[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 51 (Thursday, March 18, 2021)]
[House]
[Page H1572]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               CHILD ABUSE LEGISLATION NEEDS TO BE FIXED

  (Mr. LaMALFA asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, earlier this week, the House voted on H.R. 
485, Stronger CAPTA, a reauthorization of the Child Abuse Protection 
and Treatment Act.
  Abuse is obviously a horrible thing that no child should have to 
suffer. However, this legislation has multiple issues which I call on 
the Senate to fix. Notably, it would create a national registry of 
child abuse and neglect.
  Now, this sounds good, but under current law, a person does not need 
to be convicted or even charged with a crime to be put on a State abuse 
registry, which leads to many parents being added due to misfiled 
paperwork or perhaps overzealous CPS workers.
  Homeschooling parents in particular face this issue, and an appeal 
can take months or even years to get a name removed from the list. By 
nationalizing State registries, this problem will spread nationwide 
without a fix.
  The legislation attempts to address this concern by creating a 
working group to study and make recommendations on due process 
concerns, but that is not a sufficient safeguard for Americans' due 
process rights.
  A 2009 HHS report on the feasibility of a national child abuse 
registry noted that a national registry would be plagued by false 
positives, where an innocent person sharing a name with an abuser would 
be flagged in background searches.
  I call on the Senate to fix this legislation.

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