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House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
House of Representatives
Session of 2013 - 2014
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | January 15, 2013 11:57 AM |
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| From: | Representative Todd Rock |
| To: | All House members |
| Subject: | Assault on a Child |
| Recently, the Task Force on Child Protection completed its work and issued recommendations to improve the system for preventing, reporting and prosecuting child abuse. The report issued in November cited the disparity in our present law that makes it a more serious offense to assault a member of the legislature than a young child of tender years. The Task Force called upon the General Assembly to fix that and I intend to introduce a bill in the very new future to do so. My bill will for the most part adopt the recommendations contained in the Task Force Report regarding the crimes of simple assault and aggravated assault as they pertain to children. These crimes are codified now in Sections 2701 and 2702 of the Crimes Code. The Task Force proposed changes can be found on pages 241-242 of their report. The only differences in my bill will be that I plan to make it a felony of the first degree to intentionally, knowingly or recklessly cause serious bodily injury to a child under the age of 12. That is the classification for serious bodily injury inflicted on any of the more than 30 classes of victims in our present law which includes judges, prosecutors and public defenders as well as members of the legislature, private detectives, constables and public utility contractors. My bill will also make it a felony of the second degree to cause bodily injury to a child under 4 which is also the grading for the same crime against a member of the protected classes. I see no reason not to protect children to the same extent as other vulnerable victims. I hope you will join me in sponsoring this legislation. |
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| View Attachment | ||
Introduced as HB350