MORGANTOWN — The House of Delegates hopes to increase the penalties for child abuse and neglect — unanimously passing a bill to that effect on Thursday and sending it to the Senate.
HB 2113 increases the penalty for child abuse causing injury from the current 1-5 years to 2-10. For serious bodily injury, it goes from 2-10 to 5-15. Abuse causing substantial risk of death or serious injury goes from 1-5 to 2-10.
Second or subsequent felony offenses are subject to twice the prison time and twice the fines.
For the lesser crime of gross child neglect creating a substantial risk of death or serious injury, the penalty increases from 1-5 years to 1-10. Second or subsequent felony neglect offenses are also subject to twice the prison time and fines.
Delegate Larry Kump, R-Berkeley, said he worked for 17 years as a clinical case manager with child abusers and other felons, and as a group counselor for abusers.
The only shortcoming of the bill, he said, is there is tremendous recidivism among child abusers and the offense should non-parolable.
The vote was 95-0
TWEET David Beard @dbeardtdp
EMAIL dbeard@dominionpost.com
