Source: http://www.crazydaysandnights.net

There was a law passed a few years ago in California, which was supposed to help protect children working in entertainment from child molesters.

Unfortunately, it looks like nobody in the business is in compliance with this law, and nobody really cares, either.

Hollywood Child Protection Act

Hollywood Child Protection Act Ignored; Here’s Why It Is Important

EXCLUSIVE: One of the key California laws designed to protect child actors from sexual predators has gone largely ignored and unenforced since it was enacted five years ago. The law requires publicists, managers, acting coaches and headshot photographers who work with child actors to be fingerprinted and pass an FBI background check to screen out registered sex offenders. Only then will they be issued a Child Performer Services Permit.

A Deadline investigation, however, has found that not a single Hollywood publicist who represents child actors has obtained a permit. Dozens of managers, acting coaches and photographers who work with child stars have also failed to comply with the law, which is punishable by a year in county jail and a $10,000 fine. And yet, no one has ever been charged with breaking it.

The law, AB 1660, prohibits registered sex offenders from “representing or providing specified services to artists or performers under 18 years of age.” Fingerprints and FBI background checks are required to ensure that registered sex offenders don’t skirt the law by working under assumed names.

The law was enacted to keep men like Robert Villard from entering – or in his case, re-entering – the industry after being convicted of a sex crime. Villard, in fact, was the poster-pedophile the law specifically targeted: for many years, he was a publicist, manager, acting coach and photographer of child actors, some of whom would go on to become major movie stars. But he also had a long history of sex crimes against children. In 1987, he was convicted of possessing child pornography, but the conviction was overturned on appeal. He was arrested again in 2001 after a police raid of his home turned up thousands of photos of scantily clad boys in sexually suggestive positions. He pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor and was sentenced to three years’ probation.

Villard, who sometimes operated under the assumed name of Bob Moniker, continued to work with child stars until he was busted again in 2005, this time pleading no contest to committing a lewd act on a 13-year-old boy to whom he was giving acting lessons. He served seven years in prison and got out just before Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB 1660 into law in September 2012.

Other examples:

  • Martin Weiss, a personal manager to many young stars, got out of jail shortly before the law went into effect, having severed six months after pleading no contest to two counts of oral copulation with an 11-year-old boy whose career he was managing. Like Villard, he too operated under fake names including Maximilian Weiss, Paul Weiss and Menachem Mendel. But if either of them tries to apply under a fake name for a permit to represent child actors again, their fingerprints will give them away.

  • Jason James Murphy, a convicted pedophile who’d already spent five years in prison for kidnapping and molesting an 8-year-old boy, was arrested just a few days after Weiss. After getting out of prison, Murphy came to Hollywood, where he worked as a casting assistant and acting coach for child actors. He was arrested in December 2011 for failing to use the name under which he was a registered sex offender, but the judge dismissed the case, saying that Murphy had not attempted to conceal his identity, even though he was working with children under the professional name of Jason James.

  • Brian Peck is another registered sex offender who the law was designed to keep away from child actors. Peck, now 57, spent 16 months in jail after being convicted in 2004 of performing a lewd act on a child and oral copulation of a person under 16. His victim was a young boy to whom Peck had been giving private acting lessons at his home. – Source


Read more on these