Senate panel approves bill to end rapists’ parental rights

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ANNAPOLIS – The Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee on Tuesday approved perennially introduced but annually ill-fated legislation to enable courts to strip parental rights from a mother or father who conceived the child through non-consensual intercourse.

With the committee’s voice vote, attention shifts to the full Senate, which could begin consideration of the Senate Bill 2 as early as this week. Similar legislation, House Bill 1, is pending before the House Judiciary Committee.

The proposed Rape Survivor Family Protection Act has died each year in the legislature for about a decade amid concerns about the due process rights of individuals being civilly accused of rape without ever being charged with or convicted of the violent crime.

To assuage those concerns, the 2018 bill would enable judges to terminate the parental rights of a parent convicted of rape or who is shown by clear and convincing evidence to have conceived the child through non-consensual intercourse. The law would not apply, in the absence of a rape conviction, to couples married at the time of conception – unless the parents were separated in accordance with a protective order at the time of the assault-based conception and have lived apart since that time.

The Senate committee’s approval came after the panel rejected amendments that would have removed the requirement that a judge consider the child’s best interests before terminating the parental rights. The committee also turned aside an amendment that would permit a judge to order a parent to pay child support after parental rights had been terminated.

Sen. Michael J. Hough introduced both amendments, saying it could never be in a child’s best interest to have a rapist as a parent and that rapists should never be absolved of the obligation to financially support the child.

“They should be paying support for what they did,” said Hough, R-Frederick and Carroll.

Hough’s child-support amendment garnered wide committee support in principle but many members voiced concern that it would kill the bill again, as the House has in past years opposed requiring a parent whose rights would be terminated under the legislation to pay child support.

“In a perfect world, that would be great,” Sen. Susan Lee, D-Montgomery, said of the amendment. “(But) this needs to work in both houses.”

Sen. William C. Smith Jr., D-Montgomery, added that a child-support obligation “would substantially make the bill better” but that a “clean,” unamended, bill is necessary for passage.

Hough objected to that line of argument, saying the committee should strive for the most effective legislation rather than seek to appease the House.

“We are not potted plants,” Hough said.

In the end, the committee rejected the child-support amendment 6-5, with the panel’s chair, Sen. Robert A. “Bobby” Zirkin, casting the decisive vote as he noted the need to keep the House on board.

“That amendment could decapitate the bill,” said Zirkin, D-Baltimore County.

Hough’s opposition to the bill’s best-interest-of-the-child standard did not have broad support, as many noted that judges are bound to apply the standard in custody cases.

“I don’t want a judge to have the power to say it’s in the best interest of the child to be raised by a rapist,” Hough said in vain.

However, the Senate committee did eliminate a provision of the original bill that would have had women seeking legal counsel to represent them in the termination proceeding to consult the Sexual Assault Legal Institute, which has lobbied for the bill. Opponents of the provision objected to what they characterized as a special provision for a lobbyist.

Lisae C. Jordan, SALI’s director, said the institute – which relies on grants and donations — has expertise in counseling rape victims and finding them attorneys without charge.

“It’s unfortunate that the committee would try to deprive rape victims of their expertise,” Jordan said of SALI counselors.