Do Parents Want To Be Notified of All Arrests or Only Some?

Delegate Eric Luedtke is the lead sponsor of a House Bill that was filed on February 13, 2015.

House Bill 1033 appears to be an attempt on the part of a number of Montgomery County Delegates to respond to the many arrests of public and private school teachers and staff for incidents involving sexual abuse, pornography, rape, and related crimes involving students over the last 3 years. 

The goal of HB 1033 appears to be to create a law that would require that parents be notified after school employees or other specified adults are arrested for child sexual or physical abuse.

The concern about this legislation is that in it's rush to address serious incidents does it help or hurt student victims?

• HB 1033 appears to create reporting requirements that would supersede existing Maryland child abuse reporting law in a way that could negatively impact criminal investigations.
• HB 1033 creates a "contact person" in the local school system or the nonpublic school for reporting of incidents of abuse that may be related to the arrest.  "Contact persons" have been the problem with existing policies and procedures.  Any suspected child abuse should be reported directly to the police or child protective services.  Creating layers of "contact people" or "liaisons" circumvents existing law and threatens to prevent reports of child abuse from being handled by the appropriate authorities.
• HB 1033 limits the types of offenses where reports would be made to parents and guardians by limiting the list of crimes included.  Do parents and guardians only want to be notified when school staff are arrested for certain crimes involving child sexual abuse or for all crimes involving child sexual abuse?

HB 1033 appears to have a goal that parents and guardians would support, that of notification of staff arrests, but the devil's in the details.