ANNAPOLIS, Md. — When 5-year-old Zona Byrd was discovered starved to death in her northeast Baltimore home last fall, community members were shocked and devastated. But when they learned the parents had been arrested years earlier for abusing another daughter of theirs, they wanted answers. The system failed her, citizens and lawmakers said.
"Unfortunately a lot of times it's actually a child death that triggers the move to transparency," Tom Rawlings, head of the Child Welfare and Justice Transformation nonprofit, said in an interview with WMAR-2 News.
He recently testified in Annapolis in favor of HB 1209, a bill to increase transparency surrounding child abuse fatalities in Maryland. It's Delegate Susan McComas' fourth attempt to get this legislation passed.
"It's an accountability bill. It allows the public to know what's going on with a department that has a great deal of responsibility," Delegate McComas (R-Harford County) told WMAR-2 News. "I mean, the public's paying all these taxes. Why shouldn't they know?"
In the Zona Byrd case, there were many unanswered questions about what happened after her parents were arrested for abuse in 2019. Did they receive services from the Department of Human Services (DHS)? For how long? Did they lose custody of any of their children? If so, when did they regain custody?
DHS and the Baltimore City State's Attorney's office said all of that information was confidential.
"If the agency says, we're not gonna talk about that; we're not gonna tell you what happened, then the biggest effect is that people say, well they must be hiding something and they lose confidence in the agency," Rawlings said.
Delegate McComas' bill would require DHS to disclose certain child abuse records upon request within 30 days. The local state's attorney's office would also be given 30 days to redact sensitive information that could jeopardize a criminal case.
Under current state law, DHS and the state's attorney's office can release such records, but they can also choose not to in the spirit of confidentiality. That is almost always the route officials take.
"The problem with the current Maryland law is that while it provides for release of that information, it has an exception that swallows the entire rule," Delegate McComas testified recently.
"While on the books it looks as if you have some transparency, I think in practicality, the current law has been such that it's too easy for requests for these records to get bogged down in bureaucracy, because there's too many cooks in the kitchen. Too many people can object to the information being released," Rawlings said.
McComas and Rawlings add that Maryland law doesn't comply with federal law in this instance. The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) requires public disclosure of the findings or information about the case of child abuse or neglect that results in a child fatality or near fatality.
The Maryland State's Attorneys Association wrote a letter in favor of this bill. And perhaps most notably, DHS seems to be in favor of it too. Last year, the agency submitted a letter as testimony to the legislature, expressing concerns about family and child privacy. But this year, DHS Prinicipal Deputy Secretary Carnitra penned another letter, saying the bill "aligns well with our goal to prioritize transparency, honesty, and openness. The bill establishes a process for the public to request and potentially receive Child Abuse and Neglect reports and records. By facilitating access to this information, HB 1209 demonstrates the Administration's commitment to increasing transparency and openness."
Could that endorsement provide the momentum needed to finally get this bill to the Governor's desk?
Delegate McComas doesn't want to jinx it, having seen this bill go nowehere so many times. But she certainly hopes so, saying children's lives are at stake.
"Once the state becomes the parent, because they are the parent once the child's taken away from the parents, then it's all of us. We all have some taint because we're all part of the public and the government's representing us, and we're not taking good care of these kids."
