Sexual misconduct penalty enhancement proposed

Repeat criminal sexual conduct offenders could spend more time behind bars.

Sponsored by Rep. Andrea Kieffer (R-Woodbury), HF142 would expand felonious 5th-degree criminal sexual misconduct whereby a person who engages in nonconsensual sexual contact with another person or who engages in masturbation or lewd exhibition of the genitals in front of someone under age 16 may be sentenced to up to five years in prison, if the person has a qualifying prior offense.

Prior offenses that would qualify are: criminal sexual misconduct, criminal sexual predatory conduct, solicitation of a child, use of a child in a sexual performance, indecent exposure, child pornography, or a similar offense from another state.

“These are what my county attorney, Pete Orput, would call the knuckleheads that keep doing these little silly things over and over and over again,” Kieffer said. “This gives them another tool in the toolbox to hang

Heard Thursday by the House Public Safety Finance and Policy Committee, the bill was held over for possible omnibus bill inclusion. It has no Senate companion.

“If we let individuals repeatedly violate members of our community over and over and over again, and the penalty does not increase, we are not doing our jobs; we are not protecting those in our communities that most need this protection,” said Assistant Goodhue County Attorney Erin Kuester (pictured above, middle, with Kieffer, right).

Donna Dunn, executive director of the Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Assault, supports the bill as a way to intervene at a lower level of offending before someone gets to the point where prison is the result of their crime.

Rep. John Ward (DFL-Baxter) has sat on the Crow Wing County Sexual Assault Services Board for a dozen years.

“Each year I have seen the number cases and the number of sexual assaults escalate and intensify and become very much problematic in our society,” he said. “The earlier we try to intervene, the more likelihood that maybe we can make a positive impact.”