State Agencies and Governmental Affairs - Senate and House
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Unknown speaker
0:00
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right, Chair sees a quorum. We're going to call this meeting the Senate House Joint State Agencies
Committee meeting to order. With that, I want to start off. we're going to recognize Representative Ladyman for a point of personal privilege.
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
4:01
Representative Ladyman, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm over here in the corner over here. I want to recognize the group that's with us today. We have the clinical instructor, Shana Meyer, and the students that are the occupational therapy students from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. So if you would, help me recognize the students that are here today. Y'all stand up. so are y'all getting punished
for something or are you just coming down
here to watch your state government in action because it's just
a fun thing to do the chair doesn't believe that but we're happy
to have you guys here either way thank you for being here all right the first up consider consideration of motion to authorize the uh special expenses incurred by this committee you have a motion got a motion in a second all in favor say aye opposed all right motion to approve may 22nd 2024 meeting minutes got a motion see a motion in a second all in favor say aye opposed like sign
all right minutes have been adopted uh i do want
to welcome everybody here today uh before we get started i don't want to say this that i don't think there's a person in this room that doesn't care about the well-being of this state's children and youth and these are you know you know difficult times i understand nothing's perfect but whether it's on the legislative end and that's you know dhs dcfs state police prosecutors anything i think the important thing is is that when the system fails the children it fails all of us and that human error is to be expected from
time to time, but with human error comes accountability, and I think that's what the citizens of the state of Arkansas want, is they don't want perfection, they want accountability. And so today I'm looking forward to a fruitful and productive meeting and conversation to look for areas in where we can get better at serving our state's most vulnerable population. And with that, I'll ask my co-chair, Representative Gassaway, if he has any comments. He is good. All right, so starting up, we're going to bring in prosecuting attorney David Etheridge from the 14th Judicial District. David, come
David Etheridge
Unverified
6:22
on up here. Full disclosure, members, I've known
Speaker 15
6:26
David for about 30 years. You better not have any old
David Etheridge
Unverified
6:36
photographs of me, David. Or stories. I do have a mother, and I do not need you to call
Speaker 16
6:41
her, David. All right, if you'll introduce yourself and your position for the record. My name is David Etheridge. I am the elected prosecuting attorney for the 14th Judicial District here in the state of Arkansas. Thank
you David. So Mr. Etheridge if just to start with if you would just wouldn't
mind walking this committee through about you know how
your office works with DCFS and and state police when it comes to you know you know you know cases against children or cases of where there's alleged maltreatment or abuse. My office will
Speaker 16
7:11
receive those reports in various forms and fashion. A great number of the times we receive those reports, they are coming from reports generated by the Department of Human Services or from the Department of Crimes Against Children Division of the Arkansas State Police. In addition, we will get those reports at
times from local law enforcement, whether that be city police, county police, all those individuals who are wanting to do a job to try to investigate issues that would have occurred relating
Speaker 24
7:37
to a child or to a child maltreatment allegation okay okay now there was a case there in in mountain home
in bachelor county that you and i are both well aware of and i understand that um that's an active case and so
there's plenty of details that we're not able to go into but if you can't give us the uh the 30 000 foot view of just a little bit of the ins and outs that happened there and how
your office was communicating uh with state police and dcfs during that time
Speaker 16
8:06
the particular case we're talking about is an active case. There are certain things we can speak about, and I will. That case came into our office as a result of an investigation by the officers in the Mountain Home Police Department who had done an outstanding job going out and trying to identify the situation. Based upon that investigation, it was identified there was a child that had been in a situation that they should not have been in. That resulted in us filing charges against the two individuals
who were responsible for this child's care, and as a result of that happening, we started investigating how we reached that point, and in doing so, we identified that this child in his situation had been made known to individuals within state agencies for at least 29 previous contacts, and we could not identify in those 29 previous contacts that there had been action taken that we felt like were appropriate to protect that child.
David Etheridge
Unverified
9:06
So, Mr. Etheridge, explain to me the process. So it was Mountain Home Police Department that did
the investigation. This young man and his guardians resided in the city limits there of Mountain Home. That is correct. So, you know, was it the 29th call to the maltreatment child abuse registry that, you know, elicited, you know, somebody from that end or reaching out to
Speaker 16
9:27
Mountain Home Police Department? That is not what happened here. Okay. this happened because there had been a complaint about issues taking place inside of that particular
location. And as a result of that, Mountain Home Police Department went out on a call and made the investigation and found what had taken place. And then we proceeded to do the investigation. I hate to say, Mountain Home Police Department did investigation backwards, trying to find out what history existed for the abuse of this particular individual. Thank you. Co-chair Gasway, do you
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
10:02
Mr. Chair. So, Prosecutor Etheridge, of course, you and I have also known
each other for quite some time as a former prosecutor myself. Can you
talk with us a little bit about the facts of the case that are in the public domain already? Because what I've heard, this was just horrendous. This was akin to torture. And I think, you know, for the public who may be unaware of the specific circumstances of this case it would be helpful again not asking you to disclose anything that would be confidential but at least what's in the public domain i think it would be helpful for the
Speaker 16
10:39
public to hear just how horrific this case is
absolutely the things that were in the public domain is based on again the investigation that was done by the officers of the mountain home police department and you're going to hear me say their name a lot because i am grateful for the work they did this would not have happened and gotten us to the place we were had they not done the work that was accomplished in this, and I want to make that very clear because I can't do what I do without them, and I'm grateful. In this particular case, we charged these individuals with 112 counts of false imprisonment for this child.
We had charged them with endangering welfare of a minor,
Speaker 24
11:16
permitting them use of a minor, and we have now amended the
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
11:24
charges to charge them also with kidnapping. So my understanding is, at least the facts that I've seen reported in the press, so I don't think that there's any secret here or confidentiality here, but that this child, and I can't remember the age, relatively young, was kept locked in a bathroom by a ratchet strap in the bathroom,
was only allowed to eat on school days, missed a lot of school, was severely or was maybe malnourished and small for his or her age. And there were, I think, some other facts that, once again, were really just horrific in my mind. So
Speaker 16
12:05
can you kind of expound upon that? The statements you have made are correct with the knowledge that we have of how his history transpired. We found that he had been engaged by these individuals, the two defendants in this case,
over a substantial period of time, giving him the same type of treatment or lack of treatment, was being malnourished, was not being fed. We found that he was not being allowed to go to school at times. He was being restrained within the room that we have charged him with for substantial periods of time. The best we can tell, the only place of relief this child had would have been when he went to school and was away from his home situation. And how old was the
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
12:49
child, and what was his relationship to the two adults who were charged in this case?
Speaker 16
12:54
The child I believe now is 14 years of age. At the time we got involved, he was younger than that, of course. He was a non-biological family member. These individuals, the one individual had a guardianship over this particular child. Thank
Chair
Unverified
13:12
you. Senator Clark, you're recognized for a
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
13:18
question. Okay, so, Mr. Etheridge, this is abuse, not neglect, correct?
Speaker 16
13:25
I'm not here to make that determination, Senator Clark, but if you're asking my opinion, yes, sir, it
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
13:29
is. Yeah, I'm asking your opinion. Yes, sir. What was the age when y'all got involved? When we
Speaker 16
13:38
became involved, he was 13 years of age, sir.
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
13:40
it's 13 and the there were complaints made before y'all got involved yes sir there were how far did that go back i
Speaker 16
13:53
don't know the exact time we know there have been 29 separate complaints
made across what i want i keep using the term north arkansas he at one time was located in northwest arkansas complaints were made there and then complaints were made when he moved to the baxter county area also sir so
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
14:08
complaints were made in a different community yes sir and then the community that where y'all found yes sir that's correct okay
all right that's all for now thank you senator clark and we'll have dcfs up here uh in a little bit uh to answer that question for you but i do believe that uh there were 29 um calls to the maltreatment abuse registry
then those stated back beginning in sometime 2013 um not sure about
Speaker 52
14:34
the exact timeline but i do believe we go back you know starting to sometime in 2013 okay
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
14:41
thank you i may have more questions for this witness after they come if that's okay mr he's not going anywhere all
Speaker 54
14:49
right senator hammer you're recognized for a question sir thank you mr chair and maybe this
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
14:55
uh might be appropriate to answer this question later let me lob it out there right now in your professional opinion having
looked at all the facts of the case without divulging anything that's going to jeopardize the ability to prosecute this case to the full extent do you see areas where you in your professional opinion think there were breakdowns in the system that you would care to speak to
Speaker 16
15:19
yes sir i do and that that's the reason probably that i'm sitting here at this table today is because I was concerned about what I saw had transpired for a child and I didn't want to happen again. And I don't mean to answer more than you're asking me, but I have to back up just a minute if
y'all will let me. I went back and looked at my notes in my office. January 30th of 2020, I got a phone call unrelated to this case about a homicide in Boone County, Arkansas that was committed by a juvenile on february 7th the following week i got another phone call about a juvenile and a homicide in boone county arkansas i don't get those phone calls where we live very often i want to say that at that time it was identified but both of these children are the children involved had been had
been in contact with the department and there had not been action taken to address this at that time in about end of february that same year i traveled to little rock i met with the then director of the department of human services this was just immediately prior to covid kicking in i remember vividly we had these same conversations and i was asked center hammer the same question you're asking me now did i think something had failed and my answer was i was really tired of having to go
look about children and murders I don't like that I don't want to avoid it so yes I think there was a breakdown I think we still have issues I don't want to say the department is not aware of that they've done steps and they're going to talk to y'all about that today to address it but yes sir I believe there was a breakdown that needs to be addressed sir would you care to
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
17:02
be specific as far as what you see as the breakdown I think and I don't have the
Speaker 16
17:08
answers I wish I said I could And I'll tell you, my wife told me last night you need to have an answer to that question, and I don't.
But I think there's got to be a better way to filter and identify when these type of complaints come in to ensure that this does not happen over and over. And I think there are methods at which that could happen to get the right people looking at those complaints, especially when you have multiple times about the same individual, about an issue taking place, In particular, when it's coming from teachers at the school who are the ones that, guys, we trust those folks to make good decisions. And when they're reaching out and saying there's a problem, we need to be looking at that.
Speaker 61
17:48
And I think we've got to involve people who are seeing it and making sure we don't
David Etheridge
Unverified
17:54
let this happen. Mr. Etheridge, I'm sorry, Senator Hammer, can you tell us, you just touched
on teachers, can you tell us who the folks are who are legally obligated reporters, they're mandated to report any suspected
Speaker 16
18:06
instances of abuse or maltreatment? As the teachers, that's a long list, but teachers and any education professional or paraprofessionals required to do so, health care providers, therapists, counselors, the list is longer than that, and I apologize for not knowing that list,
but those are the ones that jump out at you in particular are health care providers and educators. And I will say educators are concerned about this. They want to make sure this does not happen to the kids who are trying to help. Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Sarah Hammers, go ahead. Yeah, just
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
18:34
one more, and I'll get off. school resource officer do you know if they were on that list of those that had called in i believe a school
Speaker 16
18:42
resource officer at some point had called in i believe that was in northwest arkansas yes sir
Chair
Unverified
18:49
okay all right i'll stop thank you yes sir thank you senator all right representative
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
18:52
gazaway you're recognized thank you mr chair so in terms of the process i mean let's talk about kind of how this process generally works and then how it worked in this case when a prosecutor gets involved i mean i i seem to recall of course calls are made to the hotline and we're going to talk with dcfs about what happens once a call comes into the hotline and and state police crimes against children division how those are handled but i mean typically after a call is made a report is generated if there's some belief that a crime has occurred then arkansas state police crimes
Against Children Division generates a report, and that's sent to the prosecutor. So can you kind of describe generally how that process works, when your office gets involved, and then how it worked in this case? In a normal
Speaker 16
19:42
situation, what you've identified is what transpires. A report is made, comes in the hotline, that report is then filtered. Is it going to be a potentially criminal activity or is it going to be something that's just there needs to be some help in the family
that's what they're kind of looking at a report is in generated i got three this morning into my email box on individuals and of those three more than y'all want to know those three there was it was unsubstantiated they they had investigated the crimes against children division had gone out they'd done interviews and they looked and they did not find anything to support to move forward that is sent to me it's also sent to local law enforcement the the idea behind sending it to local law enforcement is are we having contact with the same person are we seeing this name
over and over is there something more we need to look at but then they look at that and make a decision from there if they find something that gives rise to potential prosecution then it's going to be brought to us okay here's what we see we're going to generate an affidavit for you to review to issue a criminal information to charge that person
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
20:50
with a crime. Okay, and so in this particular case, how did it work? I mean, I think one of the concerns is we've heard about all these multiple reports that happened since 2013. Calls that were made, calls made by mandated reporters.
