Topeka ? When Marisa and Maurice Gray’s children saw the racial slurs and Nazi symbols spray-painted on the shed behind their home, each reacted differently.

The Grays’ 10-year-old daughter wondered if the Ku Klux Klan was going to try to kill them.

Their 6-year-old daughter tried to sound out a derogatory word, because she had never seen nor heard the term before.

And their 4-year-old son concluded that someone was in big trouble with Dad for spray-painting the shed.

The incident on Jan. 9 made the Grays, of Kansas City, Kan., immediately confront a lot of issues that Marisa Gray said she wished she could have handled with her children at her own pace.

“I’m getting angrier because someone has forced this on my family,” she said.

Neighbors rallied around the Grays after the incident, and the police investigated, but no one has been caught. Marisa and Maurice still are wondering who victimized them.

“You can’t dismiss this as a kids’ prank. How do I protect my kids? Are they watching my kids, my home?” she asked.

Marisa Gray and others say Kansas needs to join the majority of states in the nation by adopting a hate-crimes law to send a message that crimes motivated by prejudice will receive extra punishment.

Uphill Statehouse battle

Last week, she and leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and a California law professor who specializes in hate-crime laws urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to recommend approval of a hate-crime bill.

Committee Chairman John Vratil, R-Leawood, said the panel would consider the proposal by Sen. David Haley, D-Kansas City. But Vratil said he was far from certain that the committee would approve it.

If history is any indication, Kansas lawmakers will increase penalties for people who attack wheat and cattle before they make it tougher on people who attack others based on race, gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation.

Haley’s proposal has been rejected every session for four years, while a Senate committee last week quickly approved stiffer penalties for acts of agroterrorism. According to the Kansas Department of Agriculture, there has been no recorded case of agroterrorism in the state.

Jesse Milan, state president of the NAACP, said he receives calls every week from people who say they have been victims of crime based on their race.

And Kansas is lagging behind the rest of the nation in reporting hate crimes to the federal government.

Under-reported crime

Only one law enforcement agency in Kansas the Wichita Police Department filed reports for 2000 with the U.S. Justice Department on reported hate crimes.

“Kansas really has to improve its response to discriminatory violence,” said Brian Levin, an assistant professor of hate crimes, law and terrorism at California State University-San Bernardino.

Levin, a former New York police officer, said hate crimes are among the most under-reported crimes.

“If you’re not counting them, chances are you have no procedures or protocols for dealing with them,” he said.

The lack of reporting raised the eyebrows of several lawmakers, including Rep. Barbara Ballard, D-Lawrence, who attended last week’s hearing on the hate-crimes bill.

“I was surprised by that. That is something we have to follow up on,” Ballard said.

But state officials say Kansas law enforcement’s failure to report hate crimes to the federal government was because the state was changing its computer system to record and assemble crime statistics.

Hate crimes are being reported by law authorities, and law enforcement agencies are being trained to handle hate crimes, according to Mary Ann Howerton, manager of the crime statistics data information center for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.

It’s just that the state has only recently reached the computer capability to convey those records to the federal government.

Meanwhile in Kansas City, Kan., the Grays are unsure of the motivation behind the racist graffiti and unhappy that Kansas has no hate-crimes law.

“Our hands are tied because we don’t have the laws needed to consider the victims,” Marisa Gray said.