A petition is circulating in the St. Paul area and throughout communities in Canada to have stiffer penalties for those involved in the production, distribution and making of child pornography.
“It is a petition to amend Section 163 of the criminal code which currently allows sentences of as little as 90 days for making criminal child sex material and 14 days for the possession of criminal child sex materials,” said local resident Ellen Reid, who is circulating the petition. She said she finds the current sentences shockingly lenient. The petition, established by Canada Family Action (CFA) and Citizens Against Sexual Exploitation (CASE), calls for mandatory minimum sentences of 10 years for those who produce the images, seven years for distributing the images, and three years for possessing such images.
Reid got involved with the petition when she received a brochure in the mail some months ago. At first, she dismissed the brochure but she went back later to read the information and was bothered by what she read.
“I guess I am to blame for this too and everybody else in Canada because we have not made ourselves aware of what is going on,” said Reid. “So I decided to make as many people aware of this as I can and I started passing out brochures.”
After contacting CFA, she received a petition and she said the response from the community has been good. Over 450 people have signed her petition so far. The goal is to collect over one million signatures across the country to present to the Canadian Parliament in the new year. She said people have thanked her for circulating the petition.
Reid notes that one adult woman cried when she saw the petition, because she had been personally affected by child pornography and the man responsible “hardly got any jail time, and to her, that was like a slap in the face.”
She said she would like to see less people go to jail and not more and stiffer penalties might be a deterrent to committing a crime. “A society is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens,” she added.
Petitions are available to sign at Ideal Carpets. People can also collect petition sheets to circulate and can bring them back to the business, said Reid.
The Journal contacted MP Brian Storseth’s office to discuss the petition, but Storseth was unable to return the call before the Journal’s press deadline.
More information on the petition is available on www.childsafenation.ca or by calling 1-(403)-295-2159.
