On the morning of Feb. 15, more than 50 perturbed Mercer Island residents met with Sen. Lisa Wellman at the community and event center to voice their concerns over a bill that was proposed, in part, to reduce the length of the sex offender registration requirement to five years for persons convicted in “net nanny” sting operations.

That Wellman-sponsored bill, SB 5312, has since been pulled from the legislative docket. But the 41st Legislative District Democrat senator from Mercer Island has also introduced another bill, SB 5282, that reestablishes the advisory board to the Missing and Exploited Children Task Force (MECTF).

“Net nanny” stings feature law enforcement officers acting in an undercover capacity while communicating on the internet through various websites with individuals interested in the sexual exploitation of children, according to the previous Reporter story. The would-be perpetrators who were arrested had agreed to travel to meet with undercover detectives posing as young girls and boys to engage in sexual activity with them.

Olivia Lippens, a Mercer Island resident and parent of three school-aged children, attended the meeting and noted: “The residents that showed up to this hearing were so upset, and every single one of them were against lighter sentencing guidelines or reduced registration and supervision for convicted sex offenders. And the only two people in the room who were for this legislation were the parents of the registered sex offender.”

Wellman confirmed that the Glants from Mercer Island were present at the meeting, which the senator arranged because NextDoor comments about SB 5312 were “blowing up” on the Island and she wanted to discuss the bill with local residents.

According to a Reporter story from 2016, the Washington State Patrol’s MECTF arrested 20 males and one female, including Bryan Glant, then 20, from Mercer Island, during a Thurston County child sex abuse “net nanny” sting, according to a state patrol press release.

Glant — who had no prior criminal history, according to prosecutors — was charged and later found guilty by the trial court of two counts of first-degree attempted rape of a child. He was arrested upon arriving to meet two children under age 12 for sex, and detectives found a bottle of lubricant on Glant, according to the Reporter story. Court documents note that Glant — who is a registered sex offender listed on the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs website — appealed his convictions, but the trial court denied both motions.

At the meeting, Wellman said the residents, “ranted and raved about that I didn’t know what I was doing, that I was not protecting children, etc, etc. I wished I had an opportunity to talk about what was going on, what research I had done, talking to psychiatrists, psychologists, people who are familiar with sex trafficking, people who were familiar with the case, you know, more of our state patrol, that whole issue.”

Lippens added: “It is rare to have an issue where such a staggering number of people are against it… And yet our elected official pushes forward.”

Purpose of the bills

SB 5282, which currently sits in the House of Representatives with the House Committee on Community Safety, reads, in part, that the advisory board must submit details regarding reactive sting operations and proactive sting operations conducted by the task force on missing and exploited children in the reporting year, including: the total number of stings conducted, the number of exploited children rescued through the stings, and arrest and sentencing statistics.

Speaking in front of the Senate Law and Justice Committee on Jan. 27, Bryan’s mother Joanne Glant, said about supporting SB 5312: “The bill addresses a serious injustice of sentencing young first-time offenders to lifetime registration and supervision for crimes where no harm has been done to a person.” (Both Joanne and her husband Bruce have spoken in support of Wellman’s bills.)

The senator said she became aware of the Glants’ son’s case about three or four years ago, contacted her constituents and visited Bryan and others in prison. She thought he was mature and a leader at the Monroe Correctional Complex.

Wellman discussed the purpose of the bills, in part, while referring to a major sting that netted copious men who were charged and imprisoned for 5-10 years: “When you come out of prison, if you have had no (criminal) background, and none of these men had any background of having been charged with anything ever. They had completely clean records, and so that was kind of the focus of both of these bills, how do we treat people, kind of in this particular classification.”

She added: “There was never a child involved, and there was never, actually, as far as the reading that I’ve done, there was nothing on any of the websites that these men had previously been on or their computers. There was nothing about children or pedophilia or anything, and so I had concerns.”

Wellman said that SB 5312 wasn’t shelved for now because of residents’ pressure at the meeting, but because the committee chair didn’t feel it was ready to keep moving and it would require further study. It could possibly return next year as someone else’s bill and read in a different form, but address some of the same elements.

Islanders speak up

As for SB 5282, Islanders continue to speak up because they feel the bill covers some of the same terrain as SB 5312.

Jeremy Bean, a Mercer Island resident and father, said that Wellman avoided, deflected and ignored her constituents’ questions at the meeting. In an email to the Reporter, Bean said he opposes Wellman’s bills because he feels that if they are passed, they will negatively impact the Island or any community, families and, most importantly, their children’s safety.

Islander Jeff Geoghagan, a father of two and meeting attendee, delved into the “net nanny” stings in an email to the Reporter: “Plainly, Senator Wellman is on the wrong side of this issue. Her expressed concern with the oversight of the law enforcement agencies involved with these stings is misplaced.”

Geoghagan added that in cases like the one involving Glant, the individual acts, “of their own volition and without any inducement from law enforcement, searches for, locates and accesses a website soliciting this type of activity. They then take the additional, substantial step of responding to and engaging the person posting the ad.”

He further stated that Wellman would better serve her constituency by focusing on the internet safety of Island children.

On the city front, Mercer Island Mayor Salim Nice released a statement in February regarding the city’s opposition to SB 5312. He noted that, in part, “This bill weakens the ability to hold online predators accountable. It reduces registration and supervision for people who went online looking for a child to abuse. The only reason they didn’t succeed is because law enforcement stepped in first. That doesn’t make them less dangerous — it just means we caught them in time.”

He added: “Public safety means protecting children, not giving a break to those who try to exploit them. Mercer Island stands for stronger — not weaker — protections against child predators. We urge you to reject this bill.”

Shifting back to what’s on the table now — SB 5282 — Wellman said that it’s crucial to reestablish the MECTF advisory board so the conducted operations can catch people who are hurting children.

“I think that there’s a lot of ugliness out there,” she said. “Especially as chair of education, but as a mother and a grandmother, aunt and everything, I don’t want children hurt in any way. And they are.”

Bryan Glant’s father, Bruce Glant, spoke in support of SB 5282 in front of the House Community Safety Committee on March 17. Regarding reinstating the advisory board, he noted: “This allows officers to focus on what they do best, what they are trained to do, and do what they were mandated to do back in 1999 when the task force was established, which is the recovery of real children.”

Through those operations, Wellman said she would feel like she had contributed something positive with the bill.