The Child Abuse Task force was one of Pennsylvania's more secretive task forces. The force supposedly was composed of professionals around PA who would meet and make recommendations to improve the changes that children in the Commonwealth would be less likely to be abused.
Until the whole Penn State scandal, it appeared that most Pennsylvanians thought that changes to the law were un-necessary. In fact, the task force it appeared to some citizens, was just created as a way for the government to smooth over the Sandusky affair. The force was supposed to meet for 15 months, which some have pointed out was probably the amount of time it took for the general public to move on and get over the "outrage" that they felt over the whole scandal.
Members of BCCYS corruption continuously called the governor's office where they were given limited information about the task force once members found out about the force. Members took to the internet to see what they could find out which was limited. Staffers attempted to call the District Attorney in Bucks County who was supposedly heading up the committee. Their calls were not returned nor were callers every informed about "public meetings".
We discovered a website about the task force by "googling". Never once did authorities in PA mention this site to callers.
http://www.childprotection.state.pa.us/news.cfm
According to this site, the task force had it's last meeting in November 2012. According to staff at Senator Mensch's office, the recommendations were used to create the bill to "overhaul" the child protective system in Pennsylvania. Basically, the bill seems to concentrate on getting people to report child abuse. From the experience of those in the corruption group, the problem is that Pennsylvanians don't report abuse. Perhaps Joe Paterno overlooked it, but most Pennsylvanians do report abuse. In fact, some report abuse simply as retaliation against others. In other cases, people have been threatened with losing their children if they report abuse by powerful Pennsylvanians. Apparently, reporting isn't the problem. It's what happens after that which is the problem. That issue was not addressed.
Here is the most recent information from Berks County about child abuse statistics in the Commonwealth. It is very enlightening. Basically, there are over 24,000 reports per year of child abuse in Pennsylvania.
http://www.co.berks.pa.us/Dept/CYS/Documents/Annual_Child_Abuse_20Report_202011.pdf
Of note is this paragraph:
Due to court activity, 73 substantiated
reports were changed from indicated to
founded, including 55 due to criminal
conviction of perpetrators. these 55
represent nearly two percent of the total
substantiated reports.
In other words, individuals had to take things to court to get proper resolution and findings were changed in court. Why does CYS even exist? Oh, to make money for the Commonwealth.
This is deeply troubling that Pennsylvania seems to believe that more laws to cover "mandated reporting" will fix the child abuse problem prevalent in Pennsylvania. In addition, it is interesting that the task force did not find that any oversite of the abuse agencies were necessary at all. It appears that the task force was created in response to Penn State, that the issues that the task force deemed were responsible at Penn State were recommended to fix a larger problem, and that the task force was disbanded.
The good police chief who was featured in a previous post about how "certain important Pennsylvanians" are protected was right. For example, Sandusky had been reported for child abuse by others. Their abuse reports were ignored.
The new legislation does not seem to address this issue: what happens when CYS doesn't do it's job? Then what? The agency, which has a budget of almost $50 million dollars in Berks County still operates without any oversite. In addition, caseworkers have immunity for being charged for things that they do.
It took almost a year for the task force recommendations to actually be turned into legislation. What a shame. PA is failing it's most vulnerable citizens. Indeed, it is just a matter of time until another "Penn State scandal" happens again or perhaps it already is happening.....
