GRACE: With me right now from D.C., Lawrence Carter-Long, public affairs specialist at the National Council on Disability.
Lawrence, thank you for being with us. Lawrence, you and I have talked so many, many times about crimes and mistreatment of the disabled.
And, everyone, you may not realize it, but Lawrence was actually a poster boy once for the disabled.
LAWRENCE CARTER-LONG, PUBLIC AFFAIRS SPECIALIST, NATIONAL COUNCIL ON DISABILITY: Yes. Thank you.
GRACE: Lawrence, why, why, this girl so defenseless, a 9-year-old little girl, partially deaf, partially blind, have you noticed that predators like this, freak, will pick out the single most vulnerable, the most precious angel they can get their hands on and then destroy them? Why so much crime on the handicapped?
CARTER-LONG: Well, Nancy, I`ve got to tell you, it happens over and over and over again. The patterns are always the same. It`s always somebody that they know, somebody close to the family. We find that disabled children, disabled people in general are more likely to be abused and they have more difficulty reporting the abuse.
They are more dependent upon the caregivers. More dependent upon their parents, their nondisabled peers. It seems pretty clear that this individual probably preyed upon that and probably used that to his advantage.
You know we`ve been tracking this since I was last on the show looking at the levels of abuse and of murder of disabled children since the summer. And what we`re finding are three things. One is that the incidents of these are increasing. There seems to be more and more of them occurring all the time.
We`re also finding that the crimes themselves are more horrific. That we`re finding more and more dismemberments, more and more beheadings, such as the young disabled man who was 7 years old and in Louisiana who was killed in August. We`re also finding as we track to the cases that have gone to court that the penalties that these individuals get are quite often less severe than those individuals --
GRACE: Well, Lawrence, Lawrence, I can guarantee you, Lawrence Carter-Long, we are going to stay on this case and ask and seek the most severe penalty possible and that jurisdiction it would be the death penalty.
Marc Klaas, weigh in.
MARC KLAAS, PRESIDENT AND FOUNDER, KLAASKIDS FOUNDATION: Lawrence, from the Sarah Baker case, and everything he says is absolutely true. These people get lesser penalties for the horrific crimes they commit against disabled persons. And that`s a trend that has to stop.
Listen, Nancy, there`s plenty of blame to go around here. But the bottom line with parents is they have to know their neighborhoods. It turns out that three-fifths of the residences in this trailer park were occupied by registered sex offenders. These kids were in a trap that was waiting to snap and it snapped in the worst way possible.
Parents should be showing their kids the safe places to play and areas to avoid. Unfortunately in this case, everything was an area to avoid.