Were they not generating those reports? You didn't get any of those reports, I take it. And so how did that process work in this particular case? In this particular
Speaker 69
21:15
situation, at the time we made the charge on this particular facts
Speaker 16
21:20
situation, we did not get that report. This came to us based upon an investigation that was done by the Mountain Home Police Department. Thank
Chair
Unverified
21:31
you. Thank you, Representative. Representative Rose, you're recognized.
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
21:38
Thank you, Mr. Etheridge, for being here
with us today. I had a couple of quick
questions, and I wanted to just get some clarification, too. And I think everybody feels a lot of different levels of frustration and outrage for this child, for the case, and for the system. If I understood it correctly, 29 reports filed against them over about 11 years.
Was this dealing with the same child? Do you know? Are you privy to that information? Yes, sir. All of those reports were closed, found to be unsubstantiated, and were not thoroughly investigated. Is that correct? Our
Speaker 16
22:27
position is there was never any action that was taken to allow to be prosecuted by someone and investigate to a point to allow for
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
22:37
prosecution yes sir. Now you don't have access to
a great number of things that would be helpful to your case and for justice for the child is that
Speaker 32
22:46
correct? I believe at this time we have what we need to prosecute this particular
Speaker 16
22:53
case but again based upon the work as I've said before by the police department this case they did a great job identifying the situation so we have the tools in our toolbox to move forward this case yes sir do you have everything
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
23:06
you would like to have there are some reports
Speaker 16
23:10
that we would still like i will say as we're sitting here today dhs has been very good now to allow me to have what we
need we're not i'm not crossed with
Speaker 24
23:19
them i don't want people to think that's where i'm at we we're able to get what we
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
23:25
need from them at this time i'm glad to hear that can you speak to at what point that began
Speaker 16
23:38
to work well for you with DHS? There is always tension between the Department of Human Services and what I have to do and that's not mean to say in a bad way but there is tension but by statute statutory authority that they
operate under they've got to do different things than what my obligation is to prosecute and there are times that we disagree with what should happen with people and how they should be placed back in homes and things of that nature. And again, they're bound by some law that that's what they have to do. And so that creates a tension, and we understand that. In this case, and I guess Senator Flippo, you may go ahead and talk about this a little bit. Right after this case happened, I met with the then director of the Department of Human Services
about what we needed, what we were seeing, and with Daniel Brightwell, counsel for DHS, who they were great, met with me, and we were moving the right direction. At some point in time, that path changed, and we had to go to a different direction, and I thank Senator Flippo and Representative Gassway for helping us get back on the right track with that. And I don't mean to belabor the subject,
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
24:45
but there was a point you were not being able to put your hands on the
information that you needed there were things that would have made my
job easier absolutely sir and at some point you crossed a threshold and it became a much more amicable process
Speaker 92
25:03
it's a very amicable process at this time and
Speaker 16
25:08
how recently did that happen it's in the it's in the fairly recent past yes sir okay so there's there's a letter that it that i assume will be introduced at some time
today addressing this issue that the members the letter from dcfs is
Speaker 16
25:20
including your packets there that that letters that letters in there representative rose i think it's that's that very clearly states and they've answered my questions in
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
25:27
that letter i will say that yes sir okay and i appreciate um
you have you have a lot of there's a lot
on the line in the work that you do and the relationships that you hold with agencies and so i respect uh kind of the careful line that we have to walk today i just hope that it wasn't all of a sudden a much more amicable process following something coming out in the news that is my
hope and that it was because they saw the right path to get you what
you needed. I think the the last thing I want to ask you feel like now you have the ability to prosecute to get justice for this child you now have everything that you need from everybody who we're talking
about today you have everything you need to do that correct? If there's something I believe that I do and I'll I
Speaker 16
26:26
will answer that further. I believe if I do not have it at this time, I believe I'll be able to reach out to the department
and they'll provide me what I need from them. If there is something of theirs
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
26:39
that I need at this time, yes, sir. Mr. Chairman, last question. I'll hop out. Due to failures across the board within the system, is it your judgment that this child
suffered unnecessarily over the course of 11 years? Yes,
sir. All right. Thank you. That's all. Thank
Chair
Unverified
26:59
you, Representative. Representative Richardson, you're recognized, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Speaker 41
27:05
I'm over here to your left. Thank you. Oh, you were further around. I
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
27:10
kept looking. You were here somewhere. I saw you earlier. I apologize. Well, thank you for being here. Yes, sir. My question is this. Out of the 20, whatever you said, 29, 22 times, do you know how many individuals touched that case, like caseworkers? Were there five or six, two or three? Do you know how many? I do not know the answer to that question, but
Speaker 24
27:28
I will tell you that it would be multiple individuals touch this case. Yes, sir. That's what I was afraid of.
Chair
Unverified
27:35
Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you, Representative. Representative
Representative RJ Hawk
Unverified
27:45
Hawk, you're recognized, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Rose kind of stole some of my thunder on this. So to be clear, I want to go back to the reporting phase. You've been doing this a long time. Have you ever run into a situation like this in any case where it's been hard to get information to move a case forward?
Speaker 16
28:07
This case is different. Have there been difficulties in the past? Yes. But this case was different. And I think this case is different, again, based on the number of times. For us to see that there's been failures in the past, we know that that's been seen. But
Representative RJ Hawk
Unverified
28:27
going to read a quote that was put out by a DHS spokesperson. It says, we've completed our review of the case and have informed the prosecutor. However, we have determined the details cannot be released publicly as initially intended due to the sensitivity of child maltreatment investigation.
Under Arkansas law, it requires everything to be confidential. What
Speaker 110
28:47
Arkansas law is being referred to in that statement? That's a broad brush. That's
Speaker 111
28:53
a terrible law term. I apologize. I get it. But
Speaker 16
28:57
when we start talking about juveniles, there's a large amount of information and data that we cannot release about juveniles. And it's anything from, I had a conversation this morning about a video with people's pictures. We have to, you know, fuzz their faces because you want to see them. Can't release their name, identifying marks.
When we file documents involving juveniles, we use, you know, this will say an individual versus a male child because somebody might figure it out. So there's a wide range of what we cannot release about juveniles. And I don't mean to be disrespectful to what you've read. I don't agree with that. I think there was ways to do that and still protect and allow it to be done. What Arkansas law says you could have released. I guess that's
Representative RJ Hawk
Unverified
29:40
kind of where I'm getting at is that I feel like if we're trying to do what's best for the child
and you've got a department doing an investigation and a prosecutor trying to get justice for the situation, That information, there's not a law that says we can't share that information to get justice. That is correct, sir. Thank
you. Thank you, Representative. All right, Senator Clark, you're recognized for a question, sir. Thank
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
30:09
you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Etheridge? Yes, sir. One of my colleagues a few weeks ago, several weeks
ago, sent me a news story that had to do with a prosecutor
uh who was trying to get information and tried i believe because i don't remember all the story exactly tried through foia and other means is this the is that
prosecutor you that would not be me sir that's a different case a different case yes sir okay
Chair
Unverified
30:34
thank you thank you senator all right representative gassetway you're recognized for a
question and so i want to be
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
30:43
clear um in terms of the report or reports that you were denied I mean, can
you give us some idea about, you know, you're trying to work this case,
you're trying to do what you need to do, and there are reports, information that you
Speaker 16
30:58
need access to that you were denied. What were those in this case? Information about the history, which we wanted to have, we were not getting in the manner we would normally get those. And
Speaker 24
31:07
I want to say, we've got that information now. I don't want to say that, but there was a
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
31:13
time when it was a little more difficult than it is now. Okay. And then I think this brings up a bigger point, and to Senator Clark's point, Is this part of kind of a broader systemic problem of DHS kind of hiding behind confidentiality
and not sharing information that needs to be shared, just
Speaker 24
31:33
in your opinion? I think there is a fear from the department about release
Speaker 16
31:38
of information, and I understand that. I think that that, to me, comes from not understanding the role of the prosecutor and the role the prosecutor has to seek justice. And because of that, we see things that are confidential and hidden all the time, and we understand the rules. And if we release something we're not supposed to, that's the prosecutor's mistake.
We're the ones who did it. And so I think, again, I think the department does not understand sometimes the role that we have, and that goes back to the tension we were talking about earlier that it's created, should not be created. We should work together on these cases in a way that we can work together on them. But to be clear, Senator
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
32:19
Clark referenced another case that he was aware of that was not you. You're
here today testifying about this particular case. That leads me to believe that this is a problem that goes
Speaker 24
32:31
beyond you in this specific case. I think there
Speaker 16
32:37
are things that could be done to make everybody understand how we need to share information that could be cleaner or to protect, if that's what the department is concerned about. And, again, it's not me throwing rocks at them. If that's the concern they have, there are safeguards to be put in place to protect that, you know, because, look, we're in juvenile court all the time, and we understand the rules there, and a lot of these rules are the same rules. And so there's adequate ways to protect that information, to give us information.
And what Senator Clark has said, it's the idea they try to get it through for you is concerning. That's the route they're having to go. I think there's better routes, easier routes that could take place to allow
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
33:16
to protect children. Yeah, well, that's a big problem, I think, if a prosecutor is having to try to use FOIA to get information that's relevant to one of their cases. You're a state actor. You're a state official. You're communicating with a state agency. I would think if there's not some exemption that would allow for that information to be shared for you to prepare your case,
then we may need to look at some statutory changes in the future to make sure that that's a much easier
Chair
Unverified
33:46
process. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you, Representative. Senator Hammer, you recognize your question,
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
33:50
sir. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So you said something a minute ago that kind of perked my interest, and you said the environment now is better. Am I characterizing what you said correctly? Yes, sir. You definitely are. Okay. Okay, so I'm just going to not try to tap dance around things.
So what you're telling me is you're getting along better with Tiffany and the current leadership of DHS now than you did under the previous leadership that this case occurred under the time frame of. Is that accurate?
Speaker 28
34:19
I want to characterize it as we're getting along fine at this time, and I don't mean to say we've not in the past at times, but there's not a
Speaker 16
34:28
friction between myself and the department in that regard right now, Senator. They are giving me what I want, and we're able to communicate, and I think they understand. Again, I want to give thanks to Representative Gassway and Senator
Speaker 28
34:38
Flippo for helping us out, get through those struggles.
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
34:41
Okay, so part of my concern would be then a change in personnel has improved the situation, but as far as the policies that should have been followed that were in place regardless of the personnel, what's different? Because if personnel changes, and it goes back to not so friendly working environment, the policies are the policies. I do not disagree with you. Let me jump in there, Mr.
Speaker 27
35:06
Etheridge. You know, Senator Hamer, if we
don't mind, we can save that for DCFS as far as any specific changes to any specific policies.
Speaker 132
35:16
I think they'd probably be best to speak to, you know, any specific internal policies that have
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
35:22
changed. Can I ask one last question? Of course. Thank you. So part of what I heard you saying, if I misheard you, you straightened me out, okay? Yes, sir. Part of what I heard you saying was that you felt that you should have been given things by DHS that because you didn't get those was actually obstructing your ability to do your job to bring prosecution. Is that correct or not? I want to
Speaker 24
35:45
make sure I say it the correct way.
