Under Pennsylvania law,
a mandated reporter does have to report outside the university, specifically, to "the department," i.e. the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, initially through its delegate the "appropriate county agency." From other reading, I believe reports of child abuse are appropriately made to the Bureau of Child Welfare.
Did you check the section I mentioned about reporting within institutions because what you are suggesting goes against both the Hunt Hayes piece and the training that teachers receive in PA. I know this for fact for the two local school districts.
This is the section I mean: Under Pennsylvania law, 23 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 6311 creates a duty to report suspected child abuse, including sexual abuse. That law, however, applies only to people who come into contact with children in the course of employment, and it applies only to children under the care or supervision of the organization with which that person is affiliated. When staff members at an institution have a legal duty to report under the statute, they fully discharge that duty upon notifying the person in charge of the institution. At that point, the person in charge assumes the legal duty to report the suspected abuse to Child Protective Services.
More difficult is the question whether someone like McQ was a mandated reporter.
True. In an institutional setting, the law specifically covers administrators and teachers, but not coaches.
A strange idea, if that applies at the local educational level don't you think. Moreover, with someone like McQ, the
"comes into contact with children" part is problematical (regularly? on occasion? as part of his regular duties?).
Plus there is the outside of professional duties aspect of the law, too.
McQ's status as first reporter at the bottom of a chain of command may have to be hashed out if the transferred reporting responsibility to administrators like Curley and Schultz is to hold up. Certainly their defense will claim that the applicability of the statute was tainted at the first rung on the reporting ladder.
A technicality? Sure.
Technicalities are a way of life in the law. But the defense team won't be invoking the spirit of the statute. They'll be looking for any loophole they can find.
Absolutely. If their esteemed clients lied their butts off under penalty of perjury, they'll be headed for the slammer anyway. But the bigger picture for child safety is that the narrowness and vagueness of the mandated reporting statute should be addressed by reform legislation in Pennsylvania. And I trust reform efforts will be undertaken in other states as well as a result of this case.
Let us hope so.
Of course,
non-mandated reporters may make an outside report anyway. And someone should have done so regardless of legal niceties as to who is
mandated to report, don't you agree?
My concern about reporting only to the campus police, and I'm sure you share that concern, is that restricting the reports to such an avenue heads off the governmental/public involvement contemplated by the statute and can be a dead-end if the campus police are under the control of people intent on a cover-up.
Absolutely.
My preference would be to make report to both the State Police and the Department of Child Welfare or its local agency mandatory.
