Tarr seeks to increase penalty for child endangerment

SALEM - A North Shore lawmaker vowed to file legislation this week to increase the penalty for child endangerment, making it a felony punishable by up to 10 years in state prison.

The move by Sen. Bruce Tarr, a Gloucester Republican, comes in the wake of widespread criticism of a one-year sentence imposed last Monday on a Salem man who did nothing to stop a 9-year-old girl from being raped in the bed next to the one where he was having sex with the girl's mother and another woman.

Patrick Doyle, 42, was one of four people charged in a child sexual abuse case that involved a Beverly mother accused of trading sexual access to her young daughter for crack cocaine in 2004.

Doyle pleaded guilty to child endangerment and witness intimidation last Monday. Salem Superior Court Judge Leila Kern imposed five years of probation for the child endangerment charge and a 21/2-year jail term for witness intimidation. But she suspended all but one year of the jail term.

That sentence - which gives Doyle a shot at parole after six months - has outraged victims' rights advocates and others who say it's not long enough.

Tarr was among the critics of the sentence. He said the move to amend the law came partly out of frustration about the judge's sentence.

Tarr also said he has received broad bipartisan support for the measure.

The legislation would amend the 2002 child endangerment statute, a law enacted in response to the clergy abuse crisis, after reports of instance after instance of church administrators ignoring reported abuse by priests.

Tarr said the 2002 law envisioned a scenario in which abuse was brought to someone's attention and not a case in which someone witnessed abuse and failed to act.

Kern said during last Monday's sentencing that the sentences for both crimes fell within guidelines used by judges in Massachusetts.

Middlesex County Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Dunigan had argued there were a number of aggravating factors, however, that called for a longer penalty than the guidelines suggest, including the fact that Doyle attempted to impede the investigation. She had recommended a four- to six-year prison term.

Doyle's lawyer, Randy Chapman, had asked for probation.

Richard Lapham pleaded guilty in October 2005 to raping the girl on numerous occasions, including the night Doyle was present, and is serving a 15-to-18-year prison term.

Mary Jean Armstrong, the girl's mother, is scheduled to plead guilty next month, as is Robert L'Italien, who told police he began to engage in a sexual act one time with the girl but then stopped.

The sentencing, first reported by The Salem News, has since drawn regional and national attention, primarily from talk radio and on a conservative commentator's cable television program.

On Friday, Kern's home phone number was read on one talk radio program. The courthouse also received a series of angry phone calls. Court employees described the judge as being visibly upset when she left the courthouse Friday.

Kern, 64, is a former federal prosecutor and civil attorney. She came to the law later in life, after a career as a psychologist, earning her law degree from Harvard in 1984, at the age of 42. She was appointed to the bench in 1999.