National False Claims Database

The Interim Report to the Congress on the Feasibility of a National Child Abuse Registry published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, May 2009, should be called by another name if it ever makes it through Congress.

I would like to propose to call it the "National False Claims Database", a lawyers wet dream.

In order for an individual to be placed on the states central registry, one need only have a finger pointed in one's general direction, and, voila, you are on the central registry for abuse and neglect.

Now, the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Reauthorization Act of 2009 seems to have resurfaced in the wake of discussions to reauthorize CAPTA (Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act).

Well, a national database for child sex offenders is a popular and utilitarian endeavor but not for a child abuse national registry.

Using my favorite state as a working example, let's look at Michigan:

MCL 28.724 is an excerpt of the Sex Offenders Registration Act. The key word in said act is convicted. A person who is convicted in a court of law of an offense pursuant to the act is required to register with this central registry.

MCL 722.628d(4) states in relevant part: "If following a field investigation the department determines that there is a preponderance of evidence that an individual listed in subsection (3) was the perpetrator of child abuse or neglect, the department shall list the perpetrator of the child abuse or neglect on the central registry."

Simply put, a person is placed on the Central Registry of Abuse and Neglect of a child without due process of the courts. What may not be publicly known is that there are many individuals who were never notified that they are on the Central Registry and, even moreso, there are individuals who remain on this Central Registry when the case was dismissed.

As Michigan slowly departs from the institutionalized philosophy that poverty is abuse and neglect, the probability that many, many individuals have been listed on this eternal registry for being poor will be significant.

So, what happens is that the only way the state can provide services to needy children and parents is to create a "new and improved" federal funding-maximizing scheme. Removing a person from the central registry puts Michigan is a compromising situation: If the state removes a person from the central registry when there were no charges filed or evidence presented and the child had to remain in the foster care system, that would be a billboard announcement for ineligibility of funding (fraud) and due process violations, to name a few.

This is what is called the origin of child welfare federal false claims, or the National False Claims Database, a law firm's wet dream.

National Child Abuse Registry Feasibility Report 2009