Ashcroft urges feds to recognize address confidentiality program

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft wants to see more protections for the 1,500 people who participate in Missouri's "Safe At Home" program, which provides alternative addresses to participants who are victims of some kinds of abuse or assault - as well as for those who participate in similar programs around the country.

Ashcroft's office oversees the Missouri program.

"Under this program, there is no federal protection," he told the News Tribune last week. "So, if an individual is in this program and a federal court, in a federal civil matter, requests their address, there is no protection against disclosing that.

"Federal agencies are not required by law to follow state address confidentiality programs."

Ashcroft already is working to change that.

At the National Association of Secretaries of State conference this weekend in Indianapolis, he was asking fellow secretaries of state to support a resolution urging Congress to pass a law requiring the federal courts and U.S. government agencies to recognize the confidential addresses under the various state programs.

The National Conference of State Legislatures noted last year that Missouri's program is one of 39 state address confidentiality services in the United States.

Ashcroft explained during an interview last week the laws vary from state to state, but the programs generally are designed "to protect people who have been victimized," by hiding their home addresses from others.

Since 2007, Missouri's law has made the program available to victims "of domestic violence, rape, sexual assault or stalking" - and human trafficking victims were added last year.

"They use a P.O. Box address that we give them, and all that 1st class mail, registered mail (and) their legal process if there's a court case is collected by the secretary of state's office," Ashcroft said, "and then we send it off to their actual, physical address.

"So, they get their mail - but that address is not made public in ways that might harm them."

Ashcroft emphasized his proposed resolution isn't asking for a federal takeover of the state programs, "or to mandate how it's done, (because) the states know how to run these programs. We just don't want these (program participants) to have to give out their addresses publicly under the wrong circumstances."

Missouri's program jumped into the spotlight this year when St. Louis County Circuit Judge Sandra Farragut-Hemphill ordered the husband and wife in a divorce case to trade their home addresses with each other and with the guardian ad litem, a lawyer appointed by the court to protect their child's legal interests in the divorce battle.

The husband filed for the divorce in December 2015, and the wife joined the Safe At Home program in April 2016 - and objected to Farragut-Hemphill's order to disclose her address.

The News Tribune generally does not identify sexual assault victims and in this and other stories has not identified either the husband or wife in the St. Louis County divorce case by name.

Ashcroft's office asked to join the case after the judge twice had ordered the wife to disclose her address. Farragut-Hemphill denied those attempts, and the Eastern District appeals court in St. Louis and the state Supreme Court declined to issue an order requiring the judge to add the secretary of state's office as an intervenor.

In motions asking both of those courts to issue the order, Attorney General Josh Hawley's office noted state law already says once a person is certified as a program participant, "state and local agencies and the courts shall accept the designated address as a program participant's address when creating a new public record."

The current law also gives the secretary of state authority to release the information under certain circumstances, including a "court order that specifically orders the disclosure of a particular program participant's address and mailing address and the reasons stated for the disclosure."

Farragut-Hemphill's order was directed to the couple, not the secretary of state.

In last week's interview, Ashcroft noted the Supreme Court two years ago this month ruled - in a case involving a request to remove a man's name from the Sex Offender registry - state law gives the attorney general's office the power to "appear and interplead, answer or defend, in any proceeding or tribunal in which the state's interests are involved."

On Thursday, Gov. Eric Greitens signed a bill giving the secretary of state's office an automatic right to intervene in civil cases where the Safe At Home program is an issue.

Ashcroft said the current law makes the participants' real addresses and personal information closed records under Missouri's Sunshine Law, so they can't be released to the media or the general public.

Still, he said, his office is reviewing the current law, to see if the Legislature needs "to increase the protection for any data that we might have."

Joining the Safe At Home program is not permanent.

Under the Missouri law, "a program participant is certified for four years following the date of initial certification" but can re-apply.

"The people who have been in the program are ecstatic about it," Ashcroft told the News Tribune. "I don't think we'll ever know how important and beneficial this program is."

He added: "Far too often, people who end up being killed by domestic violence" knew their attacker.

"If abusers can't find the victims, that's a great way to help stop that process."