Joint State Agencies: Oct. 8, 2025

Senator Scott Flippo All right. The chair sees a quorum. We’re going to call this meeting the Senate and House Joint State Agencies Committee meeting to order. With that I want to start off, we’re going to recognize Representative Ladyman for a point of personal privilege. Representative Ladyman, you’re recognized. 

Representative Jack Ladyman Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m over here in the corner over here. I want to recognize the group that’s with us today. We have the clinical instructor Shaina Meyer and the students that are the occupational therapy students from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. So if you would help me recognize the students that are here today. 

Senator Scott Flippo So are y’all getting punished for something, or are you just coming down here to watch your state government in action because it’s just a fun thing to do? The chair doesn’t believe that, but we’re happy to have you guys here either way. Thank you for being here. All right. 

First up, consideration of a motion to authorize the special expenses incurred by this committee. Do I have a motion? Got a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Opposed? All right. Motion to approve May 22, 2024, meeting minutes. Got a motion. See a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Opposed, like sign. All right. Minutes have been adopted. 

DHS Child Abuse Case in Baxter County

I do want to welcome everybody here today. Before we get started, I want to say this, that I don’t think there’s a person in this room that doesn’t care about the well-being of this state’s children and youth. And these are difficult times. 

I understand nothing’s perfect, but whether it’s on the legislative end– and that’s DHS, DCFS, State Police, prosecutors, anything– I think the important thing is that when the system fails the children, it fails all of us. And that human error is to be expected from time to time. But with human error comes accountability. And I think that’s what the citizens of the state of Arkansas want is, they don’t want perfection, they want accountability.

 And so today I’m looking forward to a fruitful and productive meeting and conversation to look for areas in where we can get better at serving our state’s most vulnerable population. And with that, I’ll ask my co-chair, Representative Gazaway, if he has any comments. He is good. All right. 

So starting up, we’re going to bring in prosecuting attorney David Ethredge from the 14th Judicial District. David, come on up here. Full disclosure, members, I’ve known David for about 30 years, so you better not have any old photographs of me, David. Or stories. I do have a mother, and I do not need you to call her, David. All right, if you’ll introduce yourself and your position for the record.  

Prosecutor’s Perspective

David Ethredge My name is David Ethredge. I am the elected prosecuting attorney for the 14th Judicial District here in the state of Arkansas. 

Senator Scott Flippo Thank you, David. 

Senator Scott Flippo Mr. Ethredge, just to start with, if you would, just wouldn’t mind walking this committee through about how your office works with DCFS and State Police when it comes to cases against children or cases where there’s alleged maltreatment or abuse. 

David Ethredge My office will receive those reports in various forms and fashion. A great number of the times we receive those reports, they are coming from reports generated by the Department of Human Services or from the Department of Crimes Against Children Division of the Arkansas State Police. 

In addition, we will get those reports at times from local law enforcement, whether that be city police, county police, all those individuals who are wanting to do a job to try to investigate issues that would have occurred relating to a child or to a child maltreatment allegation. 

Senator Scott Flippo Okay. Now there was a case there in Mountain Home and Baxter County that you and I are both well aware of. And I understand that that’s an active case and so there’s plenty of details that we’re not able to go into. But if you can’t give us the 30,000-foot view of just a little bit of the ins and outs that happened there and how your office was communicating with State Police and DCFS during that time. 

David Ethredge The particular case we’re talking about is an active case. There are certain things we can speak about, and I will. That case came into our office as a result of an investigation by the officers of the Mountain Home Police Department who had done an outstanding job going out and trying to identify the situation. 

Based upon that investigation, it was identified there was a child that had been in a situation that they should not have been in. That resulted in us filing charges against the two individuals who were responsible for this child’s care. And as a result of that happening, we started investigating how we reached that point. 

And in doing so, we identified that this child and his situation had been made known to individuals within state agencies for at least 29 previous contacts. And we could not identify in those 29 previous contacts that there had been action taken that we felt like were appropriate to protect that child. 

Senator Scott Flippo So Mr. Ethredge, explain to me the process. So it was Mountain Home Police Department that did the investigation. This young man and his guardians resided in the city limits there of Mountain Home. 

David Ethredge That is correct. 

Senator Scott Flippo So, was it the 29th call to the maltreatment child abuse registry that elicited somebody from that end reaching out to Mountain Home Police Department? 

