JB Van Hollen for Attorney General - Assembly Votes To Give Equal Penalties To Beaters Of Kids

MADISON, Wis. (WTAQ) - The Wisconsin Assembly has voted to stop giving lesser penalties to child beaters than those who batter adults. Both types of offenders would get up to 10 years in prison under a bill that was sent to the Senate Tuesday night. The bill was inspired by the case of Michael Stoner – a Spooner man who pummeled his fiance’s 2-year-old daughter in 2007 to the point in which she needs a feeding tube, and cannot see or walk. In investigating the case, Washburn County Sheriff Terry Dryden found that the maximum penalty for causing great bodily harm was 2-and-a-half years less for child victims than for adults.

State Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said a bill to change that emerged after a roundtable he held with police and prosecutors in the Spooner area about a year-and-a-half ago. You might remember Stoner as the man whose car plunged in the Minneapolis bridge collapse. And he told reporters that he and his fiance heroically swam to shore so they could see young Emma Manning in a nearby hospital. But Stoner didn’t tell the nation that he battered the girl at their home earlier that day – and she was flown to the hospital. Stoner got 7-and-a-half years in prison and 5 years of extended supervision. The new bill requires child beaters to serve their full sentences, with no early release. That mandate was passed as an amendment on a 78 to 19 vote.

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