Wow.
Ok, this is exactly why I get my news analysis from SoSH rather than the news outlets. Thank you for this--that was excellent.
Could you expand on a few things, though?
1) Could you tell us more about the CYA prosecutions are and what they entail in terms of reach and ramifications? Is the lower evidentiary burden larger a function of less punitive reach? And how far is that reach--basically, what is this adjunctive system and what is its relation to the mainstream criminal justice system? This seems fascinating and important, and I know very little about it and expect many others might be curious as well.
2) Why was the second opinion requested--is that standard? Also, how was that guy chosen? Whiffing is one thing, but your description of his findings seems to suggest a serious lack of competence for doing the evaluation--the noody becomes a pedophile at 52 part seems to especially and spectacularly misapprehend and/or make assumptions inappropriate to cases such as this.
3) Do you have any sense as to why the one report didn't make it to the CYA prosecutor but the other did? Is it possible that there was inappropriate and perhaps even criminal conduct I selective distribution of the psych reports? Or is it most likely just the bureaucratic clusterfuck which I fully recognize can happen in these institutions.
4) WHAT. THE. FUCK??????
DotB may lose his mind if he reads that post... Seriously, this might end him.
More to follow... has anyone read the Mark Twain story anout Hadleyburg?
I appreciate the kind words. It isn't often when my kind of work bubbles to the surface of societal consciousness (and even in this case, only tangentially), so I'm always happen to answer any questions and shed light on what goes on the child protective services world. I have to caution you, though, in that this body of law is extremely state specific. As a result, I'm pretty limited in what I can opine on regarding Pennsylvania CYA as it existed in the late 90's. I prosecuted cases for ACS (Administration for Children's Services) in Manhattan for 6 years and currently work for DFPS (Dept of Family and Protective Services) in Texas, doing similar but not quite the same work (I'm no longer on the front lines, and my blood pressure has adjusted accordingly). If you want to know more authoritatively about New York or Texas, I'm your guy. I can only go so far with Pennsylvania. I can say the Texas and New York systems are wildly different in many respects. That being said, there are some core concepts that any system would share.
All that makes a perfect segue into your first question. I haven't looked at the PA statute, so I can't answer conclusively as to their reach. That being said, jurisdiction is definitely limited and typically revolves around 1) legal family relationships (beat up your own kid, cops and CPS come after you, beat up your neighbor's kid and the cops come after you but not CPS) and 2) regulated child care (day care workers, foster parents, etc).
The ramifications are typically twofold. The first, immediate, ramification is the possibility of the child going into foster care (obviously not an issue in the regulated child care cases). This involves a second question, that of immediate risk. When a case comes in, it is brought to court based on whether it meets the statutory definition of child abuse or neglect. The ultimate trial will hinge on proving (or not) the actions of the respondent meet the statutory definition. Within that framework, there is a separate question of whether the child is in immediate risk of danger. Here, the Department typically has broad emergency powers - in NYC the Department could unilaterally remove the child and had to file a petition with the court within 3 days. The parent can challenge whether immediate risk exists, so you end up with a minitrial inside the big picture trial.
The second ramification is related to the central registry. Each state maintains a registry of names of people who have been found guilty of neglect or abuse. Typically, by law, individuals applying to work in certain child care positions that are defined by statute are subject to a background check where they need to be cleared through the registry. If their name is in the registry, it will impact their ability to work in regulated child care or be a foster parent. The length of time one's name is in the registry varies by state, but is usually a really long time (in NY, if memory serves, it is until the youngest child in the case turns 28. In Texas, if there is a removal your name is in there forever, if not it is 24 years from the day due process exhausts).
Sandusky, by virtue of his involvement with Second Mile, would likely have been within the jurisdiction of CYA. According to the Freeh report, CYA actually contracted with Second Mile to provide services to kids in the foster care system (I believe they even ran a group home). Had Sandusky been found guilty of abuse or neglect, he would have been placed in the Pennsylvania registry and would have been prevented from working with kids anywhere there was regulation by the state.
The evidentiary burden is lesser, for exactly the reasons you mentioned. We are a civil court, so a preponderance standard is typically used (there can, and often are, exceptions in certain instances. In NY, for instance, the burden shifts from preponderance to "clear and convincing" for terminations of parental rights and certain kinds of abuse). Also, there can be some helpful (from the perspective of the state) changes in the evidentiary law. In New York, for instance, there is a statutorily defined extra hearsay exception that applied only to our abuse/neglect cases - that is, statements made by a child to another party are admissible in court. This makes trying cases soooooo much easier. If the CPS investigator was interviewing the child, and the child said his dad hit him in the mouth and made him bleed, then the caseworker could testify in court to what the child said. I didn't need to bring the child into court. Of course, the court, as trier of fact, could assign whatever weight to the otherwise hearsay statement, but the statement would come in (I suppose I should mention these trials are bench trials - no juries - or at least they are in Texas and NY). Partly because of this, it is pretty rare to lose a case. In my six years in NY, doing probably close to a thousand cases, I never lost an abuse or neglect trial. I did lose some of the imminent risk minitrials I spoke of earlier, but never the abuse/neglect determination. That wasn't because I was some awesome attorney, hardly anyone lost cases. Now this may have been different in rural Pennsylvania versus Manhattan, and especially with a high profile respondent, but the larger point remains - the deck tends to be stacked in favor of the Department in these cases.
