Today Kimberly Bender’s Law takes effect. As KING-5 news reports:
Senate Bill 5033, known as Kimberly Bender's Law, imposes harsher penalties for sexually abusive jail and prison guards. It goes into effect July 23.The law would raise the status of second-degree custodial sexual misconduct from a gross misdemeanor to a Class C felony. The second-degree charge applies to cases when a corrections officer or member of law enforcement has sexual contact with a person in their custody.
"Kimberly Bender's Law" is named after a Quileute woman who died by suicide in her Forks jail cell after reporting her jail guard, John Gray, sexually harassed her.
Gray, the corrections officer at the center of a KING 5 investigation that prompted the legislation, was convicted in 2021 of two felony and two misdemeanor counts of custodial sexual misconduct for sexually assaulting four women who were inmates at the Forks jail in 2019. He served 13 months of his 20-month sentence.
