Controversy erupts because of 2005 sex offender amendment

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Steve Marcus

Chris Giunchigliani, Clark County commissioner and Democratic candidate for Nevada governor, speaks during a gubernatorial candidates accountability session with Nevadans for the Common Good at Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton Church in Summerlin Tuesday, May 8, 2018.

Fri, Jun 1, 2018 (2 a.m.)

A day before the end of the 2005 Nevada legislative session, then-Assemblywoman and current gubernatorial candidate Chris Giunchigliani took steps to strip a bill of language that would require school workers convicted of sex crimes against underage students, and prison and mental health workers convicted of sex offenses to register as sex offenders.

The last-minute maneuver 13 years ago came to light last week as Giunchigliani, the Clark County commissioner, is vying to become the Democratic nominee for the Nevada governorship.

The bill strengthened penalties for sex offenders who violated state registry provisions and created a notification website by the Department of Public Safety to track offenders. The amendment removing the registration requirement for convicted teachers, school staff, school volunteers, prison workers and mental health workers was introduced by Giunchigliani because of concerns that Nevada lacked the funding for parole and probation officers to track offenders, she said Wednesday.

The requirement that teachers register in the offender database was eventually reinstated 10 years later, but the decade delay, critics say, put children at risk of falling prey to re-offenders.

More than 50 Clark County School District employees have been arrested on suspicion of sexual offenses against students since 2005, said Las Vegas attorney Robert Eglet, whose firm is litigating in federal court against the Clark County School District and a former teacher convicted of molesting elementary school students.

“I believe (the amendment) in essence created a safe haven in Nevada for pedophile teachers,” Eglet said. “To me, this amendment (by Giunchigliani) really showed a lack of judgment and foresight of the risk that she was putting Nevada schoolchildren under.”

Giunchigliani, who is in a contested campaign against fellow Democrat and Clark County Commissioner Steve Sisolak, says the attempt to bring the issue to the forefront more than a decade later is politically motivated. The primary election is June 12; early voting started last week.

Giunchigliani said the issue with other lawmakers was never about the language to exclude certain groups of sex offenders, but rather about the funding. Without her amendment, the bill would not have passed, she said.

“Several of the committee members raised the issue about the funding, and that’s really what the discussion was about,” Giunchigliani said. “As vice chair, when the chair tells me, ‘go work out a bill,’ I go work it out as best as I can, and this one was just personally very important to me and I wanted to make sure that it passed.”

Terri Miller of Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct and Exploitation lobbied lawmakers during the session for language to require school, mental health and prison workers convicted of sexual crimes to register as sex offenders. The Senate declined to include her proposal in the bill before it was taken up by the Assembly later during the session.

At a Ways and Means committee meeting three days before Giunchigliani’s amendment, then-Director of the Department of Public Safety George Togliatti testified that the bill did not provide additional funding to track offenders. He said “there were not enough resources,” nor did he think there would ever be enough to track every sex offender who came to Nevada.

At the time, 750 offenders were being supervised by parole and probation officers and about 4,000 were not supervised, Togliatti said. He added that each parole and probation officer already had a caseload of up to 45 offenders.

“I think that we are going to be endangering the bill as a whole, since it was rejected in the Senate in their proposal,” said Bernie Anderson, chair of the committee, in the minutes. “I just don’t want to see the bill slow down any more than it will with Ways and Means. It may become so late in the hunt that it will sneak under the radar.”

Miller said this week that when Giunchigliani and Anderson were leaders, advocates had a hard time lobbying for stricter language pertaining to teachers. Both were former educators and were affiliated with teacher unions, she said. Giunchigliani was formerly the president of the Nevada State Education Association.

“All I can deduce is that given their affiliation as teachers and (in the) unions, that’s my only guess as to why they would have obstructed the legislation,” Miller said.

Giunchigliani said the claims that her actions were motivated by a role in the union are grossly inaccurate. Rather, it’s politically motivated by her opponent in the primary election, she said.

“It’s because my opponent knows that he’s down in the polls and that I’m surging,” she said. “He is desperate, in my opinion, and ... now he’s taken on something I’ve been very passionate about my entire life as a survivor of sexual abuse. And for him to make these kind of allegations, it’s sad for every victim and survivor out there, because now they feel more at risk.”

Before the amendment, the bill was in danger of dying in committee, former Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie said this week. Leslie, who served 14 years in the Legislature and now works for Washoe County, had suggested during a hearing the need for more resources to monitor offenders, specifically for officers who had to “knock on doors” to track offenders, according to the minutes.

