Jannay Towne
Reporter
February 28, 2011
WHO13
Schools, day cares, nursing homes, even churches check Iowa's Child Abuse Registry. "You want to make sure the people taking care of your kids are you know, well equipped to do that," says Cally Slauson, a mother of three.
An Iowa Supreme Court ruling has challenged the placement of thousands of people on the registry. "An example might be a drugged or drunk caretaker. Nothing bad happened, but if there had been an emergency, the caretaker wouldn't have been in a position to make decisions to keep the child safe," says DHS Spokesperson Roger Munns.
Half of the more than 51,000 people on the registry fall under the category of Denial of Critical Care Lack of Supervision. According to the Supreme Court, those people should not be listed. State lawmakers are considering changes to the law to keep those people on the state registry. That requires them to find the right balance between the safety of the child and the rights of the accused.
"If there is no change, then going forward the agency will not be permitted to place that category of abuse, those perpetrators on the registry and that's what needs to be fixed," says Munns.
While lawmakers debate that change, they are also considering more. "Who should be on it, why they should be on it, and for how long they should be on it and how they get off it if they're inappropriately placed on it," explains Rep. Joel Fry, an Osceola Republican who sits on the House Human Services Committee.
"We need to make sure that the people in our schools are the best quality people and don't have any background that we need to be concerned about," says Slauson.
The law requires people with founded cases of child abuse to stay on the registry for ten years. One of the proposed changes is to shorten that length to five years in some cases.
I had the idea that being listed was FOREVER, and I think in some states it IS. We know of cases where falsely accused people have fought for years to get off the list
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