David Ethredge That is not what happened here. This happened because there had been a complaint about issues taking place inside of that particular location. And as a result of that, Mountain Home Police Department went out on a call and made the investigation and found what had taken place. And then we proceeded to do the investigation. I hate to say, Mountain Home Police Department did investigation backwards trying to find out what history existed for the abuse of this particular individual. 

Senator Scott Flippo Thank you. Co-chair Gazaway, do you have a question? 

Representative Jimmy Gazaway Thank you, Mr. Chair. So prosecutor Ethredge, of course, you and I have also known each other for quite some time as a former prosecutor myself. Can you talk with us a little bit about the facts of the case that are in the public domain already? Because what I’ve heard, this was just horrendous. This was akin to torture. 

And I think for the public who may be unaware of the specific circumstances of this case, it would be helpful. Again, not asking you to disclose anything that would be confidential. But at least what’s in the public domain, I think it would be helpful for the public to hear just how horrific this case is. 

David Ethredge Absolutely. The things that were in the public domain is based on, again, the investigation that was done by the officers of the Mountain Home Police Department. And you’re going to hear me say their name a lot because I am grateful for the work they did. This would not have happened and gotten us to the place we were had they not done the work that was accomplished in this. 

And I want to make that very clear because I can’t do what I do without them. And I’m grateful. In this particular case, we charged these individuals with 112 counts of false imprisonment for this child. We had charged them with endangering the welfare of a minor, permitting abuse of a minor, and we have now amended the charges to charge them also with kidnapping. 

Representative Jimmy Gazaway So my understanding is, at least the facts that I’ve seen reported in the press so I don’t think that there’s any secret here or confidentiality here, but that this child, and I can’t remember the age, relatively young, was kept locked in a bathroom by a ratchet strap in the bathroom, was only allowed to eat on school days, missed a lot of school, was severely or was maybe malnourished and small for his or her age. And there were, I think, some other facts that, once again, were really just horrific in my mind. So can you kind of expound upon that? 

David Ethredge The statements you have made are correct with the knowledge that we have of how his history transpired. We found that he had been engaged by these individuals, the two defendants in this case, over a substantial period of time, giving him the same type of treatment or lack of treatment, was being malnourished, was not being fed. 

We found that he was not being allowed to go to school at times. He was being restrained within the room that we have charged him with for substantial periods of time. The best we can tell, the only place of relief this child had would have been when he went to school and was away from this home situation. 

Representative Jimmy Gazaway And how old was the child and what was his relationship to the two adults who were charged in this case? 

David Ethredge The child, I believe, now is 14 years of age. At the time we got involved, he was younger than that, of course. He was a non-biological family member of these individuals. One individual had a guardianship over this particular child. 

Representative Jimmy Gazaway Thank you. 

Senator Scott Flippo Senator Clark, you are recognized for a question. 

Senator Alan Clark Okay, so Mr. Ethredgee, this is abuse, not neglect, correct? 

David Ethredge I’m not here to make that determination, Senator Clark. But if you’re asking my opinion, yes sir, it is. 

Senator Alan Clark I’m asking your opinion. 

David Ethredge Yes, sir. 

Senator Alan Clark What was the age when y’all got involved? 

David Ethredge When we became involved he was 13 years of age, sir. 

Senator Alan Clark 13. And were complaints made before y’all got involved? 

David Ethredge Yes, sir, there were. 

Senator Alan Clark How far did that go back? 

David Ethredge I don’t know the exact time. We know there have been 29 separate complaints made across00 but I keep using the term North Arkansas. He at one time was located in northwest Arkansas. Complaints were made there and then complaints were made when he moved to the Baxter County area also, sir. 

Senator Alan Clark So the complaints were made in a different community? 

David Ethredge Yes, sir. 

Senator Alan Clark And then the community where y’all found it? 

Senator Scott Flippo Yes, sir, that is correct. 

Senator Alan Clark All right, that’s all for now. Thank you. 

Senator Scott Flippo Senator Clark, we’ll have DCFS up here in a little bit to answer that question for you. But I do believe that there are 29 calls to the maltreatment abuse registry, then those data back beginning in sometime 2013. I’m not sure about the exact timeline, but I do believe they go back starting to sometime in 2013. 

Senator Alan Clark Okay, thank you. I may have more questions for this witness after they come, if that’s okay, Mr. Chair. 

