President Dalia Grybauskaitė said the penalty does not fit the crime in regards to molesting children in Lithuania. Photo by Nathan Greenhalgh.

VILNIUS — In light of public outrage over Kedys case, the Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė announced Thursday that she supports extending penalties for convicted pedophiles.

Currently the maximum length of imprisonment for the sexual molestation of a minor is two years, and sometimes convicts are let go with only a fine. The extension of the imprisonment to five years was proposed in the fall in the Lithuanian parliament by the Order and Justice Party, but the proposal has stalled.

“Now the current penalties for abuse of the very young is too weak, often not in line with the severity of the crime committed,” Grybauskaitė said in a statement to the press.

The announcement comes after the Vilnius Regional Prosecutor’s Office formally pressed charges against Andrius Ūsas for the sexual molestation on Friday, although not rape of the three-year-old daughter of Drąsius Kedys. Ūsas says he is innocent.

The relatively light penalty in Lithuania for molesting children compared to other countries has received harsh criticism since the Kedys case captured the media’s attention in October.

“In the social context of crime, two years for the young person’s sexual abuse … is just ridiculous penalty,” Aurelius Gutauskas, a professor at Mykolo Romeris University told the Vilniaus Diena newspaper.