It made it more difficult for us to
Speaker 16
35:50
move forward in this case because of that relationship. We've fixed that now, but there was a time where we felt like we were not getting the amount of cooperation we needed to have to prosecute this case. Do I think that was the death knell to what we were going to do in this case? Absolutely not, but I think it makes a difference for us to
Speaker 24
36:09
have all the tools in our toolbox, and we didn't have all the tools. That's a bad answer, but that
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
36:15
would be my answer to it. Yeah, because the answer I'm looking for is, did they or did they not obstruct your ability to carry out justice by withholding things that the law said you were supposed to give it to you?
Because if they did, and I'm not sure if that characterizes who's in the room or who's not in the room any longer, if they did, to me, I think that is the atrocity that needs to be focused on. And whether legally you can do anything about that, time will tell, I guess. that's that's all i got if you want to give an answer okay i don't want to use the
Speaker 32
36:48
term obstruct but i i will agree it was difficult sir and i'll tell you what we're at a point now where
i'm going to ask mr wright and ms mcdonald if you want to come up here and join mr ethridge because
when it gets to you know what information is is is allowed to be turned over to prosecution um or any specific internal policies uh with ecfs i think y'all be best equipped to answer these questions. So if y'all have a seat and introduce yourselves and your positions for the record. Hi,
Speaker 136
37:23
Lori McDonald, Chief of Staff, DHS. Good afternoon,
Speaker 138
37:27
Tiffany Wright, Director for the Division of Children and Family Services. Great, and
thank you both for being here. So, you know,
to dovetail on to Senator Hammer's question, what is the policy for DCFS when it comes to, releasing the findings of any investigation into an alleged case of abuse or maltreatment towards a
child. What are y'all's policies for that information being available to the prosecutor?
Speaker 143
37:53
DCFS can provide the information to the prosecuting attorney for the child maltreatment reports. Is there anything that could be
withheld that would be withheld? We
Speaker 145
38:06
with the prosecuting attorney's office. So what was the
Speaker 138
38:17
glitch in this specific case then? So my understanding is that local law enforcement at Mount Home PD actually made the records request for child maltreatment registry records through our privacy office, which is our procedure. So those records can be requested and then released through privacy through our central registry unit to the prosecuting attorney or law enforcement.
Chair
Unverified
38:38
And my understanding is those reports were released to
law enforcement. Do you have a time frame of when they were requested to when they were actually released? What's a general time frame for that process to take place from when those records might be requested, either
Speaker 149
38:57
from the local law enforcement doing the investigation or prosecutor's office? But what's a typical time frame? I don't want
Speaker 138
39:02
to speculate on a typical time frame. think it would depend
Speaker 150
39:06
on the case and the information being requested however I believe that these records were released in late November of 2024 okay
and then you know mr. Etheridge so do you got all the info all the case files that you needed approximately what date I do not know the exact date it was
Speaker 16
39:24
my understanding it was sometime in the first part of either the latter part of January or first part of February is what I'd understood. Okay. And I want to be clear. I'm not trying to say that that date is not correct what she's saying. Sometimes there is a flow time because you're asking for a lot of data. In this particular case, we asked for a lot of
data. I want to say that. Sure. Sure. And I think the, you know, Tiffany, Lori, one of y'all speak to this because i think a lot of the the concerns or frustrations amongst members and is why would it take so long to get that information you know to these respective offices whether it's a prosecutor's officer to local law enforcement um i understand that you know there's as mr ebster said earlier there's sometimes there's gonna be friction between
in agencies or um my colleagues in the house hate it when they see me as uh refer to the senate as the upper branch of government you know so there's you know there's there's and I say a little tongue in cheek but um a prosecutor is not the same as a public defender and so you understand that you know there can be a little tension sometimes but at the end of the day the citizens of Arkansas expect us all to collaboratively be working together to you know to address the challenges and Mr. Wright and Ms. McDonald I believe y'all are trying to do that Mr. Etheridge I believe you're trying to do that do you believe the system's perfect absolutely not because if it was we
wouldn't be here today. But at the end of the day, people deserve to see, you know, their government working collaboratively together. And especially in cases like this, where it is the absolutely most vulnerable amongst us, you know, to make sure that they are not suffering not a day longer. And so while I understand details are important, to a degree process is important. I know one of ladies that called into the maltreatment, you know, call line. And although I wasn't on the
other end listening to her call, I know her. And I can imagine the tone of her voice and the words that she was using to describe what she felt this young man was going through. And I think the frustration on my end, I don't think I know it, is that what person in DCFS or if it's, you know, whoever's meeting the call center, and that's under the, you know, direction of state police as I understand it um but at what point do we not just hear that this is sincerity in somebody's voice and we actually need to look into this because this is not somebody who's just
suspecting there might have been something to happen but we're not quite sure this lady knew things were going on and that it wasn't neglect it was abuse and I don't know how she knows that I have not asked her to get into details of the conversation she had with this young man but I know her I know her to be this kind of a person and this is the frustrating part is cutting through all this and realizing we're dealing with human beings and bureaucracy sometimes it gets in the way of things not sometimes oftentimes and i believe that's
this is one of those cases where bureaucracy kind of gets in the way and uh tiffany laurie you and i've had conversations offline prior to today's meeting and i believe those have been productive conversations and i want to acknowledge that publicly before those here today um that i believe they've been fruitful and that we are looking to push in the same direction but before we can know what needs to change we got to know what the what where the failures are and um so while i've got you all up here in your opinion where was the systematic breakdown here in our
Speaker 138
42:57
process so after the um one of the things that we did was bring together the dcfs team um that was still here or staff and leadership roles and really review information and so a part of that information that we saw that's also outlined in the letter that I wrote to prosecutor Etheridge was around history searches and having quality history searches and really looking at the information that is
provided and how we connect all of that information together and I think that also just being able to have more cross-collaboration and using our community partners through the multidisciplinary teams and just engaging and having extra set of stakeholders to participate could have been fruitful in the situation and those are things that were not
taking place with regards
Speaker 162
44:03
to this specific case i don't think that i can answer specific questions about
the investigation we're talking about the process there though i mean i'm not talking about any specifics about the case um
Speaker 138
44:17
just the process i think that in the process um we should have leaned more into our community partners our
Speaker 163
44:23
stakeholders experts across the community um working amongst the families and i want
to be very clear here because i do understand um not an attorney but i do understand that there are absolutely things that that you all nor prosecutor rethridge nor any
law enforcement entity investigating this case you know is a lot to discuss publicly um and unfortunately there's plenty of information certainly in mountain home baxter county about this some of the specifics of this case and it'll make you stomach turn but what we're talking about here today is the process the process worked or it didn't work and if the process didn't work then it is fully within the scope of this committee and I believe DCFS and DHS to speak to
Speaker 34
45:08
those specific instances all right representative Crawford put you in line for a
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
45:13
question thank you mr. chair I'm
up here and ladies you know I respect you greatly and I know that
this kind of has gotten kicked to you guys so as we ask our questions know that we we
do respect you I guess one of my questions would be to mr. Etheridge I'm not understanding exactly when you became
aware when you first became aware of the
Speaker 16
46:15
note I'll tell you pretty close ma'am. The initial report would have come into my office ma'am from
Speaker 24
46:20
law enforcement sometime around the first week in november of
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
46:24
2024 ma'am okay i'm trying
to think because we're talking 11 years what happened in those 11 years to where it only became aware to you in November of 24? Ma'am, that's
Speaker 16
46:46
the first time that my office had contact with anything concerning this individual.
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
46:56
Can you answer why? And I don't know. And
Speaker 69
47:05
that's a terrible answer. I hate to ever give that
Speaker 16
47:09
as a prosecutor, but I do not know. That's one of the reasons we're having some of the questions we have today is when we looked back and saw the history of this particular incident and this child, why there had been that many number of reports and yet there had been no action moving it forward beyond just someone seeing a report.
I don't know the answer to that question,
Speaker 24
47:31
but the first time the prosecutors in the 14th Judicial District had it was one that came in
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
47:39
to us through the Mountain Home Police Department. Okay, a couple more questions about some
things that you said. January 3rd, 2020, and I believe it
was February 7th, 2020, someone contacted you about juveniles who had committed murder, correct? Yes, ma'am. It's a totally separate matter.
Speaker 16
48:00
I brought that up just to discuss that this issue has been out
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
48:05
there. But it's in the same county, is
Speaker 16
48:07
that correct? I'm in Baxter. It's in my judicial district, yes, ma'am. I have four counties in my district. I have Baxter, Boone, Marion, and Newton. And this particular one we're speaking about today took place in Baxter. The two homicides I'm speaking about took place in Boone. Are they close? Yes, ma'am. They're within, it takes me,
Speaker 92
48:26
it's 47 minutes for me to drive from one to the other.
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
48:30
Yes, ma'am. Okay, all right. I think what I'm looking at here is trying to paint a picture of
that area where if 11 years abuse went on with a child and he couldn't get free from it, and then you have two separate juveniles who commit murder, My mind goes to, well, of course, if you have been abused for 11 years, and I know I'm mixing
the cases. Just follow me for a minute. Yes, ma'am. If you have been abused for 11 years and you get out on your own and feel like you have a little bit of control and that anger takes over, things like juvenile murder will happen so i guess in painting this
awful picture that arkansas should not have because we are an andy mayberry state right yes ma'am um
Speaker 175
49:43
how in the world is okay let me ask you this do you get to a direct question here i
got a lot of lot of people in the queue here and i want to make sure that we're not attributing you know you know this case with another so if we can speak to the specific you know to to to this current case i don't want it to there to be any illusions that um you know you know like this automatically is going to lead to you know to juveniles committing murder there's going to be kids that come from good homes that can do this um but as far as the process in this you know in this case or if mr
wants to speak to the process and the the two cases that he brought up with the homicides in boone county but let's
talk to the process as far as you know dcfs's role the prosecutor's role law enforcement's role
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
50:35
and any specific questions you have about that process i just believe that if we continue down this road that we will be here a lot
with a child who, after 11 years, has been harmed because of our state.
Chair
Unverified
50:51
Thank you, Representative. Representative Gassaway, then Senator Clark. Thank you, Mr.
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
50:56
Chair. So to follow up on Representative Crawford's question, I
mean, I think she tries to get to what I think is just the big point. Prosecutor Etheridge's office found out about this case November 2024. but prior to that there were 29 calls to the child abuse hotline or the DHS was made notified about of reports of abuse or neglect and the first time he ever heard about it was
November of 2024 and apparently there had never been as far as I can tell or I'm aware any substantiated report any effort to remove the child from the home any effort to conduct a criminal investigation and so i think the big question is why over the course of 11 years or however many years it was were 29 calls made and nothing ever
Speaker 138
51:56
happened and I think that um one is when the reports are accepted in the hotline we do conduct our
investigations and one of the things that we learned was that we did not have adequate history searches there's lack of documentation um and that we also were and I'm not making an excuse but giving you a picture of where the system was we were having significant amount of maltreatment reports that were overdue we were having significant turnover and just navigating all of those things and then multiple counties involved and so again this was where this
the whole system was not operating together okay very that's very helpful
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
52:44
because i made a list of all of those things. And
so I think what we have to do is, how do we address each one of those things? History searches, lack of documentation, the fact that you're overwhelmed with too many reports. Hard for me to read my own writing here. Significant turnover, multiple counties involved, so communication between counties, ensuring that you guys can keep a workforce where you're not
changing employees every other day, ensuring that you have sufficient staff so that you can handle the number of reports that you get, ensuring that you've got all the systems necessary to make all the documentation that you need to document when these reports come in, and then the ability to search the history. These all seem like solvable problems.
Speaker 138
53:34
So how do you respond to that? I would say that we've been, one of the things we've been doing as a state is rolling out structured decision making which leads to consistent safety decision making being solution
focused leads to more engagement both with the family but also relies on safeties of support and networks of support and so we implement we started implementing that in 2022 and three um and we're hopefully in the final stretch of that so it's a multiple um it's a big systems rollout um and so we started with the front door which would be that the hotline and we've been working through maltreatment reports um to our in-home and protective services cases and now
the last part of that is around um appropriate case planning um and reunification and doing those appropriate safety and risk assessments um also we are hoping that we'll see some outcomes around um the pay plan that we were able to receive in july and how that will impact our workforce in a positive way as well as um seeing the history searches in this situation we've
already started some work on how can we use our current system to do some level of notifications around history searches, like automatic, I don't know, something innovative that puts it more in the forefront of the workforce's face is probably not the right word to use, but in the face so that they know that it's there, some kind of trigger around that. We're also working on how we use the continued quality improvement contracts we have to continue to enhance how we're responding to families.
Also continuing our intensive in-home contract to keep kids safe and have those services available to children and families that need them. And continuing to navigate and work with our staff around critical incidents so we can learn from them and continue to expand and change and listen to systems issues that are happening whenever we have a critical incident. And then obviously continuing training, conversations.
The system is big, and sometimes you might hear what we pay attention to gets, you know, gets all the attention. And so how do you spread out the attention and be more specialized and have that work that's happening? And then obviously our relationships with the multidisciplinary teams across the state, as well as law enforcement and prosecutor's office to ensure kids are safe on all fronts of the system. Okay, thank you
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
56:24
very much. And that all sounds like good work and all things that can be improved upon.
I guess there are a lot of issues here. I mean, we could go over probably in detail each one of those things and how you're improving. And as you said, starting with the hotline, that's where most of these investigations start. Someone makes a call to the child abuse hotline, and it kind of proceeds from there. And I think there will be a lot more discussion about that, about how that process works, how decisions are made, what reports are generated, who receives those reports, et cetera.
I think that we'll probably get into that a little bit later. But, again, because there are so many issues here, setting that aside and going back to the issue of, in this specific case, working with Prosecutor Etheridge to get him the information that he needs, I would think as a prosecutor, if I'm preparing a case, number one, I need to know the history of these people that I've charged. I need to know if they've been involved in past incidents of abuse before. That's very important to my case because I may be able to admit evidence in that case that their prior conduct may be admissible to prove that they acted in conformity with it.
It may not be admissible for that purpose, but it may. And so as a prosecutor, I'm very interested in that. And then, too, as a prosecutor, I have an obligation to turn over to the defense any exculpatory information that may exist. And some of that may be found in these past reports. And, I mean, that's a good way as a prosecutor to get sued, to get in trouble with the bar for failing to disclose exculpatory information. I don't know if that exists or not unless I have access to these reports. I would think as a prosecutor I ought to be able to just pick up the phone. I don't remember how this worked when I did it.
It seemed to be kind of how we did it. But I could just pick up the phone and call someone at DHS and say, hey, I'm working on this case. I need all of this information. You guys would prepare it and send it to me. number one is that how this process works can't is it as simple as as prosecutor ethics picking up the phone and calling someone and saying hey i'm working on this case we have these two individuals charged i need this information and you guys get it to him number one if it is that simple i want to know the process there and then number two if it is that simple why did it happen like
Speaker 138
58:44
that in this case so i would say yes it is still that simple um and i would say as um dcfs if you were calling the local county worker office supervisor that they would they would be notifying our office of privacy that these were requested and then they handle the getting the records out the door, um, appropriately, um, and, and safely. Right. And so I don't, I, my understanding is
that the records were given to law enforcement. Um, and I don't know if, um, prosecutor Etheridge specifically called and asked for them, but my understanding is that they were all released to mountain home police department um so i i'm struggling to answer your question because um they both could have them but i'm unsure if he specifically called and asked for those
Speaker 147
59:40
records um or not on the on this case but i do know they were released to law enforcement
okay thank you very much but tiffany
as you said like they could be released to local law enforcement and to the prosecutor even if you've already given them to local law enforcement and I want to just expound upon you mentioned you know to make sure I forget the the you know the position but whoever you know you know you know receives these reports and then makes that determination you say you know release that information safely and appropriately what's that
Speaker 142
1:00:18
oh i i think they i please don't quote me on this uh but i think they're using like
Speaker 138
1:00:24
move it to move the records if they're emailing them not not snail mailing them that's what i mean okay okay great i thank you for the clarification not dumping them to a fax number like how do we make sure that the records are going where they
Speaker 16
1:00:37
need to be when we ask for records of that nature and of any type like that there's some safeguards we have to put in place to allow them be transmitted whether it be criminal histories things of that nature we have to not just send
them by again by snail mail or by fax they have to be encrypted and that's what she's speaking of and i'm going to go back to represent the gasways comment it would be best if we could pick up the phone and call one person and say this is who we want it from if you're asking me for an improvement that's an easy improvement for us if we had and i hate to pick on the crime lab they're not here But the crime lab has an individual that we go through all of our subpoenas for, all our information. That's who we reach out to when we need something.
I think the same thing being in place from the department in this case would be beneficial, that we know we reach out to whoever it is, make that request, whether it be through an electronic request or a direct phone call. That may help everybody, that we know who to ask for, who to get it from, and that person then has a relationship with the prosecutor's office for us to have that. okay
um senator clark you're recognized for questions sir thank you mr. chair the uh
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:01:49
tiffany yes sir uh this current case that we're
talking about is open right yes sir okay but with reports going back to 2013 were there cases that were opened
Speaker 198
1:02:12
and closed there was child maltreatment investigations yeah
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:02:18
there were child maltreatment investigations that were open and closed okay i wanted to be clear on that the mr etheridge and let me say i'm not
assuming that anybody's done anything uh that may uh may look like they have they may have uh there's a lot of questions that we can't get answers to today i think there's a lot more we could find out than not and it's not their fault uh than what we're getting to but uh mr etheridge i know that so far from this meeting i know that there's a child who we had lots of reports on for a long time that from what you've seen and probably from what they've seen at this point
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:03:11
i know that but what i don't know uh and let me tell you also what i know is there's a lot of political niceties and i get it if i was in your position i'd be doing exactly what you're doing whatever problems we had they're over they're done we're playing nice now and we don't want to say anything bad about anybody i get that uh but that's not conducive to solving problems uh so what did you
Speaker 16
1:03:41
ask for what did you ask for that you didn't get right away senator clark and i appreciate the way you phrase what you do you know we we have a lot of long relationship because a lot of times the session and so i'm going to be very blunt with my answer to you we were just asking for information about this particular child that was not coming to us as fast as we should get it. My problem in this case, and they know this, my problem in this case, and I'm going to be really blunt since you've asked me to be,
is the fact that I know that a kid was in this situation for 11 years and nothing happened. That's what stoked my frustration and my anger in all of this, and I don't want to get emotional in these things, but the fact that that took place and that kid lives where I live at, and that could happen in the state, as so rightly put, in Mayberry, that's not what I want to see happen. So there's where my anger is, if you want to know about it. I don't have the answers, and that's what bothered me,
that no one did anything to protect this child over the last 11 years. And so that's pretty blunt for me, and that's where my anger comes from. Do I have what I need? Absolutely. We're good. And I may have had some frustration, and I can live with that frustration. My frustration is the last 11 years for
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:05:05
this little boy, and I don't like that. Well, I want to get down possibly later to why we had a problem. And this particularly concerns me for different reasons, not from the community,
don't know the community, but my investigation in the Stanley case was 2015. I started here in 2013, 2015, and we've made a lot of things better, much better, and not just DCFS, but others. But at the same time, with us, at least in the background, with that investigation and others, that we still had this going on with this child.
And there is other venues, chairs, where we can look at this deeper behind closed doors. We do not need your permission or recommendation, but I'd like to see this committee today recommend that it go to that committee so that we can go deeper and get more into what came out, what happened and what we did wrong. That's why we exist.
and it's simply so that we can fix it. And we send a report to the governor or a report to the legislature at the end of every two years about what
we have found that needs to be changed, what we've found that needs
to be fixed. We don't get into details, but I think it ought to go there. And the... And I'm
also concerned, Tiffany, I mean, you can only answer for what you've been in charge of.
And you know that I like the past director. And I actually like the one before that who resigned. But it's like education. We go four, six years, and then we change what we're doing, and we start measuring all over again. And our measurements are getting better from that point, but they're not better than they were from way back when.
And, of course, we're always going to be changing people. Those things are always going to be happening. And so we're all concerned that any child is left in conditions like this. None of us. And so we've got to dig down, not hurting anybody, into how did we do it.
Speaker 138
1:07:53
That's right. Yes, I would agree. and we made us we made a step to do that um and um and saw some serious some of the things i've
talked about a high high level here today um and shared the you know shared that information in that prior
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:08:13
question and so and i'm what i'm fixing to say now is not to
inundate y'all with lots of phone calls but it may okay uh legislators with your permission mr chair you can get hold of dcfs and find out all the details they have to tell you anything about a case if you ask the questions so if you're confused about what happened and you'd like to know
you can find out you cannot share it right right any more than they can share it but behind closed doors you can find out so that you're not confused as to what happened because there's all kinds of things that could have happened uh when it comes to reports and case workers and and a case could have been closed legitimately we may find that somebody didn't do their job at all uh but but but you have to really look at it before you know and but like i said if you want to know uh a lot
new legislators especially don't know this and if you need help with what questions to ask I'll just call me I'll help you but they're very good about answering your questions they're very good about letting you know what's going on and so you don't have to be blind because from listening to this today I ain't learned much I've learned a little bit but if if you want to find out what really happened you can and if there's enough of you they may want to bring you all in at one time so they'll have to go over it.
But thank you, Chairs, for your indulgence, but I think it's important that our colleagues know that they can know what's going on
Chair
Unverified
1:09:56
in these cases. Yep. Thank you, Senator.
Representative Jason Nazarenko
Unverified
1:09:58
Thank you all. Representative Nazarenko, you are recognized, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Ms. Wright and Ms. McDonald, Mr. Etheridge, for being here. I appreciate it, and I appreciate the time we took Ms. McDonald and Ms. Wright with Senator Flippo and I. I appreciate that.
I know Ms. Dressridge was on the phone. And we all know that there's been a failure. We've talked about it. We've talked about it multiple times. We've talked about where the failures occurred, different things, and we've talked about you have mentioned different safeguards you've put in place and different things we can do to make sure that this doesn't happen again. My question is twofold. First, number one, with those safeguards in place, if I'm a concerned citizen or I'm a legislator that knows that I've got an issue in my area or I suspect there's a problem near me as a concerned citizen, what is the procedure right now?
Because I'm going to trust that that procedure is working because we want it to work for those children. And so what is the procedure right now that I should take if I'm a concerned citizen in order to report something? And then what should I
expect is going to happen behind the scenes? I think I'm going to answer it twofold because I
Speaker 138
1:11:16
think it depends. I think if you're a concerned citizen and you want to report child abuse or child neglect, you need to call the child abuse hotline.
Which is? We also have a mandated reporter. are you going to
Speaker 217
1:11:28
you want me to give you the number yes please oh i don't have the number memorized it's 1-800-482-5964 1-800-482-5964 or you can use
Speaker 218
1:11:38
the mandated watching that's why i want to i want to announce there's concerned citizens that are
Representative Jason Nazarenko
Unverified
1:11:44
out there watching they're very concerned about what's going on and
they may have something in their area so it's it's very important we get that out there
Speaker 138
1:11:53
yes um and then or or if they're a mandated reporter they
can use the mandated reporter um that they they just type in arkansas mandated reporter and it pops up and they can type in the information they don't have to make a phone call to the child abuse hotline um so then to answer the question if they're a concerned citizen they need to make a report they would make a report um and then depending upon um if the report is accepted or not it would be assigned to a specific agency crimes against children division or dcfs um and then at that point they could, they would be able to, they would hear from the assigned
investigator and be able to share further information about what they have reported. Does that answer the question? It does. When you said if it's accepted, what's the
Speaker 222
1:12:39
trigger for it to be accepted? So there has to be some
Speaker 138
1:12:43
child maltreatment, it has to meet the definition of the Child Maltreatment Act for what is defined as abuse or neglect. And that is a there's a whole lot of information in that but the hotline if they're on that they make the phone call the hotline will ask them questions as they share the narrative
Using the tool to make the decision around if it's accepted or not. Okay. Thank
Chair
Unverified
1:13:05
you very much. Thank you. Mr. Chair Thank you representative center hammer. You're recognized for a question,
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:13:12
sir. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I just feel It may turn out good may turn out bad. I don't know but I really do feel mr. Etheridge that you've alluded that past difficulties have been experienced in your opinion as far as why you had difficulty getting information IDHS that wasn't with either of the two ladies sitting at the table next year is that
correct that's absolutely correct sir okay I think that's fair to them yes we know that these two ladies at the table are not not what you refer who you're referring to that's number one and then number two I've been sitting here my phone going back and forth with somebody because about a year or so ago there was a situation in school in my district where multiple calls have been made over a two-year period by mandated reporters from the school with regards to drugs in the home, multiple arrests of people in the
home, boy getting shot with a BB gun, multiple calls with me and others. And so systemic problem of how many calls does it take before finally the decision is made to pull somebody from the home. So that's one thing I'd like to ask is criteria for making that determination because I know your field representatives are in a tough spot because you all want reunification, all the things we've been pushing for.