Senator Scott Flippo He’s not going anywhere. All right. Senator Hammer, you are recognized for a question, sir. 

Senator Kim Hammer Thank you, Mr. Chair. And maybe this might be appropriate to answer this question later. Let me lob it out there right now. In your professional opinion, having looked at all the facts of the case, without divulging anything that’s going to jeopardize the ability to prosecute this case to the full extent, do you see areas where you, in your professional opinion, think there were breakdowns in the system that you would care to speak to? 

David Ethredge Yes, sir, I do. And that’s the reason probably that I’m sitting here at this table today is because I was concerned about what I saw had transpired for a child, and I didn’t want it to happen again. And I don’t mean to answer more than you’re asking me, but I have to back up just a minute, if y’all will let me. 

I went back and looked at my notes in my office. January 30 of 2020, I got a phone call unrelated to this case, about a homicide in Boone County, Arkansas, that was committed by a juvenile. On February 7 the following week, I got another phone call about a juvenile and a homicide in Boone County, Arkansas. I don’t get those phone calls where we live very often. I want to say that. 

At that time it was identified that both of these children or the children involved had been in contact with the department and there had not been action taken to address this at that time. In about the end of February that same year, I traveled to Little Rock. I met with the then director of the Department of Human Services. 

This was just immediately prior to COVID kicking in. I remember it vividly. We had these same conversations and I was asked, Senator Hammer, the same question you’re asking me now. Did I think something had failed? And my answer was I was really tired of having to go look about children and murders. I don’t like that. I want to avoid it. 

So, yes, I think there was a breakdown. And I think we still have issues. I don’t want to say the department is not aware of that. They’ve done steps, and they’re going to talk to you all about that today, to address it. But, yes, sir, I believe there was a breakdown that needs to be addressed, sir. 

Senator Kim Hammer Do you care to be specific as far as what you see as the breakdown? 

David Ethredge I think– and I don’t have the answers. I wish I could. I’ll tell you, my wife told me last night you need to have an answer to that question, and I don’t. But I think there’s got to be a better way to filter and identify when these type of complaints come in to ensure that this does not happen over and over. 

And I think there are methods at which that could happen to get the right people looking at those complaints, especially when you have multiple times about the same individual, about an issue taking place, in particular when it’s coming from teachers at the school who are the ones that, guys, we trust those folks to make good decisions. And when they’re reaching out and saying there’s a problem, we need to be looking at that. And I think we’ve got to involve people who are seeing it and making sure we don’t let this happen. 

Senator Scott Flippo Mr. Ethredge, and I’m sorry, Senator Hammer, can you tell us– you just touched on teachers– can you tell us who the folks are who are legally obligated reporters, they’re mandated to report any suspected instances of abuse or maltreatment? The teachers? 

David Ethredge That’s a long list, but teachers and any education professional or paraprofessionals are required to do so. Healthcare providers, therapists, counselors, and the list is longer than that. And I apologize for not knowing that list. But those are the ones that jump out at you in particular are healthcare providers and educators. And I will say educators are concerned about this. They want to make sure this does not happen to the kids who they are trying to help. 

Senator Scott Flippo Thank you, sir. Senator Hammer, go ahead. 

Senator Kim Hammer Yeah, just one more and I’ll get off. School Resource Officer, do you know if they were on that list of those that had called in? 

David Ethredge I believe a school resource officer at some point had called in. Believe that was in northwest Arkansas, yes sir. 

Senator Kim Hammer Okay. All right. I’ll stop. Thank you. 

David Ethredge Yes, sir. 

Senator Scott Flippo All right. Representative Gazaway, you’re recognized. 

Representative Jimmy Gazaway Thank you, Mr. Chair. So in terms of the process, I mean, let’s talk about kind of how this process generally works and then how it worked in this case. When a prosecutor gets involved, I seem to recall, of course, calls are made to the hotline– and we’re going to talk with DCFS about what happens once a call comes into the hotline and State Police Crimes Against Children Division and how those are handled. 

But typically after a call is made, a report is generated. If there is some belief that a crime has occurred, then Arkansas State Police Crimes Against Children Division generates a report. And that’s sent to the prosecutor. So can you kind of describe, generally, how that process works, when your office gets involved, and then how it worked in this case? 

