BATON ROUGE -- The Louisiana Task Force on Child Abuse Investigation Processes met Friday with an opportunity for public testimony. According to Senate Resolution 167, the task force was created to study the methods, systems, investigative techniques, and management of investigations involving sexual abuse of children and to propose recommendations for improving current processes.

One of the discussions at Friday's meeting was around a very sensitive case regarding the alleged abuse of a 14-year-old with autism in Jefferson Parish last year. The story revealed some gaps in communications between several organizations.

Dr. Kim Kavanagh, who works in an outpatient psychiatry clinic, told the story of the 14-year-old, whom she referred to as Timmy to protect their identity.

"Timmy was attending 8th grade at a public school in a special education classroom with a 1 to 1 paraprofessional. In November 2023, Timmy started having violent episodes and an abrupt change in his behavior," Kavanagh said.

Several months later, Kavanagh said that Timmy was able to reveal that his paraprofessional, whom Kavanagh referred to as "Mr. H," had made Timmy touch him inappropriately.

"More than once, and it first happened in seventh grade," Kavanagh said.

Kavanagh told the task force that she had made a report to the Department of Child and Family Services, or DCFS. She added that she made a second in April 2024 as Timmy started to reveal more information about what had happened.

"I got a letter back from DCFS dated April 2, 2024, that said this letter will be sent to law enforcement for their consideration," Kavanagh said.

According to Kavanagh, she found out that in August, Timmy's family was never contacted by DCFS, and that neither the school nor law enforcement had notified them if Mr. H was arrested or was still working at the school.

"I called DCFS and discussed my concern for the safety of the children at the school. The DCFS workers stated they do not investigate abuse made at school. Only abuse at home, or by caregivers that are not teachers, so that is why it was probably sent to police," Kavanagh said.

Kavanagh asked them what she should do to protect other children at the school.

"DCFS stated I should assume that the school knows nothing and make sure that they are aware of what the child reported to me," Kavanagh said.

She told the task force she had called the school and that the principal was horrified to find out that the teacher had not been arrested.

"He stated that the teacher was fired and was hoping that Timmy would come back to school. I said Timmy won't go back to school if he thinks the man still works there," Kavanagh said.

Dr. Kavanagh said she ended up speaking with the District Attorney.

"The DA explained that when a victim makes an allegation of child sexual assault, then law enforcement investigates, and in that parish, it's presented to a multi-disciplinary meeting with the DCFS, the child advocacy center, the district attorney, and law enforcement. Then the law enforcement agency decides if an arrest can be made," Kavanagh said.

According to Kavanagh, the head DA explained to her that since no arrest was made, she was not made aware of the case. Kavanagh expressed that because the family wasn't notified, and no one had gotten collateral information from her or the pediatrician, the investigation did not seem thorough.

Erika Dupepe, director of the Jefferson Children's Advocacy Center, said multi-disciplinary teams like hers bring together law enforcement, DCFS, and medical professionals, but that law enforcement often makes the final decision.

"We are a neutral facility, and we cannot make a determination if something has happened. All we can do is advocate for the rights of the child and ensure, to the best of our ability, that the teen is actually communicating and working together. That does not always happen. Unfortunately, law enforcement, at times, may make their own determination, regardless of whether or not a medical provider is providing actual physical information in their report, regardless of whether or not child protection is able to do anything, regardless of whether or not the district attorney's office is requesting a case be submitted to them," Dupepe said.

Dupepe was asked if that's in every parish. She responded by saying they often times encourage law enforcement to submit it to the district attorney's office for a review. 

She added that not all law enforcement jurisdictions decide to do that and that in some instances, they are the ones that make that final determination. 

"That's very troubling. That is very problematic for me on multiple levels," State Senator Regina Barrow (D - Baton Rouge) said. 

She had several suggestions she recommended to the task force. One of them was to have fewer, but more highly trained DCFS workers who can quickly make decisions on when a situation is an emergency and how to proceed.

"But the turnover rate at DCFS right now is so high that I've had patients and parents wait months to get in to see me to ask if they can see their child again unsupervised, when I have nothing to do with that. I don't even know them, you know. So then I go to DCFS and find out that their case worker no longer works at DCFS and there's no new worker they have been assigned to," Kavanagh said.

Throughout the time that Kavanagh was revealing this information, there was quite a lot of shock and sadness from the task force.

"Communication that's another thing. I mean, where is common sense on communicating with each other when it comes to children? So if there is something that is keeping us from doing that, then I would like to work on legislation to change this because this is ridiculous," State Rep. Kathy Edmonston (R - Gonzales) said.

Task Force Member Dr. Rebecca Hook, who is also the Medical Director for DCFS, responded to the suggestions, saying there were several things that Kavanagh brought up that the task force should know.

"Medical providers are, we know we are mandatory reporters, but we are not by law required to take any certain particular training, and so there are many health care providers that talked to me and say I don't know who to report to," Dr. Hook said.

Hook believes that the task force should look into whether there needs to be some kind of mandatory reporter training that is mandated for healthcare professionals, since they do see a large portion of these types of cases.

"I think that would really help to solve some of these issues where maybe a duel report needed to be made or perhaps a report should've been made to law enforcement because if it is a criminal act, then the report should be made to law enforcement, if you make that report to DCFS, then yes we should refer that report to law enforcement. In the past, the way that that happened varied across the state because, well, there are actually some law enforcement agencies that they're not manned 24 hours a day," King said.

Kavanagh revealed she had only reported to DCFS.

"I actually never reported to law enforcement, and that is my fault because I have never been taught to do that. I mean, I did five years of training at Tulane. I have been out on my own for seven years, and I have yet to meet another doctor who knew that if DCFS referred to law enforcement, then the doctor has to report a second time, or law enforcement will never know you're the one who reported. It doesn't clearly state that in the letter, and I was never taught that," Kavanagh said.

Senator Barrow said they've clarified that now in law.

Hook says that right now they are required to call within 24 hours to refer anything to law enforcement, but are facing some challenges with that.

"We've got workarounds. Once it's referred, we don't really have control over where it goes from there," Hook said.

Hook also brought up that she thinks that the task force should look into multi-disciplinary investigations.

"Make sure we're doing this the same across the state because there are high variants of how these types of cases are being investigated and followed up across the state," Hook said.

One thing that Hook strongly encouraged was that any healthcare professional, when it pertains to an investigation, should have those conversations with DCFS investigators because it helps them spend more time to make a determination in matters such as these.

"The default should be to believe in the child, but sometimes that's all we have to go on initially is that child's report, and so if we're not getting a lot of information back from the healthcare providers or from our community stakeholders, it's really difficult to complete that investigation," Hook said.