Rep. Plakon Sponsored HB 45, But She Totally Missed the Real Threat Hiding in Seminole County

Florida Representative Rachel Plakon of Seminole County, just handed our state another example of policy making that looks tough but does nothing to keep kids safe.

Rep. Plakon was the sponsor of House Bill 45 that expanded residency restrictions to include public swimming pools for people on the sex offender registry and restricting their school access. She sponsored the bill because someone in Seminole with a past offense having nothing to do with public swimming pools or schools, simply moved into the County. Yesterday, the bill was signed into law. But while lawmakers were busy tightening restrictions on people long after their convictions, a far more predictable and dangerous threat was unfolding right under her nose! A teacher with Seminole County Public Schools (the County Rep. Plakon represents) allegedly sexually assaulted a 13-year-old student.

That’s not an outlier. That’s the pattern. Dozens of people told her so, showed up in Tallahassee to testify before committees, provided research, sent in letters, and called her office. But she didn’t want to accept the facts.

The uncomfortable truth backed by decades of research is that most sexual abuse is committed not by strangers lurking near parks or pools, but by someone the victim knows and trusts: a family member, a coach, or yes, a teacher. HB 45 did nothing to address that reality. It wouldn’t have prevented this assault. It doesn’t even try. Instead, laws like this continue to pour millions of taxpayer dollars into policies built on fear, not evidence – public registries, residency restrictions, and geographic banishment that have repeatedly failed to demonstrate meaningful impact on preventing new offenses. These measures may be politically convenient, but they are useless when it comes to stopping abuse.

What’s worse is the opportunity cost. Every dollar spent monitoring where someone lives decades after their offense is a dollar not spent on prevention, education programs for children, training for parents and teachers, early intervention systems, and resources that actually reduce victimization. While everyone is so hyper-focused in the wrong direction and fooled by this false sense of security, they are distracted from where focus and attention needs to be.

Rep. Plakon and every other lawmaker who supported this bill chose optics over outcomes. They focused on the easiest target, not the most likely threat. And in doing so, they ignored the very environment where abuse is statistically most likely to occur. Until lawmakers are willing to confront the data, abandon ineffective policies, and invest in real prevention, these tragedies will continue. And when they do, the responsibility won’t lie with the system they refused to fix. It will lie with the people who chose not to.