Increasing Mandatory Reporting in the Wake of Penn State - A Time Not to Take Action

Numerous state and federal legislators have responded to the crimes committed at Penn State (rape, assault, facilitating, aiding and abetting, failing to report under current law, covering up) by introducing legislation to enlarge laws on mandatory reporting of child abuse, and/or to increase penalties for failure to report. They are, perhaps out of unfamiliarity with the legal systems involved, missing the target: mandatory reporting laws are intended primarily to protect children in their own families, and are most often used that way, to involved child protective services. Criminal actions should be dealt with by the criminal justice system.

I propose that the groups involved in these list serves, as well as other, join in issuing a public statement about mandatory reporting.

I propose the following statement:

Increasing Mandatory Reporting in the Wake of Penn State -
A Time Not to Take Action 
INCREASING MANDATORY REPORTING OF ALLEGED CHILD ABUSE AND NEGLECT WILL HARM CHILDREN

In the wake of the Penn State cases, there have been calls to increase the number of people required to report any suspicion of child abuse or neglect. Some proposals would make every American a mandated reporter. There are a series of problems with these proposals:

--More mandated reporting will further overload child protective services agencies. Even now, more than three-quarters of reports don't meet the minimal standards required for CPS workers to "substantiate" them. That means caseworkers spend three quarters of their time spinning their wheels. More mandated reporting will leave these workers even less time to find children in real danger.

--Mandated reporters, afraid of the penalties for failure to report, will call in more cases that are patently absurd, like the recent case in Florida in which an assistant principal - a mandated reporter - called in a report about two 12-year-olds kissing as "a possible sex crime" - and sheriff's deputies investigated. http://bit.ly/tiimfc

--A child abuse investigation is, in itself, a significant trauma for a child - particularly when it involves the kind of "visual inspection" required in physical abuse cases and the kind of intrusive medical examination required in cases of sexual abuse. More mandated reporting will force thousands more children to endure this trauma needlessly. Even non-physical investigations scare children and reduce their trust in their parents.

--Many experts who once favored expanded mandatory reporting have changed their minds. For example, Prof. David Finkelhor of the University of New Hampshire Crimes Against Children Research Center used to be a big booster of mandatory reporting. Here's what he told AP:

"Maybe it's better that people use discretion ... If everybody obeyed the letter of the law and reported a suspicion of abuse, the agencies would be completely overwhelmed with reports."

He's not alone. As far back as 1983, Dr. Eli Newberger of Children's Hospital in Boston, like Prof. Finkelhor, someone who once strongly supported ever-more mandated reporting, wrote that "had professionals, like me, known then what we know now, we would never have urged on Congress, federal and state officials broadened concepts of child abuse as the basis for reporting legislation."

And even Richard Gelles, an strong proponent of ASFA, who has suggested that only 20% to 30% of children taken from their parents should ever be returned home, says that more mandated reporting is a mistake: http://bit.ly/tGx0et

--There is no evidence-base for mandated reporting. In all the decades since these laws passed in every state, there have been no studies of their effectiveness. As a result, in 1998, the National Research Council recommended against expanding mandatory reporting to domestic violence.

--Eighteen states already require everyone to report child abuse. There is no evidence that children in these states are safer than children in the others.

All this is why, in this editorial: http://bsun.md/vuR5IP The Baltimore Sun urged caution on adding tougher penalties to Maryland's reporting laws. According to the Sun:

The threat of prosecution could inundate authorities with a flood of spurious reports that overwhelm investigators and make it even more difficult to identify those children who are truly in danger.

Given that two-thirds of abuse reports are ultimately found to be unsubstantiated, some child advocates argue that the last thing the system needs is for more people to report their suspicions just for the sake of making sure they are protected from criminal liability in case abuse is actually occurring. Moreover, abuse investigations are inherently traumatic for children. They often involve hours of intensive questioning about sensitive issues of sexuality, shame and guilt as well as intrusive physical examinations that frighten and humiliate suspected victims. The stress brought on by such procedures can leave lasting emotional and psychological scars even on children who turn out not to have suffered abuse.

Similarly, in this editorial: http://bit.ly/u2ae4w the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette warns that:

There is danger in broadening the reporting requirements, according to experts in the child abuse field. They warn that a vast expansion of who must report and to whom could swamp the child welfare system, raising the prospect that substantiated allegations could be neglected as workers attempt to respond to more cases, and it could subject more children to the rigors of an investigation unnecessarily.

David J. Lansner
Lansner Kubitschek Schaffer
325 Broadway Suite 201
New York, NY 10007
212-349-0900
www.lanskub.com dlansner@lanskub.com