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Lawmakers Push to Toughen Ohio's Child Enticement Law

Jo Ingles
/
Statehouse News Bureau

Child enticement charges against a convicted sex offender in central Ohio were recently dropped because an Ohio Supreme Court ruling had invalidated part of the statute. Lawmakers are now trying to fix that part of the law. 

After the convicted sex offender allegedly tried to entice at least two, possibly more, children into his car, police arrested him on enticement charges, only to find out later that part of that law had been deemed unconstitutional in 2014.

The Ohio Supreme Court had ruled the state’s soliciting law was overly broad. But lawmakers haven’t fixed it since that ruling. The man is still in jail, under arrest, pending parole review.

Republican state  Rep. Mike Duffey has proposed a clarification that applies to strangers without any legitimate relationship to a child and also to those with prior sexual offender status. Duffey says lawmakers need to make sure to fix that law so this doesn’t happen in the future. 

Jo Ingles is a professional journalist who covers politics and Ohio government for the Ohio Public Radio and Television for the Ohio Public Radio and Television Statehouse News Bureau. She reports on issues of importance to Ohioans including education, legislation, politics, and life and death issues such as capital punishment. Jo started her career in Louisville, Kentucky in the mid 80’s when she helped produce a televised presidential debate for ABC News, worked for a creative services company and served as a general assignment report for a commercial radio station. In 1989, she returned back to her native Ohio to work at the WOSU Stations in Columbus where she began a long resume in public radio.