DFCS pulls plug on child abuse registry

The Georgia Division of Family and Children Services has shut down its child abuse registry because officials say the database was making it more difficult to accurately track and punish abuse.

The move followed the General Assembly’s unanimous vote in June to repeal the system that went into place in 2016.

DFCS officials say the database not only duplicated information collected through its SHINES Portal — a statewide, automated child welfare information system — but kept the most egregious abusers off the list until they had gone through the court system.

State Rep. Katie Dempsey, the Rome Republican who sponsored House Bill 993, the legislation that repealed the registry, said it was important for Georgians to know that children still are being protected.

“Federal law requires every state to have our child welfare agencies, for child abuse and neglect, to have those records. That already existing case management system is SHINES,” she said. “This will be a better way to deal with it.”

Getting rid of the system is expected to save the state about $1 million this fiscal year.

Melissa Carter, the director of the Barton Child Law and Policy Center at Emory University, lobbied for the system’s repeal.

In the worst cases of abuse or neglect, when criminal charges were filed, prosecutors asked that the names not be placed on the registry until after the case had worked its way through the court system, which could take years.

Carter said that essentially nullified the full value of the registry.

“The most serious perpetrators, those who are the small but very serious number of cases, perpetrators of that kind of conduct, weren’t even named on the registry,” she said.