Daniel Cameron vows coordinated, aggressive approach to child abuse prosecution in KY

Jan. 7--State Attorney General Daniel Cameron on Tuesday vowed to take an aggressive, coordinated approach to prosecuting Kentucky's child abuse cases and provide county and commonwealth attorneys with a formal guidebook to do the same.

"We really want to be a voice for the voiceless, and so today, part of that conversation was about how we can do a better job here in the Commonwealth of Kentucky in confronting the challenge of child abuse," Cameron said in a news conference, joined by other state and federal officials and child abuse prevention leaders.

Kentucky ranks highest in the nation for its rate of child abuse, said Cameron, who called it a "scourge that's plagued our communities for far too long. That has to stop, especially as we move into this new decade."

Part of mitigating the crisis, he said, requires improved coordination among entities charged with preventing, reporting, investigating and prosecuting cases of abuse. Cameron convened a round-table discussion prior to the news conference to begin that coordinated push. Those in attendance included Kentucky Youth Advocates Executive Director Terry Brooks; Russell Coleman, U.S. Attorney for Kentucky's western district; and Dr. Christina Howard, chief of the Division of Pediatric Forensic Medicine at Kentucky Children's Hospital.

Part of that discussion included "meaningful ways that the attorney general's office, from an enforcement side, can really, in a tangible way, better impact how we operate, enforce and prosecute these cases," Cameron said.

As Kentucky's top prosecutor, Cameron said his office would be releasing by August a "prosecutor's manual" for county and commonwealth attorneys on "how to look out for better ways to prosecute child abuse cases."

Cameron said he wants the state, generally, to more vigorously prosecute these cases, and that he's "building out" his office's special prosecutions unit to better assist local attorneys who ask for help.

Coleman said law enforcement, in handling these cases, has not "done as good a job collaborating across sectors, across jurisdictions, as we could have," calling it a "limiting factor to our efficacy."

Howard, as a child abuse pediatrician, said there are only advantages to a multi-disciplinary approach when investigating child abuse cases. She sits on the state's Child Fatality and Near Fatality External Review Panel, which is charged with annually investigating systematic failings in cases where Kentucky children are suspected to have been abused or nearly abused to death. Last year, more than two-thirds of the 54 children who died and 82 who nearly died had prior involvement with the state's child protective services.

These and other abuse cases cases were largely "preventable," Howard said.

"We have to have that communication, that partnership from social services, law enforcement, attorneys," to ensure all child abuse cases are "successfully prosecuted," she said. "Unfortunately, I think a lot of these cases are not successfully prosecuted, or they never reach the courtroom to begin with."

To improve overall accountability of child abuse from a policy perspective, Brooks announced more than a half dozen legislative proposals Kentucky Youth Advocates will pursue in the General Assembly's regular session, which began Tuesday.

KYA's proposals include eliminating the use of corporal punishment in schools, increasing statute of limitation time frames for misdemeanor physical and sexual abuse offenses, and raising the state's education and safety standards for homeschooling. That includes disallowing the homeschooling of children who've been issued a truancy summons.

KYA also wants the General Assembly to do away with the state's "clergy-penitent privilege exemption," a law granting child abuse reporting immunity to religious clergy who learn of an abuse allegation in an otherwise confidential pastoral conversation.

Eighteen states have explicit laws naming clergy as mandatory reporters, but Kentucky is not one of them, according to the Child Welfare Information Gateway.

Every person in Kentucky is a mandated reporter of suspected child abuse or neglect, meaning if you see what you believe is abuse, you're obligated to report it through the required state channels. Under current law, anyone who knowingly violates this mandate can be found guilty of a Class B misdemeanor crime on the first offense, a Class A misdemeanor on the second offense, and a felony on any subsequent offenses.

But the clergy-penitent privilege is an exception to this rule. It's similar to an attorney-client privilege in that an attorney is not required to disclose otherwise reportable information a client may report to them. Similarly, if something reportable, such as suspected child abuse, is shared in confession by a parishioner (the penitent) to a clergy member, or between two members of the clergy, it is not subject to the same reporting requirements.

A similar bill was pre-filed in December by Lexington Democratic Rep. Susan Westrom. Though the wording of her bill is not congregation specific, she confirmed in December that her aim is to stop abuse within the Roman Catholic Church by forcing clergy to be mandated reporters like everyone else. Her bill, as it's currently written, does not infringe on the setting of confession, but would force clergy to report child abuse.

It's unclear whether KYA's proposal, which doesn't yet have a legislative sponsor, would infringe on what's communicated in confession.

Shannon Moody, senior policy and advocacy director for KYA, said they want the bill wording "to be as strong as possible, that in any setting where abuse is disclosed, a faith leader would be required to report."

Brooks said the legislation might require "some nuances" as it relates to confession, "but we've received nothing but affirmation from faith leaders [who] believe it's appropriate that they're involved in stemming the tide of abuse and neglect."

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