Task force: Re-define child abuse in Colorado

Task force was created to reform state’s mandatory reporting laws

A statewide task force created to reform Colorado’s mandatory reporting laws cannot do so without first asking lawmakers to change the state’s definition of criminal child abuse and neglect, members wrote in a 12-page report published this week.

Colorado’s definition of criminal child abuse and neglect is too broad and should be narrowed to avoid conflating circumstances like poverty or homelessness with neglect and abuse, the task force members wrote in the report, which was published after the first year of the group’s twoyear effort to reform the state’s mandatory reporting laws.

The group plans to meet for 11 hours in January and February in order to create recommendations for change in the child abuse statute, according to the report, which noted that the laws around child abuse in some states are more nuanced than Colorado’s, and are better designed to ensure cultural differences and socioeconomic statuses don’t drive unfounded child abuse cases.

After that piece is addressed, the task force then plans to return to studying and making recommendations for reform of the state’s mandatory reporting law, which requires dozens of types of professionals to report suspicions of child abuse to the state or law enforcement.

State lawmakers established the task force in 2022 following a Denver Post investigation into the 2017 death of 7-year-old Olivia Gant, a long-term patient at Children’s Hospital Colorado. In 2019, Olivia’s mother was accused of faking Olivia’s illnesses and manipulating doctors and nurses at Children’s into providing unnecessary and even life-threatening care. Originally charged with murder, the girl’s mother pleaded guilty to child abuse negligently resulting in death in 2022 and was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

Before Olivia died, some of her caregivers at Children’s Hospital Colorado suspected Olivia’s mother may have been medically abusing her, but the hospital did not alert any outside authorities to their suspicions until after Olivia’s death, despite the

state’s mandatory reporting laws.

An attorney for Olivia Gant’s family, Hollynd Hoskins, said Wednesday that the task force seems to have been sidetracked into “extraneous details,” rather than focusing on practical, immediate changes that can be made to the mandatory reporting system to better protect children.

“Obviously the legislature acted specifically in Olivia Gant’s memory by creating this task force to enhance the mandatory reporting of child abuse to prevent her horrific death from happening to another child, because what happened to Olivia shocked everyone,” Hoskins said. “We are very disappointed in the task force’s interim report that so far fails to make important changes to enhance the reporting laws, leaving vulnerable children unprotected.”

The task force met for the first time in December 2022 and will meet through 2024. Lawmakers gave the group a list of 19 specific issues to examine that ranged from developing training for mandatory reporters to considering the disproportionate impact of mandatory reporting laws on communities of color, to clarifying how quickly suspicions of abuse must be reported. The mandates also included examining how suspected medical child abuse in particular should be handled.

The interim report doesn’t include any recommendations on changes to how medical child abuse is identified or reported, noted Michael Weber, an expert on medical child abuse and investigator with the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office in Fort Worth, Texas.

“It’s a very different investigation from a normal child abuse investigation,” he said. “If you put in the boxes that (child protective services) normally put things in, you’re going to fail.”

The task force will turn to the specific 19 topics in more detail during its second year and make recommendations for change at the start of 2025, the group’s report said.

During the first year of work, the group picked out five themes for the reform:

• The disproportionate impact of mandatory reporting laws on people of color

• The current vague definition of child abuse

• The need for a separate system for professionals to report concerns about families that don’t rise to the level of abuse and overreliance on the child protective system for such reports

• The impact of the mandatory reporting laws on professionals who need to form “trusted relationships” with children and families

“The initial findings encapsulated in this report form the bedrock for future exploration,” the report reads.