If tragedy ever is to serve as a catalyst for change, let it be the incomprehensible tragedy of Jeffrey Curley.

The 10-year-old boy is lured from the safety of his Cambridge, Mass., neighborhood into a car by two men. They kill him, smother his young life away with a gasoline-soaked rag. They sexually molest his corpse, then dispose of it in a concrete-filled tub dumped into the Great Works River in South Berwick.

Even the minutiae of the case are repellant. The accused killers, Salvatore Sicari and Charles Jaynes, bought the tub at a store where Jeffrey’s mother worked. They bought the concrete at a store where his uncle worked — he may have made the sale himself. The body was abused and prepared for disposal in an apartment Jaynes rented under an alias, the name of a young man killed in 1987 by a drunk driver. On the 10th anniversary, to the day, of that sorrowful event, a family got to relive its grief when news reports linked their dead son with these two monsters.

It could not be more horrific. That’s why, when the mother, Barbara Curley, swears Jeffrey’s death will not be in vain — “He is going to stand for something,” she vows — lawmakers must make it so.

Already, Massachusetts legislators are on the move. A bill to make even an unsuccessful attempt to lure a child into a car good for up to five years in prison has been kicked around for years and gone nowhere. Now, no one wants to get in its way, not even the Massachusetts Civil Liberties Union. A languishing plan to beef up school programs on avoiding abduction to a level comparable with drug-resistance and safe-sex efforts languishes no more. Even a proposal to chemically castrate convicted sex offenders, once a State House laughingstock, now is getting a serious look by legislative leadership.

Maine, similarly, must not miss this opportunity to better protect its children. A bill, modelled after Kansas’ sexual predator law was in the hopper last spring. But, with the Kansas law facing a Supreme Court test, lead sponsor Rep. Debra Plowman of Hampden withdrew it and held it over for the 1998 session.

The High Court since has upheld Kansas’ right to keep sexual predators locked up after they serve their sentences if medical professionals deem them still to be a threat. Maine legislators should put Plowman’s bill at the top of the agenda when they convene in January, along with a package of measures similar to that taking shape in Massachusetts. Nothing is more important.

Action at the federal level is needed as well. In the car Sicari and Jaynes used to commit their crime, police found literature from the North American Man/Boy Love Association. Here’s what NAMBLA, easily accessible on the World Wide Web, claims to be: A political, civil rights and educational organization dedicated to ending society’s oppression of men and boys who wish to have consensual sex.

Here’s what NAMBLA really is: a cover for a group of sexual predators seeking to legitimize the rape of children. The awesome federal arsenal of criminal, tax, communications and interstate commerce laws have brought down such repugnant groups before — the Ku Klux Klan being a worthy example — and NAMBLA richly deserves the same attention.

Today, the bridge from which Sacari and Jaynes tossed their heartbreaking plastic tub into the Great Works is a shrine covered in flowers, toys and letters, gifts from thousands to a 10-year-old boy they never knew. Someday, probably soon, the pilgrimage will stop. Then it will be up to lawmakers to build a memorial to Jeffrey Curley that will last.