See No Evil, Speak No Evil: Georgia Supreme Court Narrows Requirements for Mandatory Reporters in May v. State

• Citation: Vol. 66 No. 3
• Publication year: 2015

See No Evil, Speak No Evil: Georgia Supreme Court Narrows Requirements for Mandatory Reporters in May v. State

Emily L. Evett

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CASENOTE

See No Evil, Speak No Evil: Georgia Supreme Court Narrows Requirements for Mandatory Reporters in May v. State

I. Introduction

Georgia's mandatory reporting statute¹ requires twenty-six professionals, including teachers, to report any suspected child abuse to proper authorities. Even though the statute seemingly requires these professionals to report all child abuse, even if they have no professional relationship with the child, no Georgia appellate court had ever addressed the question of whether there must be a professional relationship established for a duty to report abuse to develop. In May v. State,² a 2014 opinion, the Georgia Supreme Court clarified that although it is unclear from the lack of case law how trial courts have interpreted the statute, the correct interpretation only requires professionals to report child abuse of children to whom they "attend" in direct connection with their employment as listed in the mandatory reporting statute.

II. Factual Background

In 2010, Robert Morrow initiated an inappropriate and illegal sexual relationship with a sixteen-year-old student at River Ridge High School. The student, P.D.M., met Morrow in the ninth grade when he taught as a paraprofessional in her class. The following year, during the student's tenth grade year, Morrow began making sexual advances towards her. Over the student's Christmas break, Morrow and P.D.M. met in parking lots and cul-de-sacs at least three separate times to engage in sexual conduct. Morrow initiated the first encounter by text messaging P.M.D.,

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picking her up from a party, and driving her to a Publix parking lot where they engaged in sexual conduct. One week later, the second incident occurred when the two met at a fitness facility parking lot and P.D.M. rubbed Morrow's penis. While the relationship was mostly sexual, at one point, Morrow took P.D.M. shopping for clothes at Perimeter Mall. However, afterwards Morrow drove them to a neighborhood cul-de-sac where their sexual relationship escalated to vaginal intercourse.³

Each of the sexual encounters between Morrow and P.D.M. occurred during the school's Christmas break, after which P.D.M. transferred to a high school in another school district, Roswell High School.⁴ It is unclear whether P.D.M. was still considered a student at River Ridge during the Christmas break or if she had effectively transferred out of the school at the end of classes in December 2010.⁵ Regardless, in January 2011, after the student began attending Roswell High, P.D.M. attended a basketball game at River Ridge where she saw an old teacher, Kristin May, and told her about her sexual relationship with Morrow the previous school term. The next contact between May and P.D.M. occurred in May 2011, when May emailed P.D.M. asking if she and Morrow had continued their sexual relationship. At no point did May report the relationship to school administrators or authorities.⁶

For unknown reasons, P.D.M. reported her relationship with Morrow to the Woodstock Police Department on July 26, 2011, seven months after the relationship began. Morrow later admitted having a sexual relationship with P.D.M. and police subsequently arrested him, resulting in an indictment in Cherokee County. May admitted to authorities that P.D.M. confided in her about the sexual relationship with Morrow in January 2011, and that she promised both P.D.M. and Morrow that she would not tell anyone about the sexual relationship between the two.⁷ On August 10, 2011, Cherokee County authorities issued an arrest warrant against May for "Failure to Report under O.C.G.A. § 19-7-5."⁸ May filed pleas in bar and a demurrer, both of which were denied by the Superior Court in March 2013. May's application for interlocutory

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review in the Georgia Court of Appeals was denied, and she subsequently filed a petition for writ of certiorari. The Georgia Supreme Court unanimously granted certiorari on October 7, 2013 and specifically requested arguments regarding whether teachers are mandatory reporters "in all circumstances."⁹

In its unanimous decision, the supreme court answered the question by interpreting the statute's reporting requirements narrowly: school teachers are only mandatory reporters to the extent they attend to the alleged child abuse victim in connection with their employment by which they are identified in the statute as a mandatory reporter.¹⁰