“I did not want to expand the registry even more when we already didn’t have resources to keep track of sex offenders,” Leslie said this week.

Nevada lacked parole and probation officer resources, and as the numbers stood at the time, the noncompliant rate of sex offenders stood at about 40 percent, said then-state Sen. Dina Titus, who introduced the bill, in her 2005 testimony. Leslie and at least one other lawmaker wanted to add more funding into the budget, which put the legislation at a standstill and potentially derailed it.

“I just didn’t want to pretend we were doing something and not have the resources,” Leslie said.

Even before the change, the bill would not have placed sex offenders back on probation (and thus forcing the same kind of attention from officers as regular probation). Rather, it would have required the sex offenders to register in the database and, like other such databases in the U.S., update the information when they moved. So the enforcement, while a lifetime responsibility, would have been focused more on verification and monitoring the database.

Moreover, in the minutes of the Ways and Means meeting, no legislator expressed concern about the unusual logic at work to relieve one group of sex offenders, especially those who deal with children and vulnerable populations, from the requirement of registering simply because other sex offenders were violating the law by not registering.

Miller contests the reasoning that it would be a financial burden, saying “I believe it’s more of a burden in our community to know that convicted sex offenders (can) roam freely.”

In 2002, Miller met with a Department of Public Safety official who told her teachers, mental health workers and prison workers in Nevada weren’t required to register in the state offender database. She started lobbying the Legislature the following year.

“Given the fact that it was the DPS that brought it to my attention in the first place, financial burden or manpower didn’t seem to be an issue for them,” Miller said. “They were more interested in public safety, as was I.”

A television ad airing this week questions Giunchigliani’s actions.

“Should a teacher who has sex with a child be required to register as a sex offender?” asks the 30-second spot released Tuesday by Nevada Leads, suggesting that “Giunchigliani singlehandedly protected perverts.”

Emily’s List, a national political group that supports pro-choice women vying for political office, defended Giunchigliani.

“An outside group aligned with Steve Sisolak released a shameful ad in the Nevada governor’s race that falsely alleges that Chris Giunchigliani is against tougher penalties for sexual abusers and increased protections for victims of childhood sexual abuse,” a statement from the group said.

Giunchigliani last week shared that both she and her sister were victims of sexual abuse. Her sister was kidnaped and held captive for three days while being raped, she said.

“Sisolak didn’t realize I was a victim of sexual assault myself and forced me to have to come out publicly to talk about it in order to defend my own name,” she said.

When asked about the issue coming to the forefront 13 years later, Christina Amestoy, from the Sisolak campaign, said only that “the issues raised are concerning.”

John Vellardita, executive director of the Clark County Education Association, said the union wouldn’t have supported the amendment protecting teachers from registering, noting that the union endorsed the change made in the 2015 legislation. “Our role ends” when one of their own is convicted of a crime, he said.

Vellardita’s union, which records show is associated with Nevada Leads, endorsed Sisolak, while the Nevada State Education Association endorsed Giunchigliani.

Thirty-five arrests of CCSD employees for sexual offenses against students occurred in the past five years, including after 2015, when school employees were added to the law, Eglet said. At this point, there is no indication that any of those arrested had previous convictions before their arrests or that the ones who were convicted went on to work with children or re-offend.

Richard Perkins, who in 2005 was speaker of the Assembly, said he recently learned the bill was amended to exclude teachers. He said he is confident the bill would have passed without the Giunchigliani amendment, noting that he and Bill Raggio, the former district attorney and then-head of the state Senate, would have worked together to ensure passage. Raggio died in 2012.

Minutes from the meeting confirm that Perkins was not present for the amendment vote — which, he said, is not uncommon in his leadership position, especially toward the hectic end of the legislative session.

“I’m pissed off now,” he said, “that anyone would be so underhanded as to wait for me to leave a room to change a bill to protect teachers who attack our kids. I would have never let that happen.”

Perkins said it’s “patently false” that there were funding concerns. If there would have been, there would have been a fiscal note attached the bill to request funds, he said.

“She would have said, ‘We don’t have money.’ That’s what she would have said,” Perkins said.

Yet, the bill with Giunchigliani’s amendment passed unanimously in the Assembly and Senate.

“I don’t even know why (Perkins) would be weighing in on it, because one person does not make or break a bill,” Giunchigliani said. “It was brought forward in a public hearing, the minutes are noted, and Rich knows at the end of session people are covering meetings all over the place, but that has nothing to do with it.”

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