Kentucky Releases Child Deaths by Abuse Report UPDATED

We started covering Kentucky’s coverup of abuse cases in early 2011. One of our first posts on the subject can be seen here.

Now “The Cabinet for Health and Family Services released its annual report on child abuse deaths a day before it is required by state law to submit the report to the state legislature.”

“The report notes that the number of deaths attributed to abuse or neglect in the fiscal year that ended June 30 could increase as pending investigations are finalized or new information about a death comes to light.

In its 2011 report, for example, the cabinet counted only 18 deaths as a result of abuse and neglect. The 2012 report lists 31 child abuse deaths for fiscal year 2011. There were 36 child abuse deaths in 2010; 29 in 2009; and 30 in 2008, according to the latest report.

Child advocates said a downward decline in the number of child abuse deaths is good news, but 22 deaths is still too many.

“We should all celebrate that trend-line while at the same time remembering that the death of a single child is still too many for us to ever tolerate,” said Terry Brooks, executive director of Kentucky Youth Advocates, a Louisville-based non-profit. “Secondly, given the cabinet’s track record of blatant disregard for legally required deadlines, the fact that the report was issued on time and in a comprehensive manner should be noted and commended.”

Jill Midkiff, a spokeswoman for the cabinet, said the cabinet was “very aware of the deadline and were determined to meet it.”

In addition to the number of children who died as a result of abuse or neglect, the report notes that 33 children were “nearly killed” or sustained life-threatening injuries as a result of abuse in the past year. Of the 55 children who were killed or nearly killed, child-protection workers had previous contact with the family in 30 of the cases.

In total, 15,699 Kentucky children were abused or neglected in 2012.

The number of reports of suspected child abuse or neglect continues to climb. In fiscal year 2012, there were 34,706 reports of child abuse and neglect, compared to 30,964 in 2008.

The number of reports that social workers substantiate as abuse and neglect is at a four-year high, the report shows. In 2012, 9,935 reports of abuse and neglect were substantiated, up from 9,595 in 2011. Many of those reports involve multiple children.

Over the past five years, there have been 386 deaths and near-deaths of children as a result of abuse. Of those cases, the cabinet had prior contact in 214 instances. The cabinet analyzed characteristics of the 214 children and found that the majority were white — 79 percent — and male — 57 percent.

The vast majority of perpetrators in the 214 cases were biological parents of the child. Mothers were perpetrators in 21 percent of cases, fathers were perpetrators in 17 percent of cases and both parents were culpable in 20 percent of cases. A parent’s boyfriend or girlfriend was listed as the perpetrator 10 percent of the time.

Brooks said the report shows that more still needs to be done to help Kentucky children.

“The real import of this report should be about next steps,” Brooks said. “What are we going to tackle in both policy and practice to ensure that every kid in Kentucky is protected from abuse and neglect?”

This year, Gov. Steve Beshear created an external panel of 17 experts to review all child deaths and near-deaths that stem from abuse or neglect. That panel — which has not met yet — is charged with examining such cases and making recommendations for policy changes and improvements.

In addition, Beshear proposed and the legislature approved additional money for more front-line social workers.

But Brooks said the legislature can make further improvements when it returns for the 2013 legislative session in January.”

Report: 22 Kentucky children died from abuse or neglect in the past year

[Kentucky.com 8/31/12 by Beth Musgrave]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

Update: “A bill allowing closer scrutiny of child abuse deaths by an independent panel cleared its first legislative hurdle Thursday despite objections from some that too much of the group’s work would be done in secret.

House Bill 290 would permanently establish an external review panel of 20 members to scrutinize deaths and critical injuries of abused and neglected children and make recommendations on how Kentucky’s child-protection system should be improved.

The bill would allow the panel to close portions of its meetings and withhold its records from the public, a sticking point with some lawmakers and several Kentucky media outlets.

The House Health and Welfare Committee voted 8-5 to send HB 290 to the full House. Two members did not vote.

