Every incident report your organization files is a legal document, not potentially, not only if something goes wrong, but a legal document from the moment someone signs it. After three decades of advising youth-serving organizations through litigation, licensing investigations, and regulatory audits, I have seen more cases turn on the quality of an incident report…
How a youth organization responds to a parent complaint about staff can determine its legal exposure. Here is what the law requires.
Many youth organizations have discovered the hard way that their child protection policies had a critical gap: they addressed what adults must not do to children but said nothing about what happens when one child harms another. That gap is not a minor oversight. Research, shows that more than 70% of child sexual abuse is perpetrated…
A recent news story from Pennsylvania offers an object lesson about what happens when a youth organization forgets that abuse allegations are subject to mandated reporting laws rather than the usual disciplinary procedures. A vice-principal in Altoona has pleaded no contest to recklessly endangering another person and failure to report or refer suspected abuse. The…
A story from Southaven, Mississippi illustrates the importance of good training and policies in how to deal with a dilemma that youth organizations often face — when sexual activity between minors becomes a reportable event. The district attorney has charged a youth minister for failing to make a mandated report. According to the news story,…
A few weeks ago, a judge in Braxton, WV, sentenced Robin James for failing to act on a child’s disclosure. James received the maximum sentence of 4 to 40 years in prison for child neglect after admitting she made “no moves to protect” a minor in her care because she didn’t believe the child’s repeated…
Colorado’s new mandated reporting law highlights a critical question for youth-serving organizations: Do we require staff members to report their concerns internally or require them to go directly to child protection authorities? Until this year, Colorado allowed staff to take concerns to supervisors who in their turn were supposed to contact authorities. Because of concerns…
The Arizona Court of Appeals recently issued an opinion analyzing the intersection of Arizona’s clergy privilege with its mandated reporting law. Three minors brought suit against the Church of Latter-Day Saints and two church bishops, alleging that their father had confessed to the bishops that he had been sexually abusing his children and that, because…
A magistrate judge found a former director of a childcare center in Lynchburg, Virginia guilty of failing to report a staff member’s abuse of children at the center. What makes this an unusual story is that the police also charged three Board members with the same crime. The judge found those members innocent, but once…
North Dakota has changed its requirements for mandated reporting for teachers. As of last Friday, teachers now must have training only before initial licensing rather than every year. The standard training in that state appears to be relatively short and not particularly onerous. But short trainings, while better than nothing, rarely can do more than…