Tough spot, though, but you're here 29 times. So give a little education about that.
And Senator Hammer, before you all educate us on that, I'm going to have Carly go down there. And I'm going to ask for Lieutenant Colonel Aaron and Mr. Mack with Administrator for Crimes Against Children
David Etheridge
Unverified
1:14:47
Division hotline to come on up to the table. Because I just think given the conversation, it would be easier just to have all relevant parties here at the table. So Carly's going to bring
a chair up here. And if you all will get to the table and have a seat, if you introduce yourselves and tell us your position for the record, and then Senator Hammer, I will allow you to proceed.
Jason Aaron
Unverified
1:15:12
Thank you, sir. Thank you, Carly. All right, gentlemen. My name
Speaker 227
1:15:24
is Jason Aaron. I'm a lieutenant colonel of the state police. I supervise our crimes against children division, our highway patrol division, and our criminal
Speaker 231
1:15:34
investigation division. And I'm Dan Mack. I'm the Administrator of the Child Abuse Hotline of the Crimes Against
Speaker 15
1:15:39
Children Division. Thank you for being here, gentlemen. All right, Senator Hammer, please continue.
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:15:43
Tiffany, who wants to take the
Speaker 235
1:15:45
question? I can answer. I think the answer is when we're assigned a
Speaker 138
1:15:51
child maltreatment investigation, if DCFS is assigned and we're working it, removal is dependent upon both the assessment of the history, the current safety of the children and what's going on and so typically rising to the level of removal is around intimate danger that we can't mitigate through a safe safety planning and supports being in the home and so on your specific situation I know you can't tell me here
Speaker 237
1:16:19
but I would like to know who the family is to do some research and review around that
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:16:25
okay the so So based on your answer, I've got two, and I'll be short, Mr. Chair. Based on your answer, why was this child not removed sooner than later? Was it just a system failure, personnel failure? What would you identify then as the problem? Or you weren't privileged to it at the time, I
Speaker 138
1:16:47
guess, were you? Privileged to the Baxter County?
Yes. I would say I've reviewed the history, And so I would say that there was lack of documentation, lack of investigation, doing the investigation, as well as interviewing, appropriate interviews, and then all the other system pressures that I
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:17:13
you track or do you have the ability to track that when you get a, say, 10 or more calls on a particular child, just grabbing number 10,
what point does it get above the radar screen that you say, you know what, this is a lot of calls to one particular family that it gets above the radar screen so it doesn't lack
Speaker 138
1:17:39
for attention? I think that is one thing that we've seen that didn't happen, right? there was not extensive history search we weren't reviewing the history we weren't taking that all into consideration with the continued reports coming in from the hotline and being assigned for investigation and so that is one thing I have mentioned we are working on some kind of flag
system flag just for staff so it says like hey this is there's more than I think the number we landed on was five there's more five more than five reports on this family but we're still working through what that would look like and how we
Speaker 198
1:18:13
could change what are operating in our system around that history could you pull a current report now
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:18:20
with with the systems you have in place or is that not possible pull a current report like more than how many cases out there do you have right now
and maybe the gentleman can weigh in this how many how many how many cases you have out there right now where you've gotten ten calls on any one particular child
do you you don't have the systems in place right now to do that
Speaker 138
1:18:43
that's what you're working on developing our staff can search the history and review it right now like they can type in the name of the family and review all of the history but whatever we're talking about is how do we have some level of notification that's happening and I don't know if I can pull out of the system right now and say like the Smiths have five reports
for example I don't know if I I would have to ask
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:19:07
okay and circle back to you on that. Could we get the gentleman to weigh
Speaker 230
1:19:13
in on those questions, Mr. Chair, and I'm done. Thank you. Yeah, go ahead. Just real quick for the committee's sake, I know it gets kind of blurry between CACD and DHS, but just to be clear for the committee, the hotline is manned and operated by the Arkansas State Police Crimes Against Children Division, and that division is broken up between our hotline operators and our investigators. Dan Mack here, he is here as a supervisor of the hotline center, so most of these questions in this nature, I'm going to defer to
Speaker 231
1:19:36
Dan Mack in to piggyback kind of what with director Wright was saying we don't have a way to just pinpoint how many calls have been made at the hotline where because you've got so many mandated reporters it was earlier mentioned about teachers and educators you may have three or four educators from the same school make a report to the hotline because they're all mandated to make a report to the hotline about one child we may have three or four reports on that same child with the same report same allegations same offender so one of those would be accepted but maybe three of those
would not be accepted because they're all reporting the same thing and then those would be kind of hit so it's hard to say how many reports are stacked like that we don't have a way of filtering that in our system we can see that there's been entries but we don't know why they're unsubstantiated or why they're screened out or why they're accepted that they've had the very first when we're on the call with someone. Mr. Mack are
you aware of any other states whose call centers operate in a similar capacity where there are is like a centralized database so if a person has if an individual has
five reports to the child maltreatment abuse you know hotline. I don't know. Where it gets a centralized so you're not going through and having to you know reference that specific case number and pull that up and go through each one individually. Right we we
Speaker 231
1:20:52
don't per se but there are some states I know Missouri has their intake and then they also have what they call the team of searchers and they would be handed the information from the intake process and they would do the actual search through their database and they would gather all that information while the intake operators or intake workers would stay on the phones to keep gathering more information
so there are states that do that aspect
as well. Okay and then just for the benefit of the chair and then maybe other members of the committee. Can you briefly tell us why is it that the maltreatment abuse hotline is under the umbrella of state police and not DCFS because DCFS still has oversight of it, although it's state police that operates it. And I believe there was a
Speaker 132
1:21:35
court ruling years ago. So if you don't mind, just briefly walk us through why it's structured
Speaker 231
1:21:41
this way. In other words, a lawsuit that created the hotline that had the central intake unit years ago,
the maltreatment reports were called in to each individual county office to determine maltreatment. So the belief was to streamline it to make one central intake unit. And at first, the hotline was under DHS, and they were under there maybe, I don't know, five or six years, I don't know the number, but right about late '97 or so, it was deemed to create something for the hotline or for the state police to have the severe cases
be presented for prosecution and through the powers that be with legislation we were created the state police family protection unit was kind of created and it was later named crimes against children division to be more specific that we dealt specifically with children and it's been there the whole time i've been there it was there i think 97 98 when it transferred so
Speaker 250
1:22:34
y'all aren't just dealing with the worst the
worst you know you know cases but this is any you know in a case where there's allegations of abuse, neglect, or maltreatment with a child. Okay.
Speaker 138
1:22:50
to clarify, so that lawsuit was Angela R. It started in 1991. It ended in 2004, and my understanding, I'm not an attorney, but the 12-8 sections of law are all the codified agreements that came out
Speaker 198
1:23:05
of that Angela R. lawsuit. Okay. Thank you. Can you just briefly
walk us through the process? So somebody calls in, say a teacher, calls in, you know, she's
got students in her class, and she calls in to the hotline.
Walk us through the process of how, you know, on your end, once that call is received, you know, what does the process determine whether or not an investigation is warranted? Okay. So when they
Speaker 231
1:23:34
first call in, we're going to let them go ahead and have their speak of what they're saying. They pretty much say that they want to make a report, and we'll kind of walk them through it. The operator is going to gather the demographic information, particularly who the victim child or children are, are there any siblings in the home, who the caregivers might be, and then who's the alleged offender. And then we kind of want to ask them, tell us what's their reason for calling today, what's prompted you to make a report.
So we'll let them kind of just tell us the story of what they have. We want to determine who did what to whom, what happened, where did it occur, How did the offender have access to the child? Why did something occur to the child if it was out of anger or if it was an accident and so on? So based on that kind of questioning, we ask them specific things about what they're reporting. If they're reporting physical abuse to a child, we'll ask who the offender is. What is the relationship of that offender to that child? Was the offender in a caregiving role because parts of the law require that the offender must be a caregiver?
Where was the child struck? Does the child have any injuries from being struck? If so, can you describe and get in detail what those injuries look like, what it may have been caused by, and so on? Sometimes, depending on the age of the child, they really can't get a lot of information out of the child. Sometimes there may be deficiencies mentally or emotionally with the child, or if they're older children and they just don't want to give the information. So we'll try to discern what we can figure out as far as if it's abuse, if it's a neglect, if it's sexual abuse.
Director Wright mentioned the definitions that are laid out in the Child Maltreatment Act. We take their information and match it up to that, and if we can define it through the SDM, the Structured Decision-Making Tool, we can go ahead and accept a report for investigation. At that point, we can assign it to either DCFS or CACD, depending on the severity of the allegation, and then also through with our MOU of which agency will get the assigned report. Is there ever a time
where you refer the case to local law enforcement?
So this instance in Bastard County and Mountain Home, from my
David Etheridge
Unverified
1:25:41
understanding, that was referred to, and David, you can jump in here and correct me if I'm wrong, was that referred to, turned over to Mountain Home Police Department to investigate? Okay, David, why don't you? No, so this case
Speaker 69
1:25:52
did not come about. This came about a phone call that was made, and Mountain Home took the report, and so it did not come through this process.
Speaker 231
1:26:03
When the hotline accepts a report for investigation, we typically won't forward it on to a law enforcement agency
because the investigator is going to have that information. If we can't accept a report for investigation and we believe there may be some criminal aspects involved, maybe drug use or maybe other aspects that aren't maltreatment but there could be a criminal issue, then we'll try to forward those on to law enforcement for follow-up from their standpoint. Mr. McAdoo, I've got plenty of people
in the queue, so I don't want to take up two more time. it's
a difficult question in your professional opinion what do you think is the single most important thing that we can do 29 unsubstantiated you know 29 calls that were deemed unsubstantiated
this kid as i said i don't know what the fine line is between you know abuse or torture but i think this kid was tortured so you know you know you know that being said what is the single most important thing that you believe that could be done to improve this process specifically the call Center? You know,
Speaker 231
1:27:01
if there were 29 investigations, that mean there were 29 accepted reports to the hotline. So I think from a screening standpoint, those were seen as... Are all reports accepted when they're called in?
They're just so the report is called in and it's accepted? No, sir. Okay. It
Speaker 231
1:27:16
goes through the process of that. So if it's deemed to be accepted and forwarded onto an investigation, then we've done at the hotline what we're supposed to do in regard to assessing the information and reported on to the investigations. We can see that there are reports that were unsubstantiated, but we don't go into the reports to determine why. So that's part of kind of, unfortunately for us, we do this, we don't know the outcome of that report because of the sheer volume of what we deal with. We just have really no way to follow up to see what happened
with that report, and after it comes out in the news, then we can say, oh, I remember that report. But it may have been, you know, here it is October, and we were dealing with a report that was in November of 24. So we may not have people that were there or they don't remember that. But I think when you're accepting reports at the hotline and sending them for investigations, we've done what we're supposed to do. And sometimes it comes down to educating reporters to be better reporters. Some don't know how to make a report, and that's okay.
If they can call the hotline, we'll walk them through the information of what we need to get a report through. Thank you. Representative
Speaker 54
1:28:25
Gazaway, you have a question? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
1:28:28
And so I guess just following through that process, exactly what it looks like, someone makes a call to
the child abuse hotline. I made a call recently to the child abuse hotline when I got some information in a case that I had. I felt it was incumbent upon me to report at the child abuse hotline. I did that.
I don't know if I'm a mandated reporter or not, but I did. someone answered the phone and took my information and let me explain why I thought I needed to be calling. Who makes the decision on whether or not a report is accepted or then substantiated or unsubstantiated and whether or not it has a criminal element, whether or not it should go to DCFS for dependency neglect? Who makes that decision? Is that the person who I call and
Speaker 231
1:29:18
talk to on the phone? More often than not, yes. The operators are trained through, they're educated and trained on the maltreatment law, the SDM tool, they're trained on the MOU to make the decisions themselves. We let them know that you're going to tell the reporter that the report is accepted for investigation, what the allegation may be and which agency is going to receive the investigation. At that point, that's where we would stop. The substantiation of an investigation, that all goes to the investigative agencies with CACD or with DCFS.
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
1:29:51
So how many employees do you have manning the
Speaker 231
1:29:55
hotline? Currently we have 32 operators, five supervisors, and myself as the administrator. Okay. And they've all
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
1:30:02
been trained on how to take these reports and they're the initial decision makers
on whether or not something's going to be referred for investigation or not, to be clear. Correct. If
Speaker 231
1:30:13
they accept it for investigation, If they decide that it's not going to be accepted for investigation, that gets reviewed by a supervisor. They have to speak with the supervisor or present their narrative of the report to the supervisor
to verify that, yes, it can be screened out or no, that it shouldn't be, or maybe you need to call the reporter back for more clarifying information from the
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
1:30:35
reporter before that's done. Okay. So, and back to the point that's been made earlier, and I've made it and others have made it, But 29 times, now I don't know that all of those were hotline reports. I take it that many of them likely were. But I heard Senator Clark say that there's a number of reasons that we don't know why these 29 times this case was never followed up on.
We don't know the workers who were involved. In other words, we don't know the people answering the phone, if they were following protocol or not, if they were taking this as seriously as they should, or if it went to the next level, whether or not those employees did what they were supposed to do. I've heard a lot of, and I hate to call them excuses, reasons, excuses, whatever you might say, of lack of appropriate interviews, lack of appropriate investigation, lack of the ability to do history searches, and a lot of things about why this happened 29 times.
But I just find it hard to believe. It might be one thing if there have been one or two calls about this child, that something falls through the cracks.
That is capable of happening. But 29 times seems unbelievable to me. So is there any
Speaker 231
1:31:52
explanation for that? Well, again, all I can say is based on what the hotline, basically the role we play in this part, it comes into us. If we send it for investigation, and we sent it 29 times, we've accepted it,
we sent it on to the agency who's supposed to be the investigation part of it, we don't see that report again. We're going to be on the phone to take the very next report. So we don't have anything to do with the findings and the determinations and anything about that as far as whether it's
Speaker 250
1:32:24
substantiated or it's found it true.
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
1:32:27
That part is all through investigation. Sure, I understand. And even if it is accepted or substantiated, it's then going to get referred out, I guess, based on certain protocol to possibly a criminal investigation or possibly to DCFS for dependency
Speaker 148
1:32:41
neglect type analysis. And apparently I'm not right about
Speaker 138
1:32:48
that. So I can, I think I can help. So they, the hotline will accept or screen out the report. If they accept it, that's the end of their, that's where they stop. Their involvement stops right there. then it's either assigned to crimes against children division which is underneath arkansas state police as well or dcfs either okay so it let's go if it's assigned to crimes against children and they're investigating they're working that investigation if they don't feel like a child
is unsafe based on that investigation then dcfs isn't ever involved if they feel like they have a safety issue then they call us in to assess the safety and that's how we get involved and collaborate with crimes against children if dcfs gets the report then we're both agencies are working to find for a true finding or an unsubstantiated finding but let's say during the course of either of these investigations there is risk of danger intimate danger and a safety that
we cannot keep those children in the home then we dcfs would take what we call a 72-hour hold and place the child into foster care and then that's what starts the dependency neglect process Did I help
Speaker 182
1:33:58
or clarify, make it worse? Absolutely, yes, that
Chair
Unverified
1:34:02
helped a lot. Okay. Thank you, Representative Rose. You are
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:34:06
recognized for your question, sir. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman. I think we can all agree that the individuals who committed this absolute horrible atrocity on a child are monsters.
We'll start there. They're responsible, and their actions were evil. Following that, as we keep referencing the 29 reports, I imagine for the rest of your life, 29 will be your least favorite number. It probably for the rest of my life will cause me to twitch because of the span of time that abuse or torture took place. At some point, and I read in your letter that DHS recognizes the responsibility that they bear.
So at some point, in addition to those who are committing the crimes, DHS is bearing some responsibility because the crimes were being allowed to continue after people had called and said something bad is happening. You guys have discovered the 29 reports. I'm guessing once you discovered that there was an actual crime that took place, you then searched your own database. is that correct? You searched the database to figure out that there were 29 reports that had been initiated? Yes. So briefly, because I've got a couple of questions here, but briefly,
can you tell me how you were able to determine that there were 29 reports? Were you able just to search the names of those
Speaker 209
1:35:36
guardians? Yes. So we have the ability to search the name of the parent, the child, and
Speaker 198
1:35:42
it will provide the information to us around who, and then you go in and read each of the investigations.
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:35:48
So, Director Wright, Chief of Staff McDonald, you're much more adept at this than me, and I'm sure far superior in your knowledge and understanding.
I'm sure you're already making changes, but if it hasn't already been discussed, I'm just going to throw a suggestion out there that you guys think about, is that every report, when you receive it as a protocol, now we're going to immediately search that name and see how many other reports come up so that 28 times it doesn't go by without being caught until the 29th time. With that, you've now seen, okay, we searched this, we saw we had 29 reports. I'm sure you can see who took the reports,
who investigated to some degree. All of those reports were found to be unsubstantiated for
some reason, has any disciplinary action taken place amongst staff? While you consult for just a second, I'll say, I sit on the Charitable
Penal and Corrections Subcommittee, and we had this Calico Rock prison break, and they immediately dealt with
staff who are responsible. Fortunately, in that instance, nobody was hurt in the prison break. Nobody was hurt, but staff members were immediately released. Others were punished, demoted, etc. In this case, a child was significantly harmed over a long period of time. So I'm curious if in your investigation to those 29 reports, have you taken any disciplinary action against any staff members sorry
Speaker 197
1:37:34
some of those employees no longer work for the agency given the
Speaker 277
1:37:40
length of time and some of them are in within different roles let me let me
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:37:45
pause I want to let you continue is it
does it happen that you rehire staff members after they've left can they come back at the future we do rehire some staff so for those who were involved who no longer are on staff are you guys making any kind of notation to their employee file or anything along those lines i hear you saying well they don't work
for us anymore there should be accountability so i would like you to at least consider that for those who are no longer a part of your department or or your division if they don't work here anymore that doesn't mean let's just forget it's no big deal if they want to come back that's fine We won't put it on their employee record. For those who are in different roles or in same roles, has any disciplinary action taken place? If the answer is no, you can just go with no. No. I can't answer that.
Speaker 279
1:38:42
I mean, it hasn't. No, I mean, there has not been
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:38:47
disciplinary action for staff who remain important. In your letter, you say, we will do everything
in our power to prevent this from ever happening again. So 29 reports, nothing was done, nobody's punished. Does that sound like
you're doing everything in your power to prevent
Speaker 138
1:39:07
it from happening again? I think when we brought our staff together and reviewed the incident
Speaker 198
1:39:13
and had everyone in one room and started reviewing the case, We assessed their accountability. We assessed their engagement in learning and improving practice. And so that's why the decision of no discipline for staff was not
Speaker 285
1:39:32
made. Have you individually reviewed
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:39:37
every one of those 29 reports? I
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:39:44
Do you know the names of the employees who still work for you who took those reports or pursued those investigations? Not off the top of my head. But do you know them? Like, you have records. You know who those employees are. I can see who was assigned to each of the cases. Have you spoken individually to each one of those employees about what went wrong,
Speaker 277
1:40:10
or did you just have a group setting? It was not individually, but we've had some hard conversations about this.
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:40:15
So there's been no disciplinary action taken? Nobody's been dismissed? No. I find that hard to believe. What is the likelihood that there are dozens more cases like this poor child's that have gone unnoticed? I would hope that there's not,
Speaker 289
1:40:38
but I can't give you an answer on that today. So the database
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:40:43
that you use, can you export data from it, like an Excel file, a CSV, or anything along those lines?
Yes, sir. Have you guys exported that and done any kind of analysis to determine if there's significant number of reports against any names? That was an additional question
Speaker 292
1:41:01
that we received. Have you done it? I have not done it. So how long
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:41:07
ago did you discover the 29 reports for this one name? How long ago was that? That
Speaker 150
1:41:14
would have been November of 2024. So
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
1:41:16
in almost one year's time, you discovered that there were 29 reports for one name,
and it hasn't occurred to anybody to export the database. I just thought of this sitting here. It hasn't occurred to anybody to export your entire database and just search and see if there's somebody else mass abusing a child and it going unnoticed? No. So in summary, no disciplinary action, no employees dismissed, and you guys haven't simply done a search to see if there's any other children out there who have had these kind of reports filed? No. All right, I'm finished.
Chair
Unverified
1:41:51
Thank you, Representative Richardson. You're recognized for a question. Thank
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
1:41:57
you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, so I got to tell you, for there to be no disciplinary action to these employees is unacceptable. And I think you would agree with me that with you being in a leadership position, managing these employees, I would have assumed that there was something done with these individuals.
Tell me how much training are these individuals who carry these
Speaker 217
1:42:32
cases getting on an annual basis? So to become a caseworker, you get about nine
Speaker 138
1:42:38
months of initial training, and then we do for our investigations team at least twice a year, if not more, we'll do trainings where we bring them all together and do additional trainings and talk about case reviews and practice issues we may have identified along the way.
And we also host follow-up Zoom calls and things like that with them to just continue
Speaker 162
1:43:00
their education, share information, review data, that kind of thing. And out of the individuals that
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
1:43:06
you have identified and you had your group meeting with that didn't receive any disciplinary action, has there been any history with any
of those individuals that some of these same instances have happened in the past? I can't recall
Speaker 302
1:43:20
that information. I would have to circle back and provide that to you.
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
1:43:25
And how often are those employees that are the case managers, how often do they remove themselves from investigation based on conflict of interest? I don't track that information, conflict of interest. Do you know of that having happened? I
Speaker 138
1:43:45
said, I know this, I'm related to this person, I can't work this investigation. and we reassign out of the county, maybe out of the area,
Speaker 237
1:43:55
maybe within the county, just depends on the
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
1:43:59
circumstance. Are you aware of people that are reporting instances to you and have notified you that these people are involved with this investigation and they're still involved? Has that been made known to you? Does that question make sense? No.
Speaker 136
1:44:19
Can you ask me again? And go ahead. Yeah, Representative Richardson, I think I'm familiar with what you're referring to. Whenever a worker notifies a supervisor of a conflict of interest, a possible conflict of interest,
there should be a staffing on that, and the likelihood of that worker being removed is great. I'm familiar with what you're referring to. How do we avoid that? And this is
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
1:44:42
slightly different from the case that we're talking about, and I apologize, Chair. How do we fix that? You know what? I'll get with you offline, and we'll discuss that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. That'd be
Speaker 306
1:44:53
great. Representative Gassaway, do you have a couple follow-ups? I
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
1:44:58
do. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So follow up a little bit on Representative Rose's line of questioning.
You guys have a difficult job. Everyone employed in this process has a difficult job. And I just want to say, to his point, I mean, in this case, with 29 calls, I would think somewhere along the way it would have been identified that this child was being abused. It seems to me somewhere in that process it should have happened. But with that being said, you guys also, and I know from practicing law for 19 years, having had enough cases, that you guys get a lot of bogus reports too.
And there are people that will call the hotline. I've had, I'm aware of cases, even one today, that someone made a call and DHS showing up over things that are really insignificant, not abuse, not neglect, but the parties may happen to be involved in a divorce, and you have one person who's just calling the hotline all the time because they're trying to gain an upper hand in a divorce setting, for instance.
And so I think the challenge is, it seems pretty clear, is to distinguish between what is legitimate and what is not. And you may get five reports on the same child in a very short period of time because you have a crazy person, these people exist, who are calling the hotline every other day over bogus things because they're trying to gain an upper hand in their custody dispute or things of that nature. So can you expound upon that also?
Speaker 138
1:46:47
I don't know. I think Dan may want to take that at the hotline side. But I think once it's assigned for investigation, we don't have a choice but to work that investigation. So once it's
Speaker 209
1:46:57
assigned and it's been accepted, we have to go out and work those reports. So in response
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
1:47:03
to that, I mean, I think my point to you would be, and any comments that you have on this, I would like to hear. but it's the the protocol that you have in place and the ability to distinguish between what is legitimate and what is not legitimate you also need to have a process in place similar to
what representative rose is talking about i mean to search your database quickly and find out that this child has been called on 29 times now with that being said we know that there are going to be some of those examples where a child there's been a call about a child for instance 10 times and we know that they've all turned out to be unsubstantiated because you're dealing with, for lack of a better way to put it, a crazy person who keeps calling the hotline over bogus things. So the real, I think, challenge that you have that you have to solve
in terms of proper protocol and training for the people that are answering these calls and responding to these calls is how you distinguish between what is legitimate and what is not legitimate. And you can address that. And the second point I want to make, however, is, again, I practiced law for 19 years, and unfortunately I have been involved in these cases, and I've seen what has happened. And I talked to a friend of mine, another lawyer friend of mine last night, who has done parent counsel work in DHS court.
Part of what he talks about is that DHS sometimes will strain at a gnat, to borrow a phrase from the Bible but swallow a camel so you may have something that's really insignificant that would in most people's estimation never constitute abuse probably not neglect and you have kids removed from home placed removed from homes placed in foster care etc and then you have cases like this where a child is being tortured and there's been 29 reports
and it takes 11 years before there's any action. And so, again, it's a difficult job, but part of what you have to solve for is not removing kids and taking drastic action in cases that are minor, relatively minor if serious at all, and then not taking action in the serious cases. So I realize I've said a lot
and I've not asked any particular question, but can you respond to those remarks?
Speaker 162
1:49:31
I will do my best. I think that you're right. We
Speaker 138
1:49:36
do get reports, as you've described. I think that if you look at our data of the maltreatment reports that are accepted, approximately 20% of those are found true. And so I think that maybe one thing together as a collaborative, we could focus on how do we accept the right reports and make sure that we're getting to the right kids and how do we mitigate and families who may just need help
or, like you said, swallow the camel, swat the gnat, or I said it backwards, I apologize. But anyway, what I'm saying is we do sometimes get tied up into things that are custody battles or those different situations. And then those reports are coming in on top of more severe reports. And I actually have a couple ideas, but I don't want to put my partners at Crimes Against Children's Division on the hot seat right here. But in our partnership, I have a few ideas of things that I'd like to talk about with their leadership team and our DHS administration about as well.
So just trying to strike the balance and making sure that when we have a report that comes off the hotline, we are looking at the history and understanding the family that we're serving so we can keep kids
Speaker 209
1:50:56
safe. I don't know if that satisfies your questions. Well,
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
1:51:01
I don't know that I had a particular question. I just wanted to make that point.
If witnesses from the hotline have any comments on that, because that's where those reports are initially received.
That's where that initial decision is made. How do they distinguish between what is legitimate and what's not, and what are they doing to search the
history, like Representative Rose said? - So it's
Speaker 251
1:51:22
kind of like Director Wright said, we're under, we're obligated
Speaker 231
1:51:25
to go ahead and accept the report for investigation. If the reporter gives us the information and it meets criteria to accept according to the Child Maltreatment Act, we may have an underlying thing, this is a custody issue or this is that issue, whatever, but it still meets what they've said in the black and white meets child maltreatment.
We've got to send it on for investigation. Very few reporters have been, quote-unquote, banned from making reports to the hotline due to mental instability, harassing nature of stuff. We do have some of those, and we'll have law enforcement agencies. We've had prosecutors contact the hotline and say, hey, how can we get these people or investigators? We keep getting these malicious reports, and what can we do? And we refer them to the prosecuting attorney. We can't put a ban list, if you will, together without somebody saying they're mentally incompetent
or they're this or they're that, and they've been told not
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
1:52:23
to contact the hotline anymore. One last
question just for the benefit of the committee. Arkansas State Police Crimes Against Children Division, which mans the hotline and then does conduct investigations, are they commissioned law enforcement
Speaker 230
1:52:38
officers? No, sir, they're not. They'll work their case, and if it looks like it's going criminal, then they will parallel that with the local jurisdiction, whatever jurisdiction that crime was committed in.
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
1:52:49
Right. So I just wanted to make it clear. When you say Arkansas State Police Crimes Against Children Division and that certain of these investigations get referred to them, that is not a trained commission law enforcement officer conducting a criminal investigation. They're really acting kind of under the authority of DHS.
Speaker 309
1:53:09
Can you? They're almost kind of like a liaison, but some of our investigators, and Kalika
Speaker 230
1:53:15
may clear this up, but either all of them or some of them may have certified training and forensic interviews,
and some of these police departments or law enforcement agencies across the state do not have that resource or asset available within their agency, and so that CACD investigator will pick up that role. They may already have a rapport with the victim or the suspect in this potential criminal case, and so the CACD investigator will plug along with it, but the CACD is not carrying the criminal case. That law enforcement agency is carrying the criminal case. Okay,
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
1:53:49
but the CACD investigator is employed by the Arkansas State Police?
Correct, and it's a civilian employee. Okay, as a civilian, and then what exactly
Speaker 138
1:54:04
is the interplay with DHS? We operate on a MOU together and have agreed upon understanding about our roles and expectations between the two agencies. Thank
Chair
Unverified
1:54:16
you. All right, we're going to do Senator Clark, Representative Rose, then Representative Woolrich. Senator Clark, you are recognized.
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:54:22
Thank you, Mr. Chair. uh to the state police uh and the hotline the uh you
cannot accept a report on every call correct you have you have rules and and your people are trained we can we accept this we don't accept this correct because we have people that are concerned that kids are out on their bicycle
Speaker 230
1:54:54
their their holy grail is the child maltreatment act and it specifically defines what that operator can accept and can screen out and what
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:55:02
they cannot and even at that we still not blaming y'all because you're going by the rules you have we still have the one of the highest rates in the country of accepting calls uh which could be a problem uh on the other side of what happened here because we've got to remember this is never just one-sided this is a terrible thing that
happened uh but you accept that call and it goes then to dcfs may go to cacd if it's looks more criminal in nature but we're going to say it goes to dcfs you have to investigate that's correct if the government comes to your house to investigate you about your parenting you think that's traumatic or not traumatic it's traumatic it's traumatic if you're
so if you're one of the most perfect parents there ever was it's a traumatic experience now there is no not guilty correct it's
Speaker 138
1:56:10
unsubstantiated and true that's right because these
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:56:12
are not criminal investigations now if you come investigate my parenting because they somebody called in they accepted a call how long once I have that unsubstantiated not not not guilty unsubstantiated report how long
Speaker 162
1:56:31
does that stay unsubstantiated it's not on the central registry
it's but it's within our database for history
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:56:37
it's within your database because I agree with everything that representative rose said i agree with everything representative gasway said but it's in your database that's correct and so you are if another call comes in and that's what how long is it going to be in your database forever forever so if you have that person and we do that keeps calling and knows the right things to say that they have to take the report and then you have to investigate and whether y'all will admit it or not i may try to get you to admit it
if you've got five or six unsubstantiated even though you're one of the most perfect parents that we would find there is some tendency i find that where there's smoke there's fire there is some perception about where there's smoke there is fire if we kept getting calls there must be something wrong even though i never did anything wrong so there's so i agree with representative rose on pull it you know you got pulling those out but on the other hand we got
to be careful don't we that we don't come we don't come up with the wrong idea about people who are perfectly innocent so we've got to do everything we can to stop this kind of case but We've also got to be careful because I work with way more cases where we should have done less than cases where we should have done more. And the thing is that a lot of times, including in my own family, those are tragic cases.
That's right. And in our case, I know the caseworker. And, you know, what turns out it would have been best if the child had been removed and placed with his paternal grandmother. But at the same time, we want to keep families together, you know, and so a lot of times there is no perfect call. This one looks like it was, and I want to get into it, looks like it was probably obvious. But, you know, when we get into it, we'll see.
But I just, so we agree that it's not just one-sided. We have to be very careful on the other side that we don't become a police state when it comes to parity.
Speaker 162
1:59:02
That's right. We have to walk a balance and have both. A very narrow balance. And manage both sides of the system.
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:59:09
Okay. Mr. Chair, I would like to make a motion. What's your motion? Is that true? That we refer the closed cases. We can't look into the open case. that we refer the closed cases on this child to the Child Maltreatment Investigations Oversight Committee for them to look at, recommend that they look at.
The motion by Senator Clark is that we refer the closed, did you say cases? Cases, yeah.
Closed cases specific to this child? That's what we're hearing. Yeah, okay, so the closed
case is specific to this, you know, case in Baxter County and Mountain Home to the Child Miltreatment Investigations Oversight Committee? Yes. And
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
1:59:57
may I also say, while I'm making the motion, that it's a closed committee.
It's the only one that exists. But members who are not on it can come to the chair, who is currently me, and ask to be there. I can't allow the whole room to come. If you have a very specific interest and would like to be there, because we have never had a leak, and I'm very proud of that. It's very necessary. So you've got to understand, if you want to come and be part of it, what the rules are and how careful we have to be.
So it is possible for some of you, if you wish, to be in attendance when we look at these things.
But that's okay Duff second on
that Got a second by Senator Sullivan All in favor say I opposed Congratulations motion carries. Let me just add Senator Clark. How long
have you served on that committee? When did we create it?
Speaker 154
2:01:11
the legislation that created the uh we did and
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
2:01:13
we were okay we looked at every way to try to have oversight and this was the only way we came up with and everybody said it was impossible because the press wasn't going to allow it and the press understood the problem i went to ap and the tv stations and the radio stations and they understood the problem and uh were willing to let us do that and we're very careful that we have a very narrow scope senator clark
i've served with for 11 years there's not a member of this legislature that i that i think's worked any
you know any harder or been in the weeds any more than you have when it comes to issues regarding you know children family and youth and dcfs and or family courts and i know that you have a heart for this and a passion for this i think you're an excellent chair there and so
i feel very comfortable um you know with your committee taking this up because at the end of the day um i think people are tired it's you want accountability but what people are tired of of the just the finger pointing or this and that is like we want a better process we want better kids and you know unfortunately I think we live in society and this is this is you all are dealing
with the fallout and trying to you know but you know some some of these people it's just I hate to even use the word parents because they're so far from it and I know you all have to see you know I'm disgusted by what I know about this case I can't imagine you know what you all see in just an average week at DCFS but one thing that's come to me today and is and I'll ask this question ballpark me how many of these how many calls do y'all get or this is a case of a couple going through a divorce and somebody's just trying to make the other spouse look bad or I'm upset with
my sister so I'm going to call in some you know you know some manufactured case and I know that these things have to exist I don't know how to quantify it's like is it is is it a is it an issue or is it a minor yeah it happens but
Speaker 231
2:03:03
not any degree of frequency i think from our standpoint at the hotline we know what happens we can see spikes of uh of our call volume and uh when the exchange of custodies happen on sunday evenings uh we can see it after uh long holidays when they've been with the non-custodial parent and summer visits and so on so we we see those types
of reports but some of them are are legitimate concerns um director wright probably would have more insight regarding the investigations part because they see which most of those are bogus and which aren't. We believe what we're being told. Granted, we only know it's 50% of the story. We just don't know if it's a true part or the false part. But if it meets criteria to accept, then we're going to accept it and let investigations run its course. So Director Wright would probably better be able to
Speaker 317
2:03:46
answer that question. I don't have a good data
Speaker 138
2:03:49
point on that except to say that
of the reports that come in in a state fiscal year, we're only finding true on 20% of
those. Is that in line with other states? Is there a national average?
