Welch: State shouldn’t ease sentences for child sex predators
Published 1:30 am Wednesday, November 26, 2025
By Todd Welch / Herald Columnist
Washington state’s political class is at it again, prioritizing ideology over the safety of children.
The state Sentencing Guidelines Commission just voted 7-2 to recommend legislation for lighter sentences for adults caught in sex-sting operations. These are not “thought crimes.” There are cases where grown men take concrete steps, driving to a meetup, bringing condom and sending explicit messages, to sexually assault what they believe are minors.
Among the majority’s rationale? There is “no identifiable victim” because the “child” was actually an undercover officer. By that same logic, attempted murder has no victim if police tackle the gunman before he fires. The only reason a real child wasn’t raped is that law enforcement intervened. Rewarding predators for failing is perverse.
This isn’t a one-off. The same progressive boards have previously urged “treatment over prison” for child-pornography possessors and opposed public notification when violent sex offenders are placed in neighborhoods. Weakening consequences for attempted child rape fit the pattern perfectly.
Last session, state Sen. Lisa Wellman, D-Mercer Island,tried to turn this softness into statute. Her bill, Senate Bill 5312, would have slashed lifetime sex-offender registration to five years and capped supervision at three years for first-time offenders caught in stings. Her inspiration? A Mercer Island man who showed up to meet who he believed were a 13-year-old boy and two little girls, with lubricant in his pocket.
When parents and voters erupted, Wellman didn’t reconsider; she pivoted. She introduced legislation to restructure the Missing and Exploited Children Task Force itself, the Washington State Patrol unit running these stings, in ways that would hamstring its operations. She worked with the predator’s father to do it. That’s not reform; that’s sabotage dressed up in bureaucratic language.
Now the Sentencing Guidelines Commission has given Olympia fresh cover to go even softer. If lawmakers adopt these recommendations, Washington will formally declare that trying to rape a child is less serious than succeeding only because police got there first.
Residents deserve better. Protecting kids is not a partisan issue; it’s a bare minimum we ask of government. Every legislator from Snohomish County and beyond should publicly commit to vote against any bill that reduces penalties for adults who seek to sexually exploit children, period. No hedging, no “alternatives to incarceration” euphemisms, no procedural games.
Washington has a clear choice: Stand with law enforcement and vulnerable children or keep sliding toward a system that excuses predators because their victims were fortunate enough to be fictional. The moral test is simple, and our kids are watching how their representatives answer it.
Todd Welch is a columnist for The Herald, addressing local and state issues. He lives in Everett.
