Penn State scandal calls for right fix, not quick fix
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There ought to be a law -- but we ought to get it right.
I spent my lunch hour Wednesday afternoon with Scott Hollander, executive director of KidsVoice, and we looked through some of the various legislative proposals to toughen Pennsylvania's child abuse laws.
All of them sought in various ways to answer a question few would have thought to ask two weeks ago:
How could a man see a 10-year-old boy being raped and not -- at the very least -- immediately call the police?
There might be some who know this territory better than Mr. Hollander, but there can't be many. KidsVoice provides legal counsel to more than 3,000 Allegheny County children every year who are subject to abuse or neglect, kids that our commonwealth seeks to protect and keep safe. (If you remember the set-in-Pittsburgh TV drama, "The Guardian," starring that guy who's now "The Mentalist," you'll have some sense of what KidsVoice does. Mr. Hollander's brother, David, created that show.)
Some might be surprised by Mr. Hollander's take on the rush to make new law here. He'd counsel taking our time and making sure we provide clear definitions of what abuse is and when it should be reported. Make the law too broad and "police will be overwhelmed with all these calls," he said.
Some of the legislation he's seeing is ambiguous, too open to interpretation. At the other extreme, some is so narrow that it wouldn't cover even the situation that prompts all this concern: the graduate assistant at Penn State University who told a grand jury he saw a boy being sexually assaulted in the showers of the football building.
That particular instance might not even be covered in some of the new legislation he has read, Mr. Hollander said, because a graduate assistant isn't listed as a "mandated reporter."
Ironically, a more innocent encounter might be covered. I recalled to Mr. Hollander that a few years ago, on the sidewalk outside my daughters' school, a middle school boy directed a racial slur my way. Using what I thought was my best Hugh Beaumont/Bill Cosby manner, I put my hand on his shoulder and calmly asked this kid why he'd call me that.
First Published November 17, 2011 12:00 am
