NAPLES, Fla. — It's the last day of Sexual Assault Awareness Month. One local non profit, Path2Freedom, is working to end human trafficking. Jennifer Dean is joining it's board and co-wrote Serena's Law, named after her daughter.
"With Serena's law, we enact legislation, that closes loop-holes, that ultimately puts kids at risk," Serena Parisi said.
It's a labor of love between the two. The law passed with bi-partisan support three years ago in April. It allows clerk of court records and background checks to disclose names of convicted abusers.
"We realized in the process of what my daughter had gone through, Florida had a well meaning intent to seal the records of these individuals to protect the child's name, but in doing so they also provided a cloak of confidentiality for the perpetrators," Dean said.
As sexual assault awareness month comes to a close, Governor Ron DeSantis signed on April 10 to make this law tighter. Before the amendment, Dean says it was difficult to find a perpetrators name in county databases, but now it's streamlined and simple.
Path2Freedom is working to raise paper goods for its clients.