David Ethredge  In a normal situation, what you’ve identified is what transpires. A report is made, comes in the hotline. That report is then filtered. Is it going to be a potentially criminal activity or is it going to be something that there needs to be some help in the family? That’s what they’re kind of looking at. A report is then generated. 

I got three this morning into my email box on individuals. And of those three, more than y’all want to know, those three, it was unsubstantiated. They had investigated. The Crimes Against Children division had gone out, they’d done interviews and they looked and they did not find anything to support to move forward. That is sent to me. It’s also sent to local law enforcement. 

The idea behind sending it to local law enforcement is, are we having contact with the same person? Are we seeing this name over and over? Is there something more we need to look at? But then they look at that and make a decision from there. If they find something that gives rise to potential prosecution, then it’s going to be brought to us. Okay, here’s what we see. We’re going to generate an affidavit for you to review to issue a criminal information to charge that person with a crime. 

Representative Jimmy Gazaway Okay, and so in this particular case, how did it work? I think one of the concerns is we’ve heard about all these multiple reports that happened since 2013. Calls that were made, calls made by mandated reporters. Were they not generating those reports? You didn’t get any of those reports, I take it. And so, how did that process work in this particular case? 

David Ethredge In this particular situation, at the time we made the charge on this particular facts situation, we did not get that report. This came to us based upon an investigation that was done by the Mountain Home Police Department. 

Senator Scott Flippo Thank you, Representative. Representative Rose, you’re recognized. 

Representative Ryan Rose Thank you, Mr. Ethredge, for being here with us today. I had a couple of quick questions. And I wanted to just get some clarification, too. And I think everybody feels a lot of different levels of frustration and outrage for this child, for the case, and for the system. If I understood it correctly, 29 reports filed against them over about 11 years. Was this dealing with the same child? Do you know? Are you privy to that information? 

David Ethredge Yes, sir. 

Representative Ryan Rose All of those reports were closed, found to be unsubstantiated, and were not thoroughly investigated. Is that correct? 

David Ethredge Our position is there was never any action that was taken to allow to be prosecuted by someone and investigated to a point to allow for prosecution. Yes, sir. 

Representative Ryan Rose Now you don’t have access to a great number of things that would be helpful to your case and for justice for the child. Is that correct? 

David Ethredge I believe at this time we have what we need to prosecute this particular case. But again, based upon the work, as I’ve said before, by the police department in this case. They did a great job identifying the situation. So we have the tools in our toolbox to move forward this case. Yes, sir. 

Representative Ryan Rose Do you have everything you would like to have? 

David Ethredge There are some reports that we would still like. I will say, as we’re sitting here today, DHS has been very good now to allow me to have what we need. I’m not cross with them. I don’t want people to think that’s where I’m at. We were able to get what we need from them at this time. 

Initial Lack of Response (to Prosecutor) from DHS

Representative Ryan Rose I’m glad to hear that. Can you speak to at what point that began to work well for you with DHS? 

David Ethredge There is always tension between the Department of Human Services and what I have to do. And that’s not meant to say in a bad way, but there is tension. By statutory authority that they operate under, they’ve got to do different things than what my obligation is to prosecute. 

And there are times that we disagree with what should happen with people and how they should be placed back in homes and things of that nature. And again, they’re bound by some law that that’s what they have to do. And so that creates a tension. And we understand that. In this case, and I guess, Senator Flippo, you want me to go ahead and talk about this a little bit? 

Right after this case happened, I met with the then director of the Department of Human Services about what we needed and what we were seeing. And with Daniel Brightwell, counsel for DHS, who, they were great. Met with me and we were moving the right direction. At some point in time, that path changed and we had to go to a different direction. And I thank Senator Flippo and Representative Gazaway for helping us get back on the right track with that. 

Representative Ryan Rose And I don’t mean to belabor the subject, but there was a point you were not being able to put your hands on the information that you needed? 

David Ethredge There were things that would have made my job easier. Absolutely, sir. 

Representative Ryan Rose And at some point you crossed a threshold and it became a much more amicable process? 

David Ethredge It’s a very amicable process at this time. 

Representative Ryan Rose And how recently did that happen? 

David Ethredge It’s in the fairly recent past. Yes, sir. There’s a letter that I assume will be introduced at some time today addressing this issue.

Senator Scott Flippo Members, the letter from DCFS is included in your packets there.

David Ethredge That letter’s in there, Representative Rose. I think it very clearly states. And they’ve answered my questions in that letter, I will say that. Yes, sir. 

