Kids secretly recording abusers now legal

Gov. Scott signs bill creating exception to state restriction.

TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Rick Scott signed into law Friday legislation that allows child abuse victims to secretly record their abusers — a day after the man who inspired the measure was acquitted by a Naples jury.

It was one of t wo bills that Scott signed into law Friday.

Ice cream truck driver Richard McDade, 68, of Fort Myers was cleared by jurors of repeatedly raping a minor girl for six years, beginning when she was age 10.

His conviction in 2011 on similar charges was overturned by the Florida Supreme Court because the girl used an MP3 player to illegally record conversations be- tween the pair without McDade’s approval.

Florida law prohibited such one-sided recordings. But the bill signed by Scott (HB 7001) lifts that restriction in cases of child abuse, but it won’t apply retroactively to McDade’s case.

The girl said that McDade threatened to have her and her mother deported because they were undocumented immigrants from Mexico. McDade said the recordings made by the girl were edited to make him sound guilt y of abuse.

The other bill (SB 160) signed Friday means rural letter carriers won’t have to wear seat belts on their routes. It adds an exemption to the state’s mandatory seat-belt law for rural letter carriers “performing duties in the course of his or her employment on a designated postal route.”