The Kentucky Press Association, of which the Herald-Leader is a member, strongly objected to the bill, saying it exempted from public disclosure records that are already available to the public.

“We can get the records that this panel makes secret,” said Ashley Pack, a lawyer for the Kentucky Press Association.

Members of the external review panel, which Gov. Steve Beshear created on a temporary basis in July, told the legislative committee that they need access to complete, unredacted records, which the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services has refused to provide the review panel and the media.

Members of the panel also said they need the ability to discuss cases in secret so that members can speak freely as they determine fault.

The review board, which has met twice since July, has expressed frustration that the heavily redacted case files they have been provided are difficult to follow. Panel members also say they need additional information, such as police and mental health records, which the cabinet does not always collect and which is sometimes exempt from disclosure under the state’s Open Records Act.

“This panel is absolutely critical,” said Dr. Melissa Currie, a panel member and one of only two doctors in Kentucky who specializes in child abuse cases. “It’s one of the most powerful tools that we have to look at these cases critically.”

“The people on the panel have to be able to speak freely,” Currie said. “They have to be able to admit when mistakes are made.”

Pack said the law goes too far, making it almost impossible for anyone to determine if the group is doing its job thoroughly. More information must be readily available “so the public can evaluate how the review panel is doing,” Pack said.

Kentucky’s two largest newspapers and the Cabinet for Health and Family Services have been in a legal battle for more than three years over which records can be released when a child is killed or nearly killed as a result of abuse or neglect.

A judge has sided with the Herald-Leader and The Courier-Journal of Louisville twice and ordered the records released. The newspapers and the cabinet continue to disagree over what information can be removed from the files, an issue that is pending before the Kentucky Supreme Court.

State Rep. Robert Benvenuti, R-Lexington, a former inspector general for the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, released several scathing reports about the state’s child-protection system during his tenure.

“We have lost years and years because of the inability of the cabinet to embrace transparency,” said Benvenuti, who voted for the bill but said it needs more changes. “We can no longer put children at risk because we don’t want to be criticized.”

Democratic Rep. Tom Burch of Louisville, the sponsor of HB 290, said the panel will bring more transparency in the child-protection system. If there are problems with the bill, it can be tweaked in 2014, he said.

“This may be the best that we can get right now,” Burch said.

Rep. Bob DeWeese, R-Louisville, voted against HB 290, saying that information obtained by the media through the Open Records Act allowed the committee to determine what happened in key child abuse deaths.

“I still think it is protecting adults more than kids,” DeWeese said of HB 290.

House Speaker Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, said he, too, has concerns that HB 290 keeps too much information secret.

“I believe those records should be open,” Stumbo said. “I believe the only reason that they should remain sealed is if there is a criminal investigation. I personally believe that the attorney general’s office should review those cases.”

Senate Majority Leader Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown, said that the Senate Republican caucus has not discussed the legislation and that he could not say how it might fare in the upper chamber.”

Review panel for child abuse deaths advances despite worries about secrecy
[Kentucky.com 2/14/13 by Beth Musgrave]

Update 2: “Gov. Steve Beshear on Wednesday made permanent an independent review panel to examine child deaths and serious injuries from abuse and neglect.

At a Capitol ceremony, Beshear signed House Bill 290, which makes permanent a review panel that Beshear had created by executive order in July 2012. The panel will review case files of child fatalities and near-fatalities and make recommendations on how to improve the state’s child protection system. The legislature made some tweaks to the panel, including allowing the panel to have unredacted or edited state social worker case files and expanding the membership of the panel from 17 members to 20 members. The panel will meet quarterly. It will file annual reports outlining changes to the child protection system.”

Beshear signs into law child-death review panel, Lexington pension bill, and CentrePointe incentive

[Kentucky.com 3/20/13 by Beth Musgrave]

Update 3: “Lawyers for the state’s two largest newspapers grilled state officials Monday about why they refused to publicly release portions of more than 140 case files about children who were killed or critically injured as a result of abuse or neglect.