Representative Ryan Rose Okay, and I appreciate there’s a lot on the line in the work that you do and the relationships that you hold with agencies. And so I respect kind of the careful line that we have to walk today. I just hope that it wasn’t all of a sudden a much more amicable process following something coming out in the news. That is my hope. 

And that it was because they saw the right path to get you what you needed. I think the last thing I want to ask, you feel like now you have the ability to prosecute to get justice for this child? You now have everything that you need from everybody who we’re talking about today. You have everything you need to do that, correct? 

David Ethredge I believe that I do. And I will answer that further. I believe if I do not have it at this time, I believe I’ll be able to reach out to the department and they’ll provide me what I need from them. If there is something of theirs that I need at this time, yes, sir. 

Representative Ryan Rose Chairman, last question and I’ll hop out. Due to failures across the board within the system, is it your judgment that this child suffered unnecessarily over the course of 11 years? 

Senator Scott Flippo Yes, sir. 

Representative Ryan Rose All right, thank you. That’s all. 

Senator Scott Flippo Thank you, Representative. Representative Richardson, you’re recognized, sir.

Representative Jay Richardson Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m over here to your left. 

David Ethredge Thank you. I kept looking. I knew you were here somewhere. I saw you earlier. I apologize.

Representative Jay Richardson Well, thank you for being here. My question is this, out of the 20-whatever you said, 29, 22 times, do you know how many individuals touched that case? Like caseworkers? Were there five or six, two or three? Do you know how many? 

David Ethredge I do not know the answer to that question, but I will tell you that it would be multiple individuals touch this case. Yes, sir. 

Representative Jay Richardson Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of. Thank you. 

David Ethredge Yes, sir. 

Senator Scott Flippo Thank you, Representative. Representative Hawk, you’re recognized, sir. 

Representative RJ Hawk Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Rose kind of stole some of my thunder on this. But so to be clear, I want to go back to the reporting phase. You’ve been doing this a long time. Have you ever run into a situation like this in any case where it’s been hard to get information to move a case forward? 

David Ethredge This case is different. Have there been difficulties in the past? Yes. But this case was different. And I think this case is different, again, based on the number of times. For us to see that there’s been failures in the past, we know that that’s been seen. But this one was different. Yes sir. 

Representative RJ Hawk Okay, I’m going to read a quote that was put out by a DHS spokesperson. It says, “We’ve completed our review of the case and have informed the prosecutor. However, we have determined the details cannot be released publicly as initially intended due to the sensitivity child maltreatment investigation. Under Arkansas law, it requires everything to be confidential.” What Arkansas law is being referred to in that statement? 

David Ethredge That’s a broad brush.  I know that’s a terrible lawyer term. I apologize. 

Representative RJ Hawk I get it. 

David Ethredge But when we start talking about juveniles, there’s a large amount of information and data that we cannot release about juveniles. And it’s anything from, I had a conversation this morning about a video with people’s pictures. We have to  fuzz their faces because you can’t see them. Can’t release their name, identifying marks. 

When we file documents involving juveniles, we’ll say, ‘an individual’ versus ‘a male child’ because somebody might figure it out. So there’s a wide range of what we cannot release about juveniles. And I don’t mean to be disrespectful to what you’ve read. I don’t agree with that. I think there was ways to do that and still protect and allow it to be done what Arkansas law says you could have released. 

Representative RJ Hawk I guess that’s kind of where I’m getting at, is that I I feel like if we’re trying to do what’s best for the child and you’ve got a department doing an investigation and a prosecutor trying to get justice for the situation, that information, there’s not a law that says we can’t share that information to get justice. 

David Ethredge That is correct, sir. 

Representative RJ Hawk Thank you. 

Senator Scott Flippo Thank you, Representative. All right. Senator Clark, you’re recognized for a question, sir. 

Senator Alan Clark Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Ethredge, one of my colleagues a few weeks ago, several weeks ago, sent me a news story that had to do with a prosecutor who was trying to get information and tried– I believe, because I don’t remember all the story exactly– tried through FOIA and other means. Is that prosecutor you? 

David Ethredge That would not be me, sir. 

Senator Alan Clark That’s a different case? 

David Ethredge It was a different case, yes sir. 

Senator Alan Clark Okay. Thank you. 

Senator Scott Flippo Thank you, Senator. All right. Representative Gazaway, you are recognized for a question. 

