PANEL WON'T SEEK REPEAL OF SEDUCTION LAW THIS YEAR

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, January 22, 1993                   TAG: 9301220188
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short
PANEL WON'T SEEK REPEAL OF SEDUCTION LAW THIS YEAR
Members of a state commission on sexual assault probably will back off - for the time being at least - from their proposal to eliminate Virginia's criminal seduction law.
The prosecution of a Martinsville-area preacher under the 1887 statute prompted Beyer Commission members to informally agree Thursday not to submit repeal legislation during this year's General Assembly.
Gail Nardi, a spokeswoman for Lt. Gov. Don Beyer, said commission members want to look at how Ellwood Gallimore's case is handled in order to "see what this law means in 1993."
At the same time, she said, they will be looking at other ways to deal with "legal issues surrounding abuse of authority in child sexual abuse."
The law makes it a felony for a man to use the promise of marriage "to seduce and have illicit connection with any unmarried female of previous chaste character."
When commission members first discussed what to do about the law, they thought it would be a simple housekeeping job: trudging up into the attic of the Code of Virginia and throwing out an archaic law that treats women as chattel.
They could find no record of the statute's being used in the past 30 years - until Floyd County's prosecutor charged Gallimore this week.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB