AUSTIN, Texas — (THE TEXAS TRIBUNE)
The Texas Legislature has licensed a bill that will bar Texans from making child abuse stories anonymously in an strive to weed out false stories of child abuse.
House Bill 63 authored by means of state Rep. Valoree Swanson, R-Spring, used to be licensed with out dialogue by means of the Texas Senate on Tuesday, 20-11, nearly a month after it handed the House. The bill now is going to Gov. Greg Abbott for his attention.
If the bill turns into regulation, it might mark a sea trade in the way in which Texas indicators officers to doable child abuse, and is the newest measure to scale back the workload quantity of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.
Currently, any individual can name DFPS’ child abuse hotline — 800-252-5400 — or report a record on-line to notify investigators of doable forget or abuse of a child and achieve this anonymously. A child abuse investigator will then keep on with up on that tip and behavior a initial investigation. If the investigator unearths no taking part proof, the record is regarded as unfounded and no different motion is taken.
However, House Bill 63 will require the child abuse company to download the caller’s id from the beginning. No record could be taken except the reporter equipped their very own identify, telephone quantity, and cope with. The id of the caller will stay confidential to all excluding those that paintings at DFPS.
Kate Murphy, director of child coverage coverage with the advocacy staff Texans Care for Children published that during 2022, there have been 12,473 anonymous calls to the state, and about 1,000 of the ones calls led to a substantiated discovering of abuse or forget. She argued that if the bill had been to move, the ones 1,000 kids could be left to enjoy abuse and forget or worse. “Leaving children in danger can have disastrous consequences. Last year, 182 Texas kids died of abuse and neglect.”
But state Sen. Kevin Sparks, R-Midland, advised legislators on Wednesday that individuals had been weaponizing the state company in opposition to folks they’d a war of words with by means of making false stories.
“Unfortunately, the DFPS and Child Protective Services can often be used as a weapon. A lot of times we see this in divorce cases. We probably all know of a circumstance where a family was needlessly traumatized because of an anonymous tip that was ultimately found to be false,” mentioned Sparks, one of the bill’s sponsors.
During the second one studying of the bill on Wednesday, Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio, recommended a failed modification to trade the language within the bill to say the state “discourages” false stories however nonetheless permits for follow-ups even supposing private information isn’t equipped. “I know, in other cases, when you don’t have the ability to report anonymously, there’s a chilling effect on those reports,” he mentioned.
Disclosure: Texans Care for Children has been a monetary supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news group this is funded partly by means of donations from individuals, foundations, and company sponsors. Financial supporters play no position within the Tribune’s journalism. Find a whole list of them here.
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