Representative Jimmy Gazaway And so I want to be clear, in terms of the report or reports that you were denied, can you give us some idea about,  you’re trying to work this case, you’re trying to do what you need to do, and there are reports, information that you need access to that you were denied. What were those in this case? 

David Ethredge About the history which we wanted to have, we were not getting in the manner we would normally get those. And I want to say we’ve got that information now. I don’t want to be– I don’t want to say that– but there was a time when it was a little more difficult than it is now. 

Representative Jimmy Gazaway Okay. And then I think this brings up a bigger point. And to Senator Clark’s point, is this part of kind of a broader systemic problem of DHS kind of hiding behind confidentiality and not sharing information that needs to be shared, just in your opinion? 

David Ethredge I think there is a fear from the department about release of information, and I understand that. I think that, to me, comes from not understanding the role of the prosecutor and the role the prosecutor has to seek justice. And because of that, we see things that are confidential and hidden all the time and we understand the rules. 

And if we release something we’re not supposed to, that’s the prosecutor’s mistake. We’re the ones who did it. And so I think, again, I think the department does not understand sometimes the role that we have. And that goes back to the tension we were talking about earlier that it’s created that should not be created. We should work together on these cases in the way that we can work together on them. 

Representative Jimmy Gazaway But to be clear, Senator Clark referenced another case that he was aware of that was not you. You’re here today testifying about this particular case, and that leads me to believe that this is a problem that goes beyond you in this specific case. 

David Ethredge I think there are things that could be done to make everybody understand how we need to share information that could be cleaner to protect if that’s what the department is concerned about. And, again, it’s not me throwing rocks at them. If that’s the concern they have, there are safeguards to be put in place to protect that. 

Because, look, we’re in juvenile court all the time and we understand the rules there. And a lot of these rules are the same rules. And so there’s adequate ways to protect that information, to give us information. And what Senator Clark has said, the idea they would try to get it through FOIA is concerning that’s the route they’re having to go. I think there’s better routes, easier routes that could take place to protect children. 

Representative Jimmy Gazaway Yeah, well, that’s a big problem, I think, if a prosecutor is having to try to use FOIA to get information that’s relevant to one of their cases. You’re a state actor, you’re a state official, you’re communicating with a state agency. I would think if there’s not some exemption that would allow for that information to be shared for you to prepare your case, then we may need to look at some statutory changes in the future to make sure that that’s a much easier process. 

David Ethredge Absolutely. 

Senator Scott Flippo All right. Thank you, Representative. Senator Hammer, you’re recognized for your question, sir. 

Senator Kim Hammer Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So you said something a while ago that kind of perked my interest. And you said the environment now is better. Am I characterizing what you said correctly? 

David Ethredge Yes, sir, you definitely are. 

Senator Kim Hammer Okay, so, I’m just going to not try to tap dance around things. So what you’re telling me is you’re getting along better with Tiffany and the current leadership of DHS now than you did under the previous leadership that this case occurred under the time frame of. Is that accurate? 

David Ethredge I want to characterize it as we’re getting along fine at this time. And I don’t mean to say we’ve not in the past at times, but there’s not a friction between myself and the department in that regard right now, Senator. They’re giving me what I want, and we’re able to communicate. And I think they understand. Again, I want to give thanks to Representative Gazaway and Senator Flippo for helping us get through those struggles. 

Senator Kim Hammer Okay. So part of my concern would be, then, a change in personnel has improved the situation. But as far as the policies that should have been followed that were in place regardless of the personnel, what’s different? Because if personnel changes and it goes back to a not so friendly working environment, the policies are the policies. 

David Ethredge I do not disagree with you. 

Senator Scott Flippo Let me jump in there, Mr. Ethredge. Senator Hammer, if we don’t mind, we can save that for DCFS, as far as any specific changes to any specific policies. I think they’d probably be best to speak to any specific internal policies that have changed. 

Senator Kim Hammer Can I ask one last question? 

Senator Scott Flippo Of course. 

Senator Kim Hammer Thank you. So part of what I heard you saying– if I’ve misheard you, straighten me out, okay. Part of what I heard you saying was that you felt that you should have been given things by DHS that, because you didn’t get those, was actually obstructing your ability to do your job to bring prosecution. Is that correct or not? 

