Hundreds of people rallied on Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office yesterday, calling for legislation to make information about sex offenders available to the public to prevent further assaults.
“We are all here because we all want our children to grow up happy and safe. We want our own version of Megan’s Law,” said the head of the White Rose Social Care Association, who only gave her name as Eva.
“We need the law so that parents would know if a sex offender is living right next to them and can be more cautious, as studies show that 95 percent of sex offenders repeatedly commit the crime after getting out of jail,” she said.
PHOTO: CNA
Megan’s Law refers to the Sexual Offender Act of 1994 adopted by the US Congress after a case in which a seven-year-old girl, Megan Kanka, was sexually assaulted and murdered.
The major points of the law include providing a public registry of convicted sex offenders and community notification through the Internet, newspapers or bulletin board.
However, the proposal has raised concern — including among some government agencies — that it may breach the privacy and rights of a former sex offender.
“Some people may say it’s a breach of privacy and is an act of revenge, but it’s actually not,” Garden of Hope Foundation executive director Chi Hui-jung (紀惠容) told the crowd. “This is actually a way to give them a hand, as most of them cannot control themselves from committing the offense again, and we’re helping to prevent them from doing it from the outside.”
She said there is also a clause in the Criminal Code on crime prevention, and argued that such a measure is actually a crime prevention measure.
During the rally when Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin’s (郝龍斌) wife, Kao Lung-sen (高閬仙), appeared to voice her support for the legislation, a woman from Nantou County’s Jhushan Township (竹山) gave her a letter asking for help.
In tears, the woman said her four-year-old daughter was sexually assaulted by the son of the owner of a local kindergarten last month.
“All that the kindergarten owner wanted to do was to cover it up,” she said.
“My daughter is already a victim, but I don’t want more kids to become victims — we need the law,” the woman said.
Several politicians from both the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) — including KMT legislators Nancy Chao (趙麗雲), Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾) and Yang Cheng Chin-ling (鄭金鈴), and spokespeople for DPP Sinbei City mayoral candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) and Cheng Li-chun (鄭麗君) — also took the stage and expressed their support for the rally’s appeal.
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