With Russian lawmakers backing stringent new measures designed to protect minors from recidivist sexual abusers, the vice speaker of the country’s State Duma has proposed a total internet blackout for pedophiles aimed at stopping predators in their tracks.
Speaking to RT’s YouTube channel on Monday, Anna Kuznetsova floated the idea, arguing that the web “is also a potential tool for committing crime.”
“Therefore, we need to limit and completely ban their access to the internet,” she suggested, noting that there has been a 6% increase in the number of repeat offenders in the country. “Behind each percentage point is a child’s ruined life,” she said.
According to the politician, who previously served as the Children’s Rights Commissioner, a whole set of measures should be imposed on pedophiles, including lifetime administrative supervision.
“It is unacceptable that one can get away with a fine for crimes of this nature,” Kuznetsova stressed.
Her remarks follow shortly after Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law that could see repeat pedophiles locked up without the prospect of release for the rest of their lives. Under the new legislation, jail sentences will be handed down to recidivist pedophiles who abuse minors, cases where two or more children under the age of 18 were abused, or situations where the act involved committing another serious or particularly grave crime.
The law was adopted in its first reading in December, with Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin commenting on social media that “a life sentence is a just measure to isolate the degenerates. They cannot be called humans, although they are in human form.”
The bill on life imprisonment for those previously convicted of raping minors was submitted to the State Duma in September last year, following a spate of high-profile crimes across the country. That month, in the Kemerovo Region, a previously convicted pedophile, Viktor Pesternikov, raped and killed two 10-year-old school girls.