would give prosecutors the option of charging an accused sex offender with a new crime: "aggravated sexual assault against a child under 16 with a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years to life.

"The panel's action came during the last in a series of hearings convened in response to the death last summer of 12-year-old Brooke Bennett. At the hearing, the lawmakers heard testimony from a victim of Bennett's accused killer, her uncle Michael Jacques.

"It's another formidable tool for the prosecutors," said Sen. John Campbell, vice chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

"When they have a good case … they're going to bring this charge," said panel Chairman Sen. Richard Sears. He said the law, if approved, would fulfill Gov. James Douglas' request to enact Jessica's Law.

Crackdown on sex offender sentences likely

A series of legislative hearings on Vermont's criminal justice system will likely result in a recommendation for stiffer mandatory minimum sentences for the most egregious sex offenders, the chairman of a key senate committee said Thursday.

Sen. Dick Sears, head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said longer sentences for "habitual" offenders would not supplant existing sexual assault statutes, but offer prosecutors in the state an opportunity to apply the more severe charge in appropriate cases.

Other recommendations likely to appear in the committee's report, due in November, include expansive prevention efforts and beefed-up oversight of convicted sex offenders."We clearly have to recognize the limitations of treatment when it comes to sex offenders," Sears said Thursday. "I think the committee will be looking at strengthening laws, in terms of lengths of sentences, as well as a bigger focus on prevention programs."

Friends of Brooke Bennett testify before lawmakers

Jonathan Larson, a Randolph firefighter, arrived at a public hearing on sexual violence Thursday night at the Statehouse with a picture of Brooke Bennett pinned to his crisp white dress shirt.

Larson, a friend of Bennett's family, blamed lenient sex offender statutes for the murder of the 12-year-old girl that sang in his church each Sunday.

"I come before you today very scared of how Vermont is turning out," Larson told a panel of lawmakers. "(Bennett's) death could have been prevented … by installing stricter penalties for sex offenders."

"In front of you are pictures of a precious life that has been lost," said Mary Larson, handing out photographs of Brooke Bennett. "Why? How could this possibly have happened? Never again should even one more child be the victim of a predator who remains free through a series of a broken criminal justice system's failings."

Michael Yates, a father of three and grandfather of eight, walked one mile to attend Thursday's hearing. He told lawmakers they have neglected their duty to protect the public by failing to install 25-year mandatory minimums.

"Every time I look at the news I see these crimes against children and it just tears me up," he said. "I can't understand why the state is letting this happen."

For the friends and family of Bennett, however, only harsh punishments will quell the grief, anger and fear that have accompanied her murder. Laurie Miller, Bennett's middle school basketball coach, sobbed as she recounted the little girl's life.

"Once a sex offender, always a sex offender," she said. "I think they should be in jail for life."

Man sentenced to 21 years in child porn case

A Pownal, Vt., man was sentenced in the U.S. District Court in Albany on Wednesday to more than 21 years imprisonment on two charges of possessing child pornography.

Edward K. Carnes of Blueberry Hill Road in Pownal pleaded guilty to the charges in March of this year. He had faced a possible sentence of 10 to 20 years for each count.

Carnes spoke to Judge Gary Sharpe about that matter, claiming that he did not know about the illegality of the images. Carnes also admitted to the judge that he was a pedophile.

"I don't believe it's a disease," Carnes said. "It's not an illness that can be cured with medication.I believe it's something you're born with."

Carnes told Sharpe that he had been attracted to young boys all his life, and had considered killing himself and his family before his first arrest for molestation in 1998.

Too bad he didn't at least kill himself.

Vermont's Brooke Bennett is a Victim of Pedophiles

Pedophilia is not a disease, so there is no cure. It is a mindset … of people that are evil to the core. SCOTUS has ruled we can’t give them the death penalty, and many state courts just want to give them rehabilitation time. They cannot be rehabilitated.

The first Amber Alert was issued in Vermont on Thursday June 26, 2008 for Brooke Bennett. Last seen by her sex offender Uncle.

Yesterday, the body of Brooke Bennett, the 12-year-old girl from Vermont, has been found. Her uncle, convicted sex offender Michael Jacques, had viciously raped and murdered her while initiating her into a child sex ring.

The police knew the sex offender Uncle was lying from the begining. A lie about meeting a friend at the hospital to cover for a lie that she was secretly meeting someone on myspace.

Plus, in an affidavit unsealed earlier Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Burlington, here, the FBI said a teenager they identified as "Juvenile 1" told investigators she accompanied Jacques on June 25 as he tricked his niece into thinking she was going to a party and took her to his home to be initiated that day into a sex ring.

The girl said she was led to believe Brooke "would have sex with adult males" during the initiation, and that she herself had been forced into the ring.

In another blow to the family and town, Brooke's former stepfather, Raymond Gagnon, 40, of San Antonio, Texas, was formally charged Wednesday with obstructing justice in the case. He entered no plea at the federal hearing and was denied bail pending another hearing on Monday.

There are so many wrongs here. Are they doing this child sex ring in Vermont because they don't have a version of Jessica's Law yet, hence, lighter sentence if caught?

When are we, as a society, going to put an end to these child predators?

ONE STRIKE LAW