January recognizes the importance of knowing about human trafficking. The President has declared January Human Trafficking Prevention Month (see the proclamation here). The North Carolina Governor and the Chief Justice have both declared January Human Trafficking Awareness Month (see the Governor’s proclamation here and the Chief Justice’s proclamation here). The purpose of these declarations is both a recognition that human trafficking in the United States and North Carolina exists and to educate our citizens about this issue. Partnerships are required for a successful response to combat the crime of human trafficking, which involves both sex and labor trafficking. The national, state, and local responses involve the prevention of human trafficking, protection for victims and survivors, and the prosecution of traffickers. Continue reading
Tag Archives: duty to report
The North Carolina Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice recommended in a 2020 report that state and local law enforcement agencies enact policies requiring officers to intervene in and report about circumstances in which a law enforcement officer witnesses excessive use of force or abuse of a suspect or arrestee. The North Carolina Sheriff’s Association similarly recommended in a 2020 report that all law enforcement agencies and the North Carolina Law Enforcement Accreditation Program adopt a policy requiring an officer to intervene when necessary to prevent another officer from using excessive force and to report any such intervention. This session, the General Assembly imposed such duties as a matter of state law rather than agency policy. This post will discuss current statutory law governing officer’s use of force and recent amendments enacted by S.L. 2021-137 (H 536) and S.L. 2021-138 (S 300).
Last week, I blogged about the application of the private search doctrine in child pornography cases. I noted that one recent case began when a computer repair technician contacted police to report child pornography on a computer he was repairing. A story about the case stated that “North Carolina law requires computer technicians to report any such images found during the course of their work to local law enforcement or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.” I didn’t know that, so I did some research. Continue reading →
In early October the Supreme Court granted certiorari in an Ohio case, State v. Clark, 999 N.E.2d 592 (Ohio 2013), cert. granted __ U.S. __, 135 S. Ct. 43 (2014), that will require it to decide two questions. First, whether a person’s obligation to report suspected child abuse makes the person an agent of law enforcement for purposes of the confrontation clause. And second, whether a child’s out-of-court statements to a teacher in response to the teacher’s concerns about potential child abuse qualify as “testimonial” statements. The case is important for a number of reasons. One is that like Ohio, North Carolina has a mandatory child abuse reporting statute. G.S. 7B-301. North Carolina’s statute is incredibly broad—it applies to everyone, not just teachers and doctors but also to family members, neighbors, and friends. Id. (“[a]ny person or institution”). Thus, an answer to the first question could have significant impact in North Carolina. The case also is important because Crawford has raised difficult questions in child abuse prosecutions about the testimonial nature of children’s statements to a host of people, including teachers, nurses, doctors, and social workers. Clark is the Court’s first Crawford case involving child abuse and many hope that its decision will provide answers to those questions. Continue reading →
Former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky has been charged with sexually assaulting eight young boys between 1994 and 2009. The principal New York Times story is here. ESPN’s coverage is here. The grand jury report on the matter is here. Sandusky allegedly met each of the boys through Second Mile, a charity that he founded for underprivileged children. The state contends that he took the boys to various Penn State football events, and that some of the sexual assaults took place in the Penn State football complex. News reports indicate that in 1998, the mother of one of the boys reported inappropriate contact between Sandusky and her son to campus police. The ensuing investigation apparently resulted in a taped admission by Sandusky, but the district attorney declined to prosecute. A parallel investigation by Child Protective Services failed to substantiate the charges.
In 2002, according to the grand jury report, a graduate student saw Sandusky anally raping a naked 10-year-old in the showers at Penn State. The graduate student reported what he saw to head coach Joe Paterno, who in turn reported it to athletic director Tim Curley. The graduate student then met with Curley and Penn State Senior Vice President for Business and Finance Gary Schultz, who oversaw the campus police, to discuss what he saw. Nothing that I have read suggests that the graduate student, Paterno, Curley, or Schultz reported the matter to any law enforcement agency at any time. Even after the incident, Sandusky – who retired in 1999 but remained a professor emeritus – was allowed on campus and in the football complex, though his access may have been curtailed to some extent. The university continued to promote, and to host at a satellite campus, Sandusky’s football camps for high school boys.
