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	A Look at Missouri’s Requirements on Reporting Suspected Abuse By Mark Morris Kansas City Star October 14, 2011 http://www.kansascity.com/2011/10/14/3208358/a-look-at-missouris-requirements.html When Bishop Robert Finn and the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph were indicted Friday, the charge was unusual: Failure of mandated reporter to report. Here’s some help in understanding the charge: Q. Who has to report, and report what? A. Missouri’s child abuse hot line law requires a broad swath of professions to notify child welfare authorities when they have any evidence to suspect abuse or neglect. Enacted in 1975, the law is designed to scramble state social service workers to the scene of suspected abuse, in some cases within three hours of a call. Call-takers received almost 57,000 such reports last year, an increase of more than 10 percent from the previous year, according to the Missouri Department of Social Services. Teachers, doctors, jail guards, ministers and a host of others are covered by the mandatory reporting requirement. Q. What is the penalty for failing to report? A. Failing to report a reasonable suspicion of child abuse is a misdemeanor crime under Missouri law and punishable by a year in jail and a fine of $1,000. Q.Have there been previous cases? A. The most notable one in Missouri came in 2003 when Greene County prosecutors charged a 40-year-old nurse when she did not call the hot line after noticing bruises the size of fingertips along the spine of Dominic James, a 2-year-old who later was killed by his foster father. A judge threw out the reporting law, saying it was unconstitutionally vague. In 2004, however, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that the statute’s language — requiring a report when the professional “has reasonable cause to suspect” — was clear enough. Even with that victory, prosecutors ultimately dropped the case against the nurse. Still relatively rare, several other failure to report charges have been filed in Missouri and Kansas over the years, although most appeared to be smaller parts of much larger child abuses cases. In 1986, three workers at a Kansas City church school were charged with failing to report child abuse for not notifying authorities about 17 arm and leg fractures suffered the year before by six children enrolled in the school’s infant-care center. The state dismissed the charges in 1987, when the workers offered to testify against the woman who abused the children. A Jackson County judge sentenced Angela Melton in 1995 to a year in prison for failure to report child abuse in the death of her 5-year-old daughter, Angel Lea Hart. She also was convicted on a host of other related charges. In 1999, an Osage County, Kan., school principal was found not guilty of failure to report abuse after a 5-year-old girl came to school with a bruise on her cheek and scratch marks. Q. Have any clergy been charged? A. Those cases are even rarer. Utah prosecutors charged three Mormon bishops in 2000 with failing to report after hearing sex abuse allegations. Two of the bishops reached diversion agreements with prosecutors while charges against the third were dropped. Threatened with misdemeanor criminal charges for waiting several days to report a sex abuse allegation against one of his priests, Bishop Daniel Walsh of the Diocese of Santa Rosa in northern California opted in 2006 to enroll in a diversion counseling program. Sometimes a pending scandal can prompt legislation. In the midst of a sex abuse scandal touching the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston in 2002, the Massachusetts legislature passed legislation requiring clergy to report suspected child abuse cases. To reach Mark Morris, call 816-234-4310 or send email to mmorris@kcstar.com
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