(Washington, D.C.)  Congresswoman Cathy McMorris (WA-05) today voted in favor of H.R. 4472 The Children’s Safety and Violent Crime Reduction Act of 2006. McMorris is a co-sponsor of this legislation that enforces stricter penalties for sex offenders and helps prevent the future exploitation of children.

“One of my top priorities is to keep our nation and communities safe,” said McMorris. “We must do everything in our power to protect our children and keep them out of sexual predators reach. Our community has experienced firsthand the tragedy of having our children fall prey to sexual predators and we must take action to prevent this from happening again. The creation of a public sex offender website is an especially important tool for empowering families and communities so they can keep our children safe.”

Nearly 100,000 sex offenders remain unregistered, and are moving freely about the country. Most recent high-profile abductions crimes were all committed by previously-convicted sex offenders. According to the US Department of Justice, sex offenders are four times more likely to be rearrested and child molesters on average only serve 43 percent of their sentence.

In order to keep our communities and families safe, the Children’s Safety Act will do the following:

• Improve the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Program to ensure that sex offenders register – and keep current – where they reside, work, and attend school;
• Create the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website to search for sex offender information in each community;
• Require states to notify each other when sex offenders move from one state to another;
• Create a new criminal penalty of up to a maximum of 20 years for sex offenders who fail to comply with registration requirements; and
• Protect foster children from sexual abuse and exploitation and increase criminal penalties for child sexual predators.