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Sunday, January 22, 2012

Courts - “We let it go too easily to say we need total confidentiality to help the kids,” he said. “I really disagree with that. I think transparency protects the kids.”

A Dec. 2, 2011 Louisville Courier Journal story by Deborah Yetter was headed "Courts - "Kentucky officials agree to produce records in fatal child abuse, neglect cases"." Hre again are some quotes:

FRANKFORT, KY. — Kentucky officials said Wednesday they will begin work immediately to release files of child-protection cases involving deaths or serious injury from neglect or abuse — potentially ending their protracted legal battle over public access to the records.

“They will be produced,” Christina Heavrin, general counsel for the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, said at a court hearing before Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd. “That’s our directive.”

Jon Fleischaker, a lawyer for The Courier-Journal, said that the cabinet’s position is encouraging, but he wants to see how officials follow through with the pledge to begin reviewing and releasing documents of about 180 child-protection cases from 2009 and 2010. * * *

[Judge] Shepherd has ruled three times in the past 18 months that such material must be released under the state open records law — twice in lawsuits brought by The Courier-Journal and the Herald-Leader and most recently in a case brought by the Todd County Standard. * * *

The cabinet also backed off of Tuesday’s motion to heavily redact, or remove, certain information from the records that it deemed confidential. Heavrin said the cabinet will withhold only limited information — such as Social Security numbers and other personal information — and will supply the newspapers with a list describing any such information.

Shepherd advised the cabinet to limit redactions, saying he found little that should remain confidential in his review of two case files in which children died and which he ordered to be released. * * *

“If a record is produced with heavy redactions, I think you all can expect to be back here and we will review that,” Shepherd said.

Well, they were back, last week. Yetter has a story dated Jan. 20, 2012, headed "Judge fines state over child-abuse records, orders legal fees paid to newspapers: Cabinet ordered to pay legal fees after withholding public records." Some quotes:
FRANKFORT, KY. — In a sharply critical decision, a judge has ordered a state agency to pay $16,550 in fines and $56,663 in legal costs to three newspapers for illegally withholding public records involving child-abuse deaths and serious injuries.

Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd also rejected efforts by the Cabinet for Health and Family Services to heavily redact, or remove, information from such documents. He said the cabinet was continuing its “efforts to blanket the operation of the child welfare system under a veil of secrecy.”

“Past experience has demonstrated that the cabinet will apply any privacy exception in the broadest possible manner, giving rise to an inevitable protracted court battle for anyone who seeks to discover the facts surrounding a child fatality or near fatality,” Shepherd said in a ruling issued Thursday. * * *

Jon Fleischaker, a lawyer for The Courier-Journal, said Shepherd has ruled three times in the past two years that the cabinet must disclose information in cases in which a child dies or is seriously injured from abuse and social service officials had prior involvement with the family.

In a separate story, also dated Jan. 20th, Mike Wynn of the LCJ reports:
LEXINGTON, KY. — A state health official argued for privacy in child abuse records Friday, describing it as cornerstone of social work, while representatives from the media called for more transparency to protect children.

The panel discussion — part of the Kentucky Press Association’s winter convention — marked the first open exchange between parties in a two-year legal battle to disclose child-abuse files under the state’s open records law. * * *

But for nearly an hour and a half, Teresa James, acting commissioner of the Department of Community Based Services, defended a state health cabinet’s decision and said case files can often follow families for generations, chronicling intimate and painful details about victims and others peripheral to the case.

“Just as passionate as you are about first amendment rights, I am equally, as a social worker, passionate about people’s confidentiality and right to privacy,” she told the room of about 35 newspaper publishers, editors and journalists.

Another panelist, Jon Fleischaker, an open records expert and attorney for The Courier-Journal, challenged James in the matter.

Fleischaker said the concept of privacy has grown too expansive over the past two decades, and now encompasses any information that people want to hide regardless of whether it fits the traditional definition.

“We let it go too easily to say we need total confidentiality to help the kids,” he said. “I really disagree with that. I think transparency protects the kids.” * * *

Deborah Yetter, a Courier-Journal reporter who wrote about that case and spoke on Friday’s panel, said details in the Dye file played an essential role in attracting public attention to the issue.

“The average Kentuckian … does not have any kind of grasp of the depth and complexity and poverty and misery of these lives and how this cycle has gone on and on,” she said. “That’s why I think it is so important to get the whole file and the complete picture and force readers to see what is going on.”

Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 22, 2012 12:49 PM
Posted to Indiana Courts