Mo. Senate backs state probes of child-on-child abuse

Missouri senators on Tuesday endorsed a bill giving the state's Children's Division more authority to investigate complaints that a juvenile has molested or abused another child.

A final vote is needed to send the bill to the House, but the Senate's voice vote Tuesday means Sen. Jeanie Riddle's bill can't be amended anymore.

"We currently have a grave situation that needs to be rectified," Riddle, R-Mokane, told colleagues. "A gap exists in the system for reporting and assessing situations where juveniles are sexually abusing other juveniles."

When the Senate's Seniors, Families and Children Committee heard the bill two weeks ago, Becky Wekenborg of Jefferson City was the only person telling a story of a child in her family being an abuse victim of another child.

"I have since found out that this has happened, or is currently happening, to two other families in my district," Riddle said Tuesday morning.

"And, upon digging into this issue, we have discovered a problem in our legal and social services system that lets children slip through the cracks. These children are hurting other children and not getting help themselves."

Senate Judiciary Chairman Bob Dixon, R-Springfield, applauded Riddle for introducing the bill.

"There are a lot of details that the folks who work in the area of offering healing to child abuse victims," Dixon said, "and law enforcement who have to deal with a lot of the facts and the details, the evil that many children unfortunately have to live through."

Riddle noted current state laws provide for investigations and possible charges when an adult sexually abuses a child.

However, because juveniles are not under the "care, custody and control" of each other, the state is powerless to do much more than check into a complaint.

"The result is that children who are being abused by an adult receive one response, and children who are being sexually abused by another juvenile receive a completely different, and often inadequate, response," Riddle said. "The juvenile office or the law enforcement agency have no statutory obligation to investigate, and do not have the capacity to provide services to the family in cases involving young children."

Her bill would let the Children's Division write rules to cover the child-on-child abuse situation and to provide counseling or other assistance to help the abuser stop.

"Intervening appropriately with juveniles with problem sexual behaviors is an opportunity to prevent generations of child sexual abuse," Riddle said. "These juveniles have, often, been sexually abused themselves and desperately need a positive, therapeutic response that gives them the opportunity to not continue to repeat those abusive patterns.

"Research shows that juveniles with problem sexual behaviors have tremendous rehabilitative potential, and our state must begin to invest in creating a system to identify and treat these young offenders."

Sen. Ed Emery, R-Lamar, wondered if families shouldn't be allowed to resolve the issues, without requiring the state's intervention.

"We have reports being filed, but nobody's working with the kids," Riddle said, adding she saw some of the results of the abuse in her classrooms before she retired from teaching in 2006.

Sen. Joe Keaveny, D-St. Louis, worried the law would "start branding 10-year-old boys and girls with having sexual problems."

Riddle said: "The purpose of this bill is for our child-advocacy agency to go in and address this with the families, so they can help these kids."

Shortly after the Senate gave its first-round approval to the bill, the House Children and Families Committee heard testimony on the companion bill sponsored by Rep. Bill Lant, R-Pineville, but took no action on it.