A University of Virginia student, a veteran State Police sergeant, an Albemarle County School Board member and eight other local residents received citizen lawmaker awards Tuesday from Del. Rob Bell, R-Albemarle.

“Each one of these people found something wrong with Virginia’s laws - something that needed to be fixed,” Bell said at a Court Square ceremony to honor the 11 residents who helped him draft and push legislation signed into law last spring by Gov. Mark R. Warner.

“With their help, we got the laws changed,” Bell said. “The laws of Virginia are better than they were a year ago because of these people.”

Ellen L. Mierzejewski, a UVa student, was on an Albemarle County school band trip to Boston a few years ago when she was sexually molested and could not identify the county the school bus was in when she was assaulted, Bell said.

He said no criminal should escape prosecution just because the victim, often a child in sexual abuse cases, cannot say in which locality a crime was committed.

Mierzejewski said she wrote a letter in support of legislation that Bell drafted to ensure that a victim’s home locality could serve as a valid venue for a trial if a juvenile victim could not prove where a sexual assault took place.

She said she feels better with the law in place that future victims of assaults will not see criminals escape trial on a technicality.

Albemarle County police detective Steve Wilkins also helped Bell with that legislation, testified for House Bill 1293 in front of committees and received a citizen lawmaker award and a framed copy of the legislation. The bill passed unanimously in March and was signed into law by Warner in April.

State Police Sgt. Todd M. Taylor helped Bell draft another bill to close off another technicality that once prevented prosecution of drunken driving cases, the delegate said. In a case he once prosecuted with Taylor’s help in Orange County, a defendant who had been driving drunk “sneaked away from the scene of an accident,” Bell said.

He said the former law used to allow many people to escape a drunken-driving charge just by leaving the scene of an accident. Virginia’s new law allows police to arrest a suspect for drunken driving within three hours of a crash, without a warrant and at any location, if police find probable cause for such a charge.

Bell gave an award and a framed copy of another bill to Brian Wheeler, a member of the Albemarle County School Board, for helping him draft and pass legislation allowing felony charges in cases involving videotaping of nude children in private places without permission.

Wheeler had discovered a camera left hidden in a home bathroom by a contractor who used it to videotape children bathing. Under the old law, the contractor could only be charged with a misdemeanor because the children were not acting in a sexual manner.

“This is a law that I’m about as proud of as any,” Bell said of the new law allowing felony prosecutions in such cases.

Other local residents given citizen lawmaker awards by Bell included Albemarle Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Camblos, juvenile probation officer Teri Larsen, forensic scientist Julia Pearson and defense lawyer Andrew Wilder.

Amy Lovelace of the Shelter for Help in Emergency and Andrew Torget, president of the Central Virginia chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, also received citizen lawmaker awards for their assistance in drafting and pushing a pair of anti-crime bills.

Bell said Torget helped secure passage of a bill requiring a minimum five-day jail sentence for anyone convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol with a blood-alcohol content in excess of 0.15 percent, or nearly twice the legal limit, instead of the former “super drunk” standard of 0.20 percent.

Tuesday’s ceremony marked the third year that Bell has bestowed citizen lawmaker awards, which have gone to two dozen of his constituents.