Curley and Schultz have been charged with failing to report the assaults and with perjuring themselves before a grand jury. (They testified that the graduate student reported only having seen inappropriate horseplay between Sandusky and the child.) Both have stepped down. Paterno is not a target of the investigation, apparently because he reported the matter up the chain at the university. Sandusky, Curley, and Schultz all maintain their innocence and are presumed innocent.
The case raises a number of legal issues, but perhaps the most controversial issue is whether Curley and Schultz had a duty to report, assuming arguendo that they were, in fact, aware of the abuse. Schultz’s lawyer has suggested that he did not. The relevant Pennsylvania statute provides in part that “[a] person who, in the course of employment, occupation or practice of a profession, comes into contact with children shall report . . . when the person has reasonable cause to suspect . . . that a child under the care, supervision, guidance or training of that person or of an . . . institution . . . with which that person is affiliated is a victim of child abuse.” Curley and Schultz could argue that they do not “come[] into contact with children” as part of their work. While children are sometimes present on Penn State’s campus, they could argue that such presence is incidental, and not sufficient to bring them within the scope of the statute. This article explores that argument, and suggests that the degree of connection, if any, between Sandusky’s charity and Penn State may be relevant. Of course, whether Curley and Schultz had a legal duty to report is a separate question from whether they had a moral obligation to do so.
Had the matter arisen in North Carolina, the relevant statute would have been G.S. 7B-301, which imposes a duty to report to DSS on “any person or institution who has cause to suspect that any juvenile is abused, neglected, or dependent, as defined by G.S. 7B-101.” It does not appear that Sandusky was the custodian or caretaker of the victim of the alleged shower assault, so the assault likely does not meet the legal definition of “abuse” and so likely would not have triggered a duty to report. Although the General Statutes impose a number of other reporting requirements – for example, on school principals, see G.S. 115C-288(g), and on health care providers, see this post – I’m not aware of any that would apply to university administrators on the alleged facts of the Sandusky case. If I am missing something, please let me know.
This case first came to light several days ago, and the anger surrounding it has only grown since. It is hard to imagine Paterno surviving it. It is hard to imagine the university president – who apparently was briefed to some extent on the allegations and on the university’s response to them – surviving it. It raises serious questions about the role of big-time sports on university campuses.
Jill Moore, one of my colleagues who works in the area of public health law, recently posted on the School of Government’s local government law blog about health care providers’ obligation to report certain injuries to law enforcement. It’s an issue that comes up from time to time, and I thought that our readers would be interested in it too. I’ve pasted the first couple of paragraphs below to whet your appetite; the full post is available here. Thanks to Jill for agreeing to cross-post.
Here at the School of Government, we get a lot of questions about disclosing medical records or information to law enforcement officials. Often the question arises when a law enforcement official appears at a health care facility and presents a search warrant or court order for the information, a situation my colleague Jeff Welty has written about on the SOG’s North Carolina Criminal Law blog. But disclosure of medical information is not always initiated by law enforcement. Sometimes a health care provider treats a patient for an injury or illness, such as a gunshot or stab wound, that suggests a violent crime has occurred. Law enforcement may not be aware of these situations unless someone tells them. Therefore, North Carolina has a statute (G.S. 90-21.20) that requires health care providers to notify local law enforcement officials when they treat patients with particular injuries or illnesses.
The statute has two subsections that address the types of injuries and illnesses that must be reported—one that applies to all patients, and one that applies only to patients who are minor children. Subsection (b) identifies the injuries and illnesses that must be reported regardless of the patient’s age. Subsection (c1) describes the additional circumstances in which a report is required if the patient is a minor child. This post summarizes the provisions of each section and then addresses some frequently asked questions.
Again, if you’d like to read the rest of Jill’s post, it’s here.