For example, lawyers questioned why the Cabinet for Health and Family Services had blotted out information on a news release from the Kentucky State Police about a criminal indictment of a foster parent, why it had removed the name of a parent who had been charged with a crime, and why the cabinet continued to withhold entire files long after criminal prosecutions of the cases were completed.

 

The more than six-hour hearing in Franklin Circuit Court was the latest in a more than three-year court battle waged by the Lexington Herald-Leader and The Courier-Journal of Louisville over what information must be released after a child dies or nearly dies as a result of abuse and neglect. The hearing continues Tuesday.

“If the information is public and publicly available, why is it private?” asked Jon Fleischaker, a lawyer for the Courier-Journal.

Dana Nickels, a policy adviser for the cabinet who oversees the process of removing information from the case files of social workers, testified Monday that the cabinet removed any information that could be viewed as private or that is required to remain confidential by federal and state laws. She cited juvenile court records, social security numbers, information about whether a person receives government benefits, and mental health records as examples.

“What the cabinet is trying to do is protect the safety of these families,” Nickels said.

Nickels acknowledged that some information, such as portions of a Kentucky State Police news release, should not have been redacted. But cabinet officials don’t always know what information is publicly available when they redact information from a file, she said.

Lawyers for the newspapers rejected that argument, saying cabinet officials should know not to remove pertinent information from case files that is publicly available elsewhere.

The Herald-Leader first sued the cabinet to get the case file of Kayden Branham, a 20-month-old Wayne County toddler who died in 2009 after drinking drain cleaner allegedly used in the production of methamphetamine. The newspapers then sued the cabinet in 2011 for access to about 140 case files of abused children from 2009 and 2010.

Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd ruled that the cabinet must release the records, declaring that the public has an overriding interest in knowing how the cabinet performed its job of protecting children. He also fined the cabinet $16,000 for improperly denying access to records.

Newspaper lawyers question state officials about child-abuse records

[Kentucky.com 7/29/13 by Beth Musgrave]

Update 4: “Angela Estep, a social worker with the Department of Community Based Services, testified that the file should also be kept confidential to spare Nathaniel’s father details of his son’s death.

“There are a lot of things that the father doesn’t know,” Estep testified, even if he can find some of them in news reports of Nathaniel’s death.

“We’re social workers and we’re not supposed to reveal it,” she said. “If someone else releases it, that’s on them. But I don’t think it’s the Cabinet’s job to release it.”

Estep and several other social workers from across the state testified before Judge Phillip Shepherd to explain why they believe information should remain confidential in the files of children who died or were seriously injured by abuse or neglect.”

Social workers testify abuse investigation details should stay secret

[Louisville Journal Courier 7/30/13 by Jessie Halladay]

“After more than three days of testimony, a Franklin Circuit Court judge said Wednesday that state lawyers still need to explain why they deleted key information from case files of abused kids who died or were critically injured.

Judge Phillip Shepherd told lawyers with the Cabinet for Health and Family Services that he expected more detailed explanations of why the cabinet decided to remove information from more than 140 social worker case files before releasing them publicly.

Among other things, the cabinet redacted the names of parents or caregivers who were charged in a child’s death and information from Kentucky State Police news releases.

The names of individuals charged with a crime are public record, Shepherd said. Removing them from the case files “could be interpreted as an effort to obstruct public access to information that should be available,” he said.

Lawyers for the cabinet and the state’s two largest newspapers — the Lexington Herald-Leader and The Courier-Journal of Louisville — must now submit briefs to Shepherd explaining why they believe certain information in the case files should be included or removed. Shepherd said he will then make a final ruling on what information can be released to the public.”

“Shepherd had also ruled that only limited information could be removed from the files, including the names of children who have been seriously injured but not killed, the names of minor siblings and other medical information. However, the cabinet redacted far more information than Shepherd instructed.

Information that was removed included names of nearly every adult interviewed in the cabinet’s investigation, addresses of the cabinet’s own offices, and all previous reports of abuse of neglect that were not substantiated by social workers.

