I’ve worked with survivors of child abuse for over a decade. I can attest that confidentiality, privacy and having safe adults to turn to are crucial for abuse disclosures. For many children experiencing abuse or harm at home, a trusted adult at school may be the only person who recognizes that something is wrong and can help connect them with support.
Initiative 001 (IL26-001), on your November ballot, would remove commonsense record protections for victims of child abuse. The changes it makes would allow abusers who have been accused of, or even charged with raping, beating or otherwise harming their child to access their victims’ social work and counseling records, putting these vulnerable kids in more danger.
It’s hard to see how anyone would want to remove safeguards designed to protect children. The backers of this initiative are playing politics in order to distract voters from the real issues families are facing, like rising costs. It’s important for voters to get the facts, not just the campaign narrative that I-001 backers are pushing.
I-001 would put children at greater risk by discouraging them from seeking help at school. While most parents are loving, sadly child abuse is more widespread than most realize — there are more than 100,000 reports of abuse each year in Washington. Children are often afraid to report abuse, or don’t know what is happening to them is abuse. Under I-001 even fewer students facing abuse, including child sexual abuse, would seek help from trusted adults at school. We should not force schools to hand over sensitive information about kids to their abusers, but that’s what it does.
I-001 is so poorly written that it actually removes parents’ rights. As The Seattle Times editorial board pointed out in its opposition to this initiative, I-001 repeals Washington’s parents’ rights laws and replaces them with language taken nearly verbatim from Louisiana.
The state attorney general’s analysis found that I-001 removes parents’ guarantee of “immediate notification” when their child is a crime victim and replaces it with a much weaker standard of notification. “If a student is the victim of a serious crime at school, parents should not have to wait to find out and any delay could cause further harm to the student,” says former Snohomish County Sheriff John Lovick, now a state senator.
Delayed notification only adds to a child’s trauma and can prevent them from getting immediate help and support from loved ones and professionals. If a student is the victim of a serious crime at school, parents should not have to wait to find out.
Forcing schools to release students’ counseling and other records puts already vulnerable children in danger of further abuse. While it is understandable that most parents want to know what is happening with their kids in order to help them, the fact is that some parents abuse or kick out their child if they find out they are LGBTQ+. In fact, 40% of LGBTQ+ homeless youth were forced out of their homes because of their identities, putting these youth at higher risk for sexual assault.
I-001 does the opposite of keeping our children safe. That’s why organizations across the state, including the Washington State PTA, the League of Women Voters, Washington State Nurses Association, more than 100 doctors and medical care providers and Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates are opposing I-001.
No matter what your political affiliation, you can protect children from increased risks of harm by voting no on this ill-conceived initiative that would remove vital protections for youth to disclose abuse and get help from trusted adults.