III. Legal Background

A. Before 1965: Why Mandatory Reporting Statutes Were Created

Prior to the enactment of its mandatory reporter statute, Georgia did not legally require any citizen to report child abuse, and common law did not place a duty to report child abuse on any person not currently obligated to watch over children.¹¹ The common law did, however, require those persons accepting the responsibility of attending to, caring for, or supervising a child to reasonably provide for the child's safety.¹² This mixture of duties was common among the states but was not codified as law in the United States until the mid-1960s.¹³

In 1962, a doctor published a revolutionary article entitled The Battered Child Syndrome,¹⁴ which recognized the existence of "child abuse" as a medical condition for the first time in U.S. history.¹⁵ At the same time, the Children's Bureau of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare developed and published a model statute for state legislatures that suggested making it a requirement for all doctors and health care employees to report any suspicion of child abuse and stressed the need for subjecting those physicians who neglected to report any suspicious abuse subject to criminal liability.¹⁶ These simultaneous

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publications sparked immense public interest in the welfare and protection of children, specifically the states' duties to provide for such interests.¹⁷ As a result, state governments quickly began enacting mandatory reporting laws.¹⁸ By 1967, every state enacted some form of mandatory reporting statute.¹⁹

B. Georgia's Version: From Ga. Code Ann. § 74-111 to O.C.G.A. § 19-7-5

After this growing demand for increased protection for children, the Georgia General Assembly enacted Georgia's first mandatory reporting statute in 1965.²⁰ The statute was very similar to other states' new mandatory reporting statutes because it only identified categories of professionals to be mandatory reporters that were related to the health care profession.²¹ Specifically, Georgia's statute required physicians, doctors of medicine, licensed osteopathic physicians, intern residents, public health nurses, and public welfare workers to report child abuse.²² The law required these professionals to report suspected abuse of children under the age of twelve to police authorities or any child

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welfare agency.²³ Civil and criminal immunity were granted to those mandatory reporters that reported suspected child abuse under this statute "in good faith."²⁴ The statute's purpose remains generally untouched since its enactment in 1965: to ensure the protection of children by the state and its agencies after the abuse is brought to their attention.²⁵ The statute was, and still is, to be liberally construed" in order to conform to the statute's broad purpose.²⁶

Since its enactment in 1965, the legislature has substantially revised the mandatory reporter statute over sixteen times in order to expand the categories of reporters, change the type of immunity granted to those reporters, change the process for making such reports, and add a permissive reporter category.²⁷ The statute was first amended three years after its enactment by adding dentists and podiatrists to the list of professionals.²⁸ Up to this point, the legislature only included professionals in the list that were members of the health care profession.²⁹ In 1973, the legislature expanded the statute to include, for the first time, professionals who were not in the health industry, including school system employees, and county and city employees.³⁰ Further, the statute now required that any other professional that is "charged with the responsibility for the health, welfare or education of a child"

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must also report child abuse.³¹ The age range of children covered under the statute was changed from twelve-years-old to eighteen-years-old.³² This expansion was implemented based on the rationale that these particular professionals are most likely to be in regular contact with at-risk children and will be more likely to notice the more subtle changes that occur in children who are being abused.³³

The 1970s brought a new wave of statutory reform in Georgia. These changes were specifically influenced by Congress's creation of the federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1974 (CAPTA).³⁴ This federal statute guided the state legislatures to promote "three national goals for child protection:" (1) safety of children, (2) permanency of those children in stable homes, and (3) child and family well-being.³⁵ In relevant part, CAPTA explained that federal funding would be granted to state child welfare agencies only if the states would, among other requirements, include a provision for criminal and civil immunity in their mandatory reporting statutes and also explain the statute's purpose in the overall child welfare scheme.³⁶

In 1974, the legislature completely revised and re-categorized Georgia's mandatory reporting statute to specifically include school teachers, school administrators, child-care personnel, and law enforcement to the list of mandatory reporters of child abuse.³⁷ Because the list of mandatory reporters was expanded so broadly, the statutory phrase requiring children to be brought to the professionals for "examination, care or treatment" was removed entirely.³⁸ However, the statutory scheme remained the same—the professional...