Sen. Klein, Miss New York Stump for Anti-Cyberbullying Bill

State Sen. Jeff Klein, D-Bronx/Westchester, is hopeful that a bill his is sponsoring will add more teeth to anti-cyberstalking laws.

Klein’s bill, S.6132, would update the state’s stalking and harassment laws to cover electronic bullying and give authorities the ability to prosecute cyberbullying incidents under the state’s hate crime statutes.

A copy of Klein’s bill is available in the PDF file to the right of this story.

“We have over 15 co-sponsors and we introduced the bill the first week in January and I think we’ve been building support among my colleagues,” Klein said.

Klein has been touring local skills in his district in order to get input from the people who will be impacted the most by the bill—children. On Feb. 9, Klein and Miss New York 2011 Kaitlin Monte, who has been a vocal supporter of the legislation, stopped by the Pelham school district and spoke to middle schoolers and students in the high school’s criminal justice class to speak about the law.

“I’m trying to build grassroots support among the people who really need it the most, the students,” Klein said.

As part of his campaign, Klein has also created the state cyberbully census. The cyberbully census is an anonymous survey for students to fill out in order to let lawmakers know how big a problem cyberbullying has been in their lives.

“It gives me the opportunity to amend my existing legislation to add in what the students support,” Klein said.

Klein said he hoped to have the results of the survey in March.

State Assemblyman William Scarborough, D-Queens, has also introduced an anti-cyberbullying bill which is currently being reviewed in the codes committee, according to Klein.

“I’m hopeful that we can pass it before the Legislative session ends in June,” Klein said.

During the visit, Monte shared her experiences with an ex-boyfriend who bombarded her with hateful texts for almost two years. Monte said she went to the police for help, but they didn’t respond at first.

Although the texts weren’t threatening, Monte said they were intimidating and damaging to her self-esteem.

“I kept calling and calling and finally got an officer who decided to do something and [my ex-boyfriend] is no longer able to contact me,” Monte said. “But what really bothered me was that it  was relationship abuse and that was totally different thing than bullying. But it really wasn’t, because at the end of the day he was taking advantage of his position of power.”