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It’s surprising and disturbing that in these times a member of the Legislature would consider child abuse an “act of passion.” It took a long time to make the cultural change, but modern American society views offenses like child abuse, which often involves rape, as crimes of violence.
State Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino made the comment in his opposition to Senate Bill 461, which among other changes would increase jail time for child abusers. But many of the changes deal with child sex crimes, such as making it so that coerced sex with a child no longer would have to result in personal injury to the child to be a felony.
Speaking of child abuse in general, Ortiz y Pino said, “These are not planned out in advance. These are acts of passion, of momentary insanity, of craziness.” He contended extra jail time would not be a deterrent to abusers who commit the crimes in the heat of the moment and would only serve to clog up prisons with child abusers. The bill was tabled.
Ortiz y Pino’s later attempts to defend his comments make it worse: “I was just addressing the parent who loses it because he’s either mentally ill, stressed out or under the influence of a substance, and just loses it and batters his child to death. He doesn’t stop to think, ‘Gee, if the penalty were 10 years longer, I wouldn’t do this.’ It’s a moment of passion. That’s what I meant, a moment of losing your mind and just reacting to the situation.” That he is a former social worker make his comments even harder to fathom.
Can we really accept the notion that passion is an excuse for committing a crime like this against our most vulnerable? And we live in a state with a frightening and pervasive problem of crimes against children. One has only to recall the death of “Baby Brianna” Lopez, a 5 1/2-month-old who was raped and beaten by her father and uncle, to remind us that children live at the mercy of adults.
If Ortiz y Pino thinks the level of punishment for crimes against children is adequate under current law, that may be a reasonable argument. But that isn’t the one he is making. Children are our future, and the senator’s comments do not display forward thinking.
This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
