WICHITA — More than 450 prosecutors, investigators and child specialists from more than six states are in Wichita this week for a three-day conference on crimes against children. U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom said child exploitation crimes are exploding. There has been what he calls a historic rise in the distribution of child pornography and in the level of violence associated with child exploitation and sexual abuse crimes. However, one Ottawa woman says that Jessica’s Law, one of the state laws that target child sex crimes with tougher penalties needs a rewrite. Since Kansas legislators passed it a few years ago, the law has had critics. One of them is Kathryn Scholtzhauer, whose grandson was sent to prison for having sex with a 13-year-old girl. Jessica’s Law, written in the aftermath of a horrific kidnapping, rape and murder of a 9-year-old in Florida, has a gray area when both boy and girl involved in a sexual relationship are teenagers, as happened with her grandson, she said. “I can see if it’s a 40-year-old man having sex with a five-year-old girl,” Scholtzhauer said. “He needs to go to prison.” But she said Ottawa High School officials estimate that about 37 percent of the students are sexually active and probably half could be eligible for prison time under Jessica’s Law. When her grandson was 19, he was convicted and sent to prison for his relationship with his 13-year-old girlfriend, she said. It was a relationship accepted by the girl’s family and the girl continued to contact him while he was still in prison, she said.
Wednesday, Aug. 31, 4 p.m.
