November 18, 2009
Councilmember Phil Mendelson
Chairman, Committee on Public Safety & the Judiciary
1350 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, Suite 402
Washington, DC20004
RE: B18-344, Information Sharing to Improve Services for Children and Families Act of 2009
Dear Councilmember Mendelson:
On behalf of the DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence (The Coalition) and the undersigned organization, I write to share our feedback on the proposed Information Sharing to Improve Services for Children and Families Act of 2009.We appreciate what we believe to be the intent of the bill’s co-introducers: to enhance the ability for caring adults to be engaged in the protection of children’s welfare. However, we cannot support this overly broad legislationas it will seriously jeopardize the safety of juvenile and adult victims of relationship violence.
Existing Law Already Enables Providers to Share Information
The information sharing provisions of this legislation are duplicative and unnecessary. As testified to by the Children’s Law Center and the Public Defender Service, existing law already allows for the sharing of a juvenile’srecords with certain professionals. While we defer to our colleagues’ testimony on this point, we encourage you to referenceD.C. Official Code § 16-2331(b)(5) and (7), § 16-2332(b)(1)(D) and (E), and § 16-2333(b)(2) and (3).
The BillEndangersIndividuals the Legislation is Designed to Better Serve
Thebill authorizes anyone with a “professional interest” in the protection, welfare, treatment, or rehabilitation of the child to gain access to protected records. This would mean that everyone from a sportscoach ora member of the clergytoany person employed by the Council could access these records. As such, this will likely jeopardize victims’ safety and autonomy.
The use of children to gain information about victims of domestic violence is a common tactic used by batterers.[1]While the bill’s intent is to ensure that individuals who interact with juveniles have information to assist them in helping children, we must acknowledge the unfortunate reality that abusers are not confined to one segment of society. They include, in fact, the very sports coaches, teachers, and even government employees this bill authorizes to view a child’s records.
Consider this example:“Joe”,a middle school soccer coach,is contacted by a caseworker and told that one of his players, “Adam”, has been involved with DYRS. As the bill is drafted,Joe can access Adam’s records, which, among other things, will include the location of the child’s residence[2]. Joe is unaware that Adam and his mother are living in a secure, secret location, having fled Adam’s abusive father. Without knowing this, Adam’s father need only approach Joe concerned about his child and learn through him the address of their current residence.
Furthermore, the scope of the type of records to be shared is too broad. The disclosure of police records presents a serious safety risk for juvenile victims of relationship violence. The District has one of the highest rates of teen dating violence in the country, and great care must be taken to protect the safety of vulnerable juvenile victims.[3] Police records identify the location, date and time of offenses – and this information alone may lead to harm or retaliation at the hands of a batterer who uses the information to track the victim and/or who is angered by the fact that this offense becomes known to another in the community.
Passage of this Bill will have a Chilling Effect on Victims
The root word of “confidentiality” is “confidence” – victims who share confidential information with service providersneed to have confidence that their information will be kept confidential, as it is commonly understood. Confidentiality, privilege and privacy laws exist so that individuals can feel safe when seeking assistance. This proposal will profoundly discourage help-seeking for the vulnerable populations who need it most and will significantly undermine victims’ confidence in the system. Confidentiality should not be confused with “secrecy” – it is, in fact, a standard that protects and empowers victims of crime when they need support the most.
We Oppose the Reporting Requirement
First, a technical note: the bill requires the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) to produce quarterly reports. It is our understanding that, in fact, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) maintains statistics on juvenile arrests. While we oppose the reporting requirement for the reasons below, if it is retained, the legislation should be amended to require that the MPD, not the OAG, issue the required reports.
That said, we oppose the inclusion of a reporting requirement on the grounds of public safety. Many victims reside with their batterers at the time of the batterer’s arrest. Quarterly reports which include the arrests of juveniles by Police Service Area (PSA) may well, in a jurisdiction as small as the District,reveal the location of a victim of domestic violence. This may put victims at-risk. If any such reports are mandated, they should be limited to aggregate data.
For all of these reasons, we oppose passage of this legislation. Thank you for your continued leadership in working to protect juvenile and adult victims of relationship violence. Please do not hesitate to contact me or our Policy Director, Rebecca O’Connor (202.299.1181 x 102; ) with any questions you may have.
Sincerely,
Kenneth E. Noyes, Esq.
Executive Director
Break the Cycle
CC:Councilmember Yvette Alexander
Councilmember Muriel Bowser
Councilmember Mary Cheh
Councilmember Jack Evans
Juley Fulcher, Break the Cycle
AJ Pearlman, Break the Cycle
[1]Joan Meier, Domestic Violence, Child Custody and Child Protection:Understanding Judicial Resistance and Imagining the Solutions, 11 A.U. J. Gender, Social Policy & the Law 657 (2003),
[2]Although in the hearing for this bill, Councilmembers described their intent for information flow to be one-way, the bill as drafted does not reflect this.
[3] Department of Health & Human Services Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, “Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance-United States, 2005”, Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report, June 9, 2006, Vol. 55, No. SS-5.