Missouri lawmaker plans to file bill to change invasion of privacy laws
COLUMBIA, MO. (KMIZ)
A state lawmaker plans to file a bill that would change Missouri's invasion of privacy law. The new law would require repeat offenders convicted of invasion of privacy to register as a sex offender.
Ronald Dameron, a convicted felon known for looking up women's skirts, was recently sentenced to two years probation after pleading guilty to seven invasion of privacy charges.
Dameron is once again out of jail and is not on the sex offender registry. Two lawmakers are working to change that.
The current invasion of privacy law says that a person invades another person's privacy if they knowingly take a photo or video of another person without consent if the person is fully or partially nude and is in a place where privacy is expected.
The law does not require someone to register as a sex offender unless the person who creates the image sends it out to other people, more than one person views the image, if the victim was under 18, or if the person has previously been found guilty of invasion of privacy.
Dameron has been committing these crimes for a decade and has been charged 11 times since 2009.
Democrat State Representative, and former Sex Crimes Prosecutor Wes Rogers, is working on filing a bill to change that.
"Those cases where someone is evading privacy for their own sexual gratification, it needs to be a registrable offense," Rogers said.
Rogers worked on a similar case 10 years ago in Kansas City.
"This person was chronically peeping into women's changing rooms; it was terrifying people and there wasn't much we could do," Rogers said.
Inspired by these two cases, Rogers is now working on adding sexual gratification language to the bill.
"You would need to narrowly tailor that so someone that is invading privacy for sexual gratification would end up on the sex offenders list," Rogers said.
Republican State Representative Chuck Basye also plans to work on the bill with Rogers.
"We need to enhance the penalties involved in this situation any victim everybody deserves justice. We need to address this and I'm pretty sure after this conversation we're gonna do something," Basye said.
