Jessica Lunsford Act

The Jessica Lunsford Act was passed in 2005 after the rape and murder of a little girl, by a previously convicted child molester. Jessica's Law requires a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years imprisonment, and electronic monitoring for the rest of their life for offenders who are convicted of lewd or lascivious acts against a child under the age of twelve years old. Florida considers sexual battery or the rape of a child a capital felony, which is only punishable by death or life in prison with no possibility of parole.

Forty two out of the US's 50 states have now passed similar legislation . We need Jessica's Law enforced in all 50 of our states. Check your local sex offender registry, and you'll be surprised at how little time these child predators have had to serve. It outrages me in a way that nothing else has. These are our children and there is no excuse for lawmakers to have let this go on. Most of the sex offenders listed in my town's registry have done less than a year in prison for molesting a child.

Last year my husband and I were working as peer tutors at our local university. We had a guy that was in the lab almost constantly, who we befriended. Over 8 months later we were getting ready to buy a home, and I decided to check the sex offender registry for our town, and there he was. He was convicted of 2 counts of child molestation a few years earlier, and was only sentenced to 18 months, and somehow only served 3 months in prison. I immediately called our boss in the lab and several professors at the university to warn them to keep their eye out for him. My husband and I were very upset about this, realizing that our 4 year old daughter frequently visited us at work when he was there. Needless to say, we now check the sex offender registry frequently.

You really never can tell who a child molester may be. A few years ago a friend of mine was remarried to a good looking, hardworking guy who played in a band for extra money, and was actually a pretty well known guy around town. My friend had 3 daughters, and later found out that he molested all three of them on a regular basis. He was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison, which he will most likely only have to serve 15 of.

I was raised in church, and one of our pastor's had 2 sons and a daughter. One of the son's got married to a girl that was also raised in our church, and several years later after they had 3 children together, he began to molest his own children. Needless to say, both of their families were grief stricken. This guy was not raised to think that this kind of thing was OK.

I think that if someone is sick enough to commit sexual crimes against defenseless children, that they will never change, and they should be locked away for the rest of their natural life, or be executed. They should never be released after serving only a couple months, no wonder they would do it again. They are essentially taking the life of these children whether they end up killing them or not, in that they change that child's life forever.