Megan Law's Impact on Sex Offender Registry Legislation. Maggie McAninch Albia High School English 9 Mrs.La Rue March 1, 2024. Megan Law's Impact on Sex Offender Registry Legislation Introduction Megan's Law is a law that paved the way for making the Sex Offender Registry public while trying to prevent what happened to Megan from ever happening again. History of Megan Law The way Megan's unfortunate outcome of life ended and the circumstances of her death have shaped the way laws about child protection are enforced, but we first need to know how these laws were put into place. Megan was a seven-year-old girl from Hamilton Township, Mercer County, New Jersey, who was abducted, raped, and killed by a known child molester who lived across the street from her family (Montaldo, 2019). On July 27, 1994, James Timmedquas was …show more content…
(Montaldo, 2019). James had previously had two convictions for the attempted aggravated sexual assault of a five-year-old girl and the assault of a seven-year-old girl (CPI Open Fox, 2023). James first two counts of assault, pleaded guilty and spent several years in the Adult Diagnostic & Treatment Center (ADTC) in Avenel, New Jersey (CPI Open Fox, 2023). After James' sentence and Megan's passing, Megan's family fought for Megan's Law to be passed so that local people would be notified of local sex offenders (Montaldo, 2019). Before Megan Law, the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children Act required a list of offenses against children, but this list was only released to law enforcement (Montaldo, 2019). Having these facts out to the public helped them be more self-aware about who they are living by and prevent what happened to Megan from happening to their children. The aftermath of Megan's death and the actions that took The Kanka family says that if they had known that their neighbor was a sex offender, Megan would