Christina Heavrin, general counsel for the cabinet, said the cabinet employed several people to redact information from the case files. There may not have been consistency in those redactions because so many different people did them, she said.

She also acknowledged to Shepherd that the cabinet’s protocol for redacting information was not developed in consultation with the social workers and other staff who testified about the case files on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

Child-protection workers who testified at the hearing said they were concerned that releasing the names of perpetrators to the public would harm other children in the family. [How about protecting the public and other children? I guess that doesn’t matter]They also told Shepherd that much of social work is based on confidentiality.”

After 3-day hearing, judge wants more details about deletions to child abuse files

[Kentucky.com 7/31/13 by Beth Musgrave]

Update 5: “The state’s child-welfare agency continues a pattern of “willfully refusing” to release critical documents in cases of near-fatal and fatal abuse and neglect, and it should be penalized and ordered to comply, The Courier-Journal argued in a legal brief filed Friday.

The Cabinet for Health and Family Services was expected to dispute that picture in briefs due in Franklin Circuit Court by the end of business Friday. A cabinet spokeswoman said Friday afternoon she did not have the document available yet.

The Courier-Journal and the Lexington Herald-Leader have been battling to obtain cabinet records of cases in which children died or nearly died from abuse or neglect.

“For years, the Cabinet for Health and Family Services has willfully refused to comply with its obligations under the Open Records Act and numerous orders from this court,” Courier-Journal lawyers Jon Fleischaker and Michael Abate argued in a 48-page brief.

The Herald-Leader brief makes similar arguments, saying perpetrators of child abuse benefit from secrecy “while unwitting future employers, neighbors, romantic partners, etc., have no way of knowing of (their) violent history.”

While the cabinet has turned over thousands of documents related to scores of child deaths, it redacted such things as the names of perpetrators, even if their identities were known when convicted in open court or identified in police press releases.

“The cabinet’s process for complying with the Open Records Act and this court’s orders was a sham,” the Courier-Journal argued.

The newspapers also are asking Judge Phillip Shepherd to require the cabinet to pay the legal costs of the newspapers for having “willfully withheld” documents.

Shepherd had given the cabinet permission to redact — or delete — limited information in the records, such as Social Security numbers and the names of victims’ siblings.

But the cabinet at times deleted thousands of pages of what it deemed “unrelated” documents, including prior investigations by social-service workers into the same families where serious abuse later occurred. Some files were withheld entirely because of pending criminal-court cases, even though much of their information was already in court files.

Shielding such documents has no legal justification, the newspapers’ lawyers argued. The secrecy has the effect of “covering up, rather than fixing” problems in the state child-welfare system, the Courier-Journal brief said.

The newspapers cited in particular the case of a prematurely born Louisville infant, Rafe Calvert, who was found dead on an adult-sized pillow in his bassinet in 2010.

The cabinet had originally ruled his death to be a result of medical neglect by his parents, who had missed numerous medical appointments and stopped using supplemental oxygen for the baby without a doctor’s authorization.

The cabinet, however, reclassified that death as unrelated to neglect earlier this summer after reviewing a medical examiner’s report, which described the neglect as a complicating factor but did not give a cause of death.

By reclassifying the document, that would potentially shield the cabinet from having to release more documents in the case.

Cabinet officials’ depositions last month revealed that a social-service worker had visited the family three days before the death, but her report left questions about how thoroughly the cabinet investigated.

“One cannot help but wonder how many other cases of child fatality and near fatality occur each year that are not reported to anyone,” The Courier-Journal’s legal brief said.

The legal fight comes in the wake of a 2009 Courier-Journal investigation that found nearly 270 Kentucky children had died of abuse or neglect during the past decade — more than half in cases in which state officials knew of or suspected problems.”

Kentucky child-welfare agency accused of ‘willfully’ disobeying order to release abuse documents

[The Courier-Journal 9/14/13 by Peter Smith]