In relation to the criminal justice system, we often overlap. We tend to give wide berth to, and take a backseat to, the cops. This is because they tend to be better trained investigators and they have higher stakes (personal liberty is at stake). Also, when our trials run concurrently the criminal proceeding almost always goes first. Any defense attorney with half a brain would never let their client take the stand in a CPS case, and be subject to cross examination, where the statements under oath could be used against them in the criminal case. On the flip side, if the criminal case goes forward and the defendant is convicted under a beyond a reasonable doubt standard, then I can move for summary disposition in my case. The reverse is not true, since one can be guilty by a preponderance standard but not beyond a reasonable doubt.
2) The second opinion - the problem is that, to the CYA investigator, it wasn't a second opinion. If you believe him, he never was made aware of the Chambers report. Usually, one of the elements to proving abuse is there has to be some kind of injury - physical, mental, or emotional - to the child. Having the child seen by a therapist can help build up that element of the case. It is also just good practice. We're not purely in the business of running through trials and tagging people with findings. My job can often be part lawyer and part social worker. The Department's mandate is to protect the child first and foremost, but work to preserve families in marshaling and offering various services. In this case, having the child seen by a professional could help ascertain if there needed to be ongoing therapy that the worker would need to locate and make a referral for.
This Seasock guy had a contract with CYA, like any number of people who can provide services relevant to social work. I'm sure he was just picked from a list. As one might expect, the Department doesn't pay at the top of the scale and the best and brightest tend not to hold these contracts. It might have been incompetence, it might have been that Seasock was a PSU football fan and couldn't conceive that Sandusky would be a pedophile. Each is plausible to me.
3) It doesn't necessarily shock me that the report was in the hands of law enforcement but not given to the CYA investigator. They are two separate agencies, and anyone who has ever tried to deal with multiple government agencies knows how difficult it for them to share even simple information. There also tends to be a dynamic where the police department feels like they are doing the real investigation and sees the child protective investigation as amateurish or somehow lesser, so there isn't always a feeling of urgency in sharing information.
That being said, there is one oddity that sticks out to me. Standard procedure for any child protective investigation is to first contact and interview the source of the report. Basically, the entire child protective system depends on calls of suspected child abuse or neglect. Each state has its own hotline. This is where all the mandated reporter stuff comes in. Anyone can (and should) call in if they have reason to suspect abuse or neglect, though people in certain, statutorily defined occupations have an affirmative duty to call in. Once a call comes in, it is screen and if it has any merit at all, assigned to the local CPS office who assigns it to a worker. The worker then typically must initiate an investigation within a day or two, and the first step is always to contact the source of the report (if known, sometimes reports come in anonymously).
In this case, the psychiatrist who wrote the prescient report, Ms. Chambers, was the source. Which, of course, means she should have been the first one interviewed. I don't know the exact timing of when the intake call was placed, when Ms. Chambers consulted with her colleagues and made their consensus view of Sandusky and created the report, and when first contact between CYS and Ms. Chambers was, but at minimum you can expect Ms. Chambers to emphatically make her suspicions known. In fact, in the Freeh report, it specifically said that Ms. Chambers felt like the gravity of her concerns were properly felt by CYA and the police.
The one thing I can think of that might have screwed it up, from the perspective of CYA, is that the case was initally assigned to the Centre County CYA office. They decided there was a conflict of interest due to the Second Mile holding local CYA contracts, so the case was transferred to the Harrisburg office. In the midst of this transfer, it is possible the Centre County investigator first talked with Ms. Chambers and the Harrisburg investigator, when he picked up the case, saw she had been contacted and didn't do it himself. One would have hoped the first investigator would have made good notes and passed on the information obtained from Ms. Chambers to the Harrisburg investigator, but sadly those kinds of transfers are seldom smooth. If someone knows they are passing a case on, they typically don't put much effort into it. Of course, the possibility also exists that Mr. Lauro, the Harrisburg investigator, is lying through his teeth when he said he didn't know about the Chambers report.
A small point - I see no evidence that a CYA prosecutor ever saw this case. In fact, I'd be shocked if one did. Again, I don't know the PA system specifically, but cases are usually only brought to attorneys at the very end, once everything is lined up. In a case where they decide there isn't enough there to pursue (which is the majority of cases - people love calling in reports, most of which are bogus), an attorney would never know it existed.
Hope all this helps. It's only my somewhat limited, outsider, perspective. If you have any other questions, I'm happy to answer them.