Do there any national data or states that we border that we look at to see how we're doing in comparison? I
Speaker 197
2:04:08
think we are over-accepting. I think the data would show that Arkansas is over-accepting at the front door on the hotline reports.
Speaker 329
2:04:13
The data would show that. Okay. Sir, I think to give you just to give
Speaker 230
2:04:20
you an answer to give you an idea of the call volume about 65,000 calls are taken in the hotline center every year
Chair
Unverified
2:04:27
so 20% of 65,000 so 20% of that All right Representative roe and the rose rose,
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:04:42
excuse me and then representative will rich.
Thank you. Mr. Chair Miss McDonald Any October over the last 11 years, if we'd pose the question,
hey, why don't you do a database search of every report that's been filed and see if any name comes up 20-plus times? If we'd done that a year ago or two years ago or three years ago, we could have stopped the abuse of this one child sooner. Would you agree? Yes, sir. If today we made the suggestion and it was followed through upon to do that search in the database and you guys picked the number,
10, 15, 20, 30, I don't know what the magic number is, but you guys are the subject matter experts. And we said if it hit this many with one name, we're going to invest some time in pursuing why this is happening. Do you think that that would be a productive method to hopefully stop some children from being abused? I certainly
Speaker 333
2:05:59
think that it would be a good tool, a good measure.
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:06:04
There are still employees who took reports or investigated or were in some shape or form involved in the 29 reports that were deemed unsubstantiated, do you think it would be beneficial to have a one-on-one review with that employee as well as the standards and practices that they're exercising in their report taking or they're investigating to determine whether they need correction or discipline or to be removed
entirely yes sir i would
Speaker 333
2:06:38
certainly um i'd like to go back and talk with our legal
counsel as well as director wright and be able to look into that more
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:06:51
deeply i don't want to rabbit trail too much here but can you think of some job performance related offenses that are fireable what would those look like in any any given position within your department you can use broad
Speaker 335
2:07:13
terms job performance terminations yeah what what
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:07:15
not what would rise to the level of being
uh, relieved of their job? Sure.
Speaker 335
2:07:24
Um, dishonesty, theft. Um, there's, there's a host of reasons. What if they were
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:07:32
just bad at their job? Performance.
Speaker 335
2:07:35
Performance related. Yes, sir. Um, if, if they
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:07:38
failed to do their job adequately and it caused harm to happen to somebody or for something to be missed that was significant, would that rise to the level of being fired that would
Speaker 333
2:07:53
certainly rise to the level of
taking that to our legal counsel for console yes sir
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
2:08:01
director right in your letter i want to go back to you said
we will do everything in our power to prevent this from ever happening again In your letterhead, it says, we care, we act, we change lives. I would like to suggest and challenge that you consider immediately doing a database search for any large number of reports that come back to an offender or a child's name
and give those a significant review to make sure there's not some other kid who's been in an abusive or torturous situation for over a decade or even three to five years, I would also like to suggest that you consider immediately upon receiving a report of child abuse that part of your protocol is that that name is put into a filter, whether it is simply that the employee goes to the database and searches John Smith address or DOB or whatever
else information that you take to see if there's a long list of names or a long list of reports that show up. And if that were to happen, that they would then also pursue further investigation into that or referring it to an investigation. And the other thing that I would like to suggest is that one-on-one follow-ups are done with the employees who are still with you regardless of their position, but if they're still with you, if they were involved in any of these unsubstantiated reports,
whether it was on the paperwork side, the investigation side, that you have one-on-ones, that you review their body of work, and that you pursue whether or not there should be disciplinary action taken. After just having my exchange with the chief of staff, it seemed that these were meritable considerations, And so I would like to suggest that you consider those and then report back to the state agency's committee and let us know your findings, whether you decided to follow those suggestions or not. And if you did follow them, what results you came up with.
And I hope this does not come across harshly, but you said, I hope there are no other children that fall into this category. Hope is not a strategy. You have data and tools at your disposal. You and your team have to act because none of us can let this happen again on our watch. Would you agree? I agree. Thank you.
Chair
Unverified
2:10:39
Thank you, Representative. Representative Woolridge, you are recognized for a question, sir.
Representative Jeremy Wooldridge
Unverified
2:10:43
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for being here. I know that you all are as equally bothered by this as we are. So I know we talked about 65,000 reports. Roughly 12,000 to 13,000 are accepted. When those are found as unsubstantiated reports, are those staffed with a supervisor? Are they staffed through
Speaker 197
2:11:05
peer-to-peer review? What does that look like? For DCFS, when we unsubstantiate, before we close an
Speaker 198
2:11:11
investigation, there is a supervisor or consult that occurs on each investigation.
Representative Jeremy Wooldridge
Unverified
2:11:17
So, and I know the hotline already answered that. They said if they don't accept a report, it's reviewed by a supervisor. So, for DCFS, every unsubstantiated report is reviewed by a supervisor? It
Speaker 209
2:11:29
doesn't matter unsubstantiated or true. Before the closure happens, there is a review that occurs. Okay. So,
Representative Jeremy Wooldridge
Unverified
2:11:35
I guess then the question, and I don't know that you can go into the answer or an answer for this question. So, 29 times this was reviewed not only by a caseworker but by a supervisor and found to be unsubstantiated?
Speaker 306
2:11:49
Yes. Okay. All right. Thank you. all right representative
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
2:11:59
gasway yes volauts i do thank you mr chair so looks like we may be nearing the end of
this meeting but before we go i this is the state agency's committee dhs is a state agency arkansas state police is a state agency i think we all want to be problem solvers here and so the question is how do we improve
what can we do as a legislature to help you guys ensure that what happened in this case never happens again and so you know i heard you say earlier that you had issues with number one you have a significant number of reports and that you've had significant turnover in staff so that sounds to me kind of like a staffing issue and so i don't know what how we can help you in terms of staffing but I would ask that you let us know that and you may want to generate some kind of
report following this meeting about recommendations about what we can do as a legislator as a legislature to help you but some of that sounds like staffing some of it sounded like there were maybe software problems in terms of being able to search histories that maybe there was there were protocol problems because those who were charged with taking the reports didn't document things properly sometimes there's nothing you can do about that you may have all the protocol in place that you need and if
people won't follow it that's not your fault but what we need to know is if there are things that need to be changed in terms of you need different or better software. You need resources related to staffing. You need training and, you know, more money for training, protocols that need to be put in place. I don't want to leave this meeting of the Joint State Agencies Committee without coming to some kind of resolution as to how we can help fix a
problem because ultimately that's what we're here for and so will you guys commit to letting us know what we can do to help you yes yes sir all right
Speaker 136
2:14:12
thank you absolutely we appreciate it thank you thank
Speaker 54
2:14:18
you representative guys away and it would be my intent to have at least one more state agencies meeting between now and the end
of the year as a follow-up as far as you know what DHS, DCFS, state police are doing
and within what the legislative branch needs to be doing as
far as potential legislation. I've got three or four things that I've jotted down here that I've looked at and was like, well,
isn't this worth a consideration of us talking about it amongst ourselves about whether or not this would warrant legislation? And let me end it with this. I think I'm accountable for the mishaps of the ball being dropped just like you are, Tiffany, Lori. I mean, when state government fails, we don't need to know what position, what title.
Let's collectively put our all selves in there. There's a failure in this system. And at the end of the day, what people want is they want an acknowledgment that it failed. And I believe we're getting that today. But just as importantly, we know what the hell we're going to do to fix it. Everybody in this room knows there's no such thing as a 100% guarantee, a 100% fail-proof process. I wish to goodness there was. I'm sure you all do too. But when there's a failure, there's got to be an acknowledgement of it. I appreciate the conversations we've had today. It's important that we do it in public and that we do it in a way that is constructive.
And I understand Senator Clark's committee is going to meet in private. I don't think that y'all, Senator, it's closed to the public and to members of the media. Some members can attend, but there's a strict confidentiality portion of that. But I know you, Alan, and I know how serious you take this work. And I know how you work with people you agree with, how you disagree with, because you're actually interested in trying to, you know, make the system better. And if one thing that we can all take at this today is, like, we can't get this young man the 10 years that he's essentially lost of his life back.
But we can be working together to make sure that we're holding ourselves accountable and that we're doing more than just holding ourselves accountable, that we're actually working together to come up with real-world, you know, solutions that are viable and that we can implement and that we can show the people of this state measurable results, and I'm looking forward to working with you all to do that and to make sure that I don't want to hear any more if there's a prosecutor or a law enforcement agency asks for a specific case file. Let's get them what they got. If they're legally entitled to it, there doesn't need to be a, I mean, it should be a very simple, straightforward, you know, straightforward process.
You know, Mr. Ether shouldn't have had to reach out to me. Should have never had it happen. but in that the people of this state I think there's good everyone of you all down there I know personally a good person I think my colleagues here on this side good people sometimes you know good people can make mistakes or the people under us can make mistakes we're still accountable for that but in all that the people of this state deserve our very best
and in getting our very best that means sometimes we have to have hard but necessary conversations of the public sphere and with that seeing no further questions and no further items come before this committee we are adjourned
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Comments by the Chairs
C. Consideration of a Motion to Authorize Chairs to Approve Special Expenses Incurred by the Committees
D. Consideration of a Motion to Approve the May 22, 2024, Meeting Minutes [Exhibit D]
E. Discussion of Child Abuse Case in Baxter County [Exhibit E] - David Ethredge, Prosecuting Attorney, Baxter County
F. Overview of Child Abuse Hotline Procedures and Agency Roles
G. Other Business
H. Adjournment
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — STATE AGENCIES & GOVT'L AFFAIRS-SENATE, Oct 8, 2025 | Agenda | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit D -- Draft Minutes 5-22-2024 | Exhibit | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit E -- DHS Letter to Prosecutor | Exhibit | 2 | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Senator Scott Flippo Chair
Unverified
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
David Etheridge
Unverified
Speaker 15
Speaker 16
Speaker 24
Speaker 34
Representative Jimmy Gazaway
Unverified
Chair
Unverified
Senator Alan Clark
Unverified
Speaker 52
Speaker 54
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
Speaker 61
Speaker 69
Representative Ryan A. Rose
Unverified
Speaker 32
Speaker 92
Speaker 41
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
Representative RJ Hawk
Unverified
Speaker 110
Speaker 111
Speaker 28
Speaker 27
Speaker 132
Speaker 136
Speaker 138
Speaker 143
Speaker 145
Speaker 149
Speaker 150
Speaker 162
Speaker 163
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
Speaker 45
Speaker 175
Speaker 147
Speaker 142
Speaker 198
Speaker 203
Representative Jason Nazarenko
Unverified
Speaker 217
Speaker 218
Speaker 222
Jason Aaron
Unverified
Speaker 227
Speaker 231
Speaker 235
Speaker 237
Speaker 230
Speaker 250
Speaker 256
Speaker 148
Speaker 182
Speaker 209
Speaker 197
Speaker 277
Speaker 279
Speaker 285
Speaker 289
Speaker 292
Speaker 302
Speaker 306
Speaker 251
Speaker 309
Speaker 291
Speaker 154
Speaker 317
Speaker 329
Speaker 333
Speaker 335
Representative Jeremy Wooldridge
Unverified