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Arkansas lawmaker who gave daughters away votes to make practice a felony
Source: The Guardian
Arkansas lawmaker who gave daughters away votes to make practice a felony
Friday 20 March 2015 20.58 GMT
An Arkansas lawmaker who gave away his adopted daughters to a man who later sexually assaulted one of them voted on Friday to make such transfers a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.
Representative Justin Harris did not speak as the house passed two laws without opposition that sponsors said are a direct response to the Republican lawmaker giving away his three- and five-year-old adopted daughters to Eric Cameron Francis, who later abused the older child.
The case is sensitive enough that none of the lawmakers who spoke during the debate on Friday mentioned Harris by name as he sat in the chamber, and neither Harris nor his attorney, Jennifer Wells, responded to requests for comment after the vote.
In his only public comment two days after the Arkansas Times newspaper published the story earlier this month, Harris said he gave the girls to Francis because they were a threat to his three biological children and that a psychiatrist, pediatrician and therapist all recommended the move. Francis had worked at Harris’s family-owned preschool, Growing God’s Kingdom, and had been approved for international adoptions.
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Friday 20 March 2015 20.58 GMT
An Arkansas lawmaker who gave away his adopted daughters to a man who later sexually assaulted one of them voted on Friday to make such transfers a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.
Representative Justin Harris did not speak as the house passed two laws without opposition that sponsors said are a direct response to the Republican lawmaker giving away his three- and five-year-old adopted daughters to Eric Cameron Francis, who later abused the older child.
The case is sensitive enough that none of the lawmakers who spoke during the debate on Friday mentioned Harris by name as he sat in the chamber, and neither Harris nor his attorney, Jennifer Wells, responded to requests for comment after the vote.
In his only public comment two days after the Arkansas Times newspaper published the story earlier this month, Harris said he gave the girls to Francis because they were a threat to his three biological children and that a psychiatrist, pediatrician and therapist all recommended the move. Francis had worked at Harris’s family-owned preschool, Growing God’s Kingdom, and had been approved for international adoptions.
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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/20/arkansas-lawmaker-gave-daughters-away-votes-felony
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