Move privacy bill forward

There is now just under a week until the start of the 'First Funnel” of this legislative session. With the exception of appropriations bills, most legislation that has not cleared at least one committee in at least one chamber by Friday is dead for the year.

Two very important bills, HF3 and SF15, are being stalled in the Iowa Legislature. As it sits, the bills' fate rests in the hands of four people.

I urge Iowans to reach out to Senators Steve Sodders, Wally Horn and Julian Garret and Rep. Chip Baltimore, and ask them to advance this bill and give it a chance to become a permanent part of the Iowa Code. Their reasons for holding this bill back are purely partisan and we have a duty to call them out.

I have a personal stake in the passage of HF3 and SF15 - bills which would amend the definition of 'Invasion of Privacy” in the Iowa Code to make the crime easier to prosecute. I was recently a victim of a landlord in Iowa City who systematically spied on me and several other tenants through peepholes in our bathrooms for the duration of our stay at his residence. He was caught by a girl who lived across the hall from me.

Before this incident, we had all trusted, respected and liked our landlord. When the police interrogated him, he admitted to carrying out these acts for at least two years.

Even though my landlord had admitted so much to the police, the details in the Iowa Code made it so his criminal conviction was less than certain.

As it's now defined, a person can only be found guilty of invasion of privacy who 'knowingly views, photographs, or films a victim, for the purpose of arousing or gratifying the sexual desire of any person,” and only if 'the victim does not consent or is unable to consent to being viewed, photographed, or filmed; the victim is in a state of full or partial nudity; and the victim has a reasonable expectation of privacy while in a state of full or partial nudity.”

During the trial, I and the other victims were forced to recount every incidence our landlord appeared 'aroused” around us on the property. We had to explain any smile or blushing of the cheek we witnessed from our landlord to the judge to prove his alleged 'arousal,” when we were all still in shock from the incident.

My former landlord was not charged with six additional counts of Invasion of Privacy because the victims in those cases were men. This led to fewer penalties overall and to a feeling of disappointment with law enforcement from the male victims of this crime.

The bills under consideration would eliminate the requirement that a perpetrator be aroused to be convicted of invasion of privacy and would save future victims a lot of heartache in trying to prove this in court.

If these bills become law it will help to make sure victims who are viewed without their consent, in what they reasonably believe to be a place of privacy, are protected by the law.

Please ask the previously listed legislators to defend the welfare of the people of Iowa and move this bill forward.

' Ruth Lapointe is a clerk in the Iowa House of Representatives and graduated from the University of Iowa last December with a B.A. in Philosophy. Comments: 4ruthlapointe@gmail.com