In the USA two pressure groups are seeking to get their respective State Governments, Pennsylvania and New York City, to scrap their poorly designed versions of mandatory reporting of ‘child abuse’.

We sympathise, with the significant exception of Mandatory Reporting of known and suspected child sexual abuse, on reasonable grounds. Mandatory reporting for CSA has not been revoked in any jurisdiction in the world, indeed many jurisdictions have strengthened and extended the law to more professionals, Switzerland being just one; Western Australia is another even more recent example. Data and empirical evidence demonstrate MR of child sexual abuse by prescribed professionals is a vital component of functioning safeguarding for institutional settings (known in the UK as ‘Regulated Activities’). These key personnel also have a vitally important ‘sentinel’ role of safeguarding children who may be abused in the family or elsewhere.

Here are two articles featuring the campaigns of both US jurisdictions.

Click on the headlines to read the articles.

Here is MR law for both Pennsylvania and NYC

Prescribed personnel are mandated to report the following:

Pennsylvania: 

The definition of ‘child abuse’ covers a very significant range of child abuses including :

  • Causing bodily injury to a child through any recent act or failure to act;
  • Fabricating, feigning or intentionally exaggerating or inducing a medical system or disease which results in a potentially harmful medical evaluation or treatment to the child through any recent act;
  • Causing or substantially contributing to serious mental injury to a child through any act or failure to act or a series of such acts or failures to act; Causing sexual abuse or exploitation of a child through any act or failure to act;
  • Creating a reasonable likelihood of bodily injury to a child through any recent act or failure to act; Causing serious physical neglect of a child;
  • Engaging in any of the following recent acts: Kicking, biting, throwing, burning, stabbing or cutting a child in a manner that endangers the child;
  • Unreasonably restraining or confining a child, based on consideration of the method, location or the duration of the restraint or confinement;

Hereafter the significant list of reasons that trigger a mandated reporter to report reasonable cause continues – see the link to the law.

NYC

The design of the NYC legislation differs from PA in several ways.

The definition of ‘child abuse’ also covers a significant range of child abuses including:

“Child abuse” means intentionally, knowingly or recklessly doing any of the following:

  • Causing bodily injury to a child through any recent act or failure to act;
  • Fabricating, feigning or intentionally exaggerating or inducing a medical system or disease which results in a potentially harmful medical evaluation or treatment to the child through any recent act;
  • Causing or substantially contributing to serious mental injury to a child through any act or failure to act or a series of such acts or failures to act;
  • Causing sexual abuse or exploitation of a child through any act or failure to act;
  • Creating a reasonable likelihood of bodily injury to a child through any recent act or failure to act;
  • Causing serious physical neglect of a child;
  • Engaging in any of the following recent acts:
  • Kicking, biting, throwing, burning, stabbing or cutting a child in a manner that endangers the child;
  • Unreasonably restraining or confining a child, based on consideration of the method, location or the duration of the restraint or confinement;
  • Forcefully shaking a child under one year of age;
  • Forcefully slapping or otherwise striking a child under one year of age;
  • Interfering with the breathing of a child;
  • Causing a child to be present in a location while a violation of a criminal statute relating to operation of a methamphetamine laboratory is occurring, provided that the violation is being investigated by law enforcement;
  • Leaving a child unsupervised with an individual, other than the child’s parent, who the actor knows or reasonably should have known:
  • Is required to register as a Tier II or Tier III sexual offender under 42 Pa.C.S. Chapter 97 Subchapter H where the victim of sexual offense was under 18 years of age when the crime was committed;
  • Has been determined to be a sexually violent predator under 42 Pa.C.S. Section 9799.24 (relating to assessments) or any of its predecessors;

or

  • Has been determined to be a sexually violent delinquent child as defined in 42 Pa.C.S. Section 9799.12 (relating to definitions);
  • Has been determined to be a sexually violent predator under 42 Pa.C.S. § 9799.58 (relating to assessments) or has to register for life under 42 Pa.C.S. § 9799.55(b) (relating to registration).
  • Causing the death of the child through any act or failure to act; or
  • Engaging a child in a severe form of trafficking in persons or sex trafficking, as those terms are defined under the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000;
  • “Severe form of trafficking in persons” is defined in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 as follows: (1) sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age; or (B) the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery.
  • “Sex trafficking” is defined in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 as follows:
  • the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a person for the purposes of a commercial sex act.

NYC law provides further definitions for “Abused child,” “Child”, “Maltreated Child” and “Neglected Child” as you can read in the link.

In contrast to both these jurisdictions and many others in the USA, Mandate Now seeks to mandate prescribed UK professionals to report only known or suspected child sexual abuse. We are not proposing the reporting of any other form of abuse be mandated. See highlighted section of Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson’s Bill which is live in Parliament (March 2023). 

Understandably the two US pressure groups are concerned that MR laws discriminate against minorities and families in poverty. MR laws that extend beyond CSA, such as those in PA and NYC, often become discriminatory and are frequently weaponised. Anecdotally, in the UK, the most common reason of referral by a Regulated Activity against a staff member for example, is alleged physical assault i.e., a kick, slap or punch. Most of these are unsubstantiated – see (DfE 194-RR192 March 2012 – page 2 and footer note 2). In both PA and NYC these are mandated reports which are also frequently found to be without foundation. But turning up at school without a packed lunch, or looking unkempt are also mandated referrals.

As a result of these ‘fine mesh’ versions of mandatory reporting in PA, NYC and other jurisdictions in the USA, child protection services become close to overwhelmed as both articles reveal. Such referrals can so often be the cause family breakdown. Being mandated to report so many forms of abuse including neglect tends to prompt over-reporting because law demands a report is made on specified grounds. In part, over-reporting protects the mandated reporter from a potential sanction for failing to refer.

Extract from the NYC article:

Nationwide, more than half of Black children experience a child welfare investigation before they turn 18, compared to 28% of white children and 37% of children overall. Affected families say the process — which often involves intrusive questions, refrigerator probes and strip searches of children — casts a far-reaching mental health and legal shadow even when the allegations prove false. Several rally attendees said they had been subjected to such investigations in their youth, as parents or both

Following the ‘strengthening’ of the law in PA in 2014 and its extension to many more prescribed professionals stemming from the Sandusky scandal (child sexual abuse in sport) this was said:

 

Today, Pennsylvania says ‘No more’ to child abuse,” then-Gov. Tom Corbett declared as he signed the legislation into law in 2014.

A flood of unfounded reports followed overwhelming state and local child protection agencies. The vast expansion of the child protection dragnet ensnared tens of thousands of innocent parents, disproportionately affecting families of color living in poverty. While the unintended and costly consequences are clear, there’s no proof that the reforms have prevented the most serious abuse cases, an NBC News and ProPublica investigation found.

There are also nineteen States in North America with very similar range of abuses that are mandated to be reported not just by prescribed professionals, but by all society. The adverse impact of ‘fine mesh’ MR in these jurisdictions is as you might expect.

Mandatory reporting of ‘child abuse’ in such broad terms, is often misused in divorce cases to take revenge on partners, neighbour and neighbourhood disputes and any number of other misuses. It often results is familial dysfunction and disrupted childhoods.

We agree with aspects of the campaigns, but we would urge both pressure groups to make no attempt to scrap MR of suspected and known child sexual abuse. That would put both jurisdictions on the wrong side of safeguarding altogether.

Poorly designed MR like those featured in this article have provided our government the excuse to reject well-designed MR for the last 13 years. But perhaps, the real reason for its rejection is ideological. We have written about it here : Ideology stops government introducing well-designed Mandatory Reporting