Establishment and Maintenance of Central Registries for Child Abuse or Neglect Reports - Louisiana
Establishment
Citation: Children's Code Art. 616; 616.2
The Department of Children and Family Services shall maintain a State repository of all reports of abuse and neglect. Within the State repository, the department shall maintain a State central registry of certain justified reports of abuse and neglect as set forth in rules promulgated by the department.
The Bureau of Identification and Information in the Office of State Police shall maintain a central index registry of all reports of sexual abuse obtained in accordance with article 615.1.
Purpose
Citation: Children's Code Art. 616; 616.2
The central repository's purpose, among other uses, is to provide information on past reports of abuse or neglect to assist in the proper evaluation of current reports that may include a pattern of incidents.
Upon the written request of the court during its evaluation of an individual applying to work as a court-appointed special advocate (CASA) and with the applicant's consent, the department shall search the central registry and report to the court any justified report of abuse or neglect alleging that the applicant is a perpetrator.
Information from investigations of reports that are inconclusive may be disclosed, with the applicant's written consent, for the limited purposes of evaluating the applicant to be a CASA volunteer, a foster parent, an adoptive parent, or a caregiver.
The purpose of the central index registry is to provide information on past reports of child sexual abuse to assist in the proper evaluation of current reports of abuse that may include a pattern of incidents and that may prove admissible in a criminal prosecution.
Contents
Citation: Children's Code Art. 616
The State repository shall contain all reports of child abuse and neglect. The State central registry shall contain certain justified reports of abuse and neglect as set forth in rules promulgated by the department.
Effective August 1, 2017, the name of an individual who is determined to be a perpetrator of abuse or neglect shall not be placed on the State central registry until that individual's administrative appeals are exhausted. All decisions rendered by an administrative law judge are final, and the decisions shall exhaust the individual's administrative remedy.
Maintenance
Citation: Children's Code Art. 616
When the department determines, after an investigation, that the report does appear to be justified, any subsequent adjudication by a court that dismisses a petition for a child in need of care involving a report shall be added to the registry. Records shall be maintained during the pendency of any litigation involving those records.
The Department of Public Safety and Corrections shall maintain all information regarding sexual abuse reports for 10 years from the date of receipt of the report unless a subsequent report is received during that time, in which case, information from all reports will be maintained indefinitely.