Senate sends Culver bill to toughen law on enticing a minor

DES MOINES – The Iowa Senate on Tuesday sent Gov. Chet Culver legislation intended to close a loophole in state law in prosecuting sexual predators who attempt to entice a minor via the Internet, by telephone or some other method.

Senators voted 49-0 to accept final changes that would enable law officers to charge someone with enticement of a minor even if the person they were communicating with was an adult police officer.

House File 2438 attempts to address a situation brought to light when the Iowa Supreme Court determined in June 2008 that it was not enticement of a minor when the sexual perpetrator attempted to entice a child but instead was speaking with an undercover police office

The new proposed law would make it a felony to attempt to entice a minor along with actual enticement, meaning a perpetrator could still be found guilty even if the situation involved a law officer posing as a minor.

“I do think that it is going to better protect children in this state and it is a warning to perpetrators not to even attempt to entice a child of this state,” said Sen. Keith Kreiman, D-Bloomfield, the bill's Senate floor manager.

Along with the class D felony for enticing a minor and a class C felony if the child is under 13 years of age, the legislation would create an aggravated misdemeanor for an enticement with the intent to commit an illegal act upon a minor that would give prosecutors a charging alternative if there was a problem with a witness or with obtaining sufficient proof to convict under the felony offenses, Kreiman said. Also Tuesday, Iowa senators decided they don't have a beef with allowing state inspectors and a Marshalltown restaurant to resolve a loose-meat controversy.

Last week the House stripped Senate language that would have waived state regulation on a cooking technique that Taylor's Maid-Rite uses in making its loose-meat sandwiches. On Tuesday, the Senate agreed to accept the House version in passing a fiscal 2011 budget measure covering administrative and regulatory agencies.

Sen. Steve Sodders, D-State Center, who initially offered the Maid-Rite amendment, said he has been working with restaurant owner Don Short and his family, the state Department of Inspections and Appeals and Iowa State University engineers in hopes of finding “some easy fix” to resolve the dispute outside the legislative arena.

At issue is the restaurant's “traditional cooker” methods that dates back 82 years without a reported health-related problem.

 The issue came to the attention of lawmakers when state food-safety inspections raised questions about the restaurant's cooking methods dealing with cooked and raw meats. The state Department of Inspections and Appeals notified Taylor's Maid-Rite that it must change a cooking process in which cooked hamburger is placed in the same heated equipment used to cook raw meat.

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