David Ethredge I want to make sure I say it the correct way. It made it more difficult for us to move forward in this case because of that relationship. We’ve fixed that now. But there was a time where we felt like we were not getting the amount of cooperation we needed to have to prosecute this case. 

Do I think that was the death knell to what we were going to do in this case? Absolutely not. But I think it makes a difference for us to have all the tools in our toolbox. And we didn’t have all the tools. That’s a bad answer, but that would be my answer to it. 

Senator Kim Hammer Yeah, because the answer I’m looking for is, did they or did they not obstruct your ability to carry out justice by withholding things that the law said they were supposed to give it to you? Because if they did– and I’m not sure if that characterizes who’s in the room or who’s not in the room any longer– if they did, to me, I think that is the atrocity that needs to be focused on. And whether, legally, you can do anything about that, time will tell, I guess. That’s all I got, if you want to give an answer.

David Ethredge I don’t want to use the term obstruct, but I will agree it was difficult, sir. 

Senator Scott Flippo And I tell you what, we’re at a point now where I’m going to ask Ms. Wright and Ms. McDonald, if y’all want to come up here and join Mr. Ethredge. Because when it gets to what information is allowed to be turned over to prosecution or any specific internal policies with DCFS, I think y’all be best equipped to answer these questions. So if y’all have a seat and introduce yourselves and your positions for the record. 

Lori McDonald Hi, Lori McDonald, Chief of Staff, DHS. 

Tiffany Wright Good afternoon, Tiffany Wright, Director for the Division of Children and Family Services. 

Senator Scott Flippo Great, and thank you both for being here. So, to dovetail on to Senator Hammer’s question, what is the policy for DCFS when it comes to releasing the findings of any investigation into an alleged case of abuse or maltreatment towards a child? What are y’all’s policies for that information being available to the prosecutor? 

Tiffany Wright DCFS can provide the information to the prosecuting attorney for the child maltreatment reports. 

Senator Scott Flippo Is there anything that could be withheld, that would be withheld? 

Tiffany Wright We 100 percent can share the information with the prosecuting attorney’s office. 

Senator Scott Flippo So what was the glitch in this specific case then? 

Tiffany Wright So my understanding is that local law enforcement at Mountain Home PD actually made the records request for child maltreatment registry records through our privacy office, which is our procedure. So those records can be requested and then released through privacy through our central registry unit to the prosecuting attorney or law enforcement. And my understanding is those reports were released to law enforcement. 

Senator Scott Flippo Do you have a time frame of when they were requested to when they were actually released? What’s the general time frame for that process to take place from when those records might be requested, either from the local law enforcement doing the investigation or prosecutor’s office? But what’s the typical time frame? 

Tiffany Wright I don’t want to speculate on a typical time frame. I think it would depend on the case and the information being requested. However, I believe that these records were released in late November of 2024. 

Senator Scott Flippo Okay. And then, Mr. Ethredge, so you got all the case files that you needed at approximately what day? 

David Ethredge I do not know the exact date. It was my understanding it was sometime either latter part of January or first part of February is what I’d understood. 

Senator Scott Flippo Okay. 

David Ethredge And I want to be clear, I’m not trying to say that that date is not correct, what she’s saying. Sometimes there is a flow time because you’re asking for a lot of data. In this particular case, we asked for a lot of data. I want to say that. 

Senator Scott Flippo Sure, sure. And Tiffany, Lori, one of y’all can speak to this, because I think a lot of the concerns or frustrations amongst members is why would it take so long to get that information to these respective offices, whether it’s the prosecutor’s office or to local law enforcement. I understand that, as Mr. Ethredge said earlier, sometimes there’s going to be friction between agencies. 

My colleagues in the House hate it when they see me refer to the Senate as the upper branch of government. And I say that a little tongue-in-cheek, but a prosecutor is not the same as a public defender. And so you understand that there can be a little tension sometimes. But at the end of the day, the citizens of Arkansas expect us all to collaboratively be working together to address the challenges. 

And Ms. Wright and Ms. McDonald, I believe you all are trying to do that. Mr. Ethredge, I believe you’re trying to do that. Do we believe the system’s perfect? Absolutely not. Because if it was we wouldn’t be here today. But at the end of the day, people deserve to see their government working collaboratively together. 

And especially in cases like this, where it is the absolutely most vulnerable amongst us, to make sure that they are not suffering not a day longer. And so while I understand details are important, to a degree process is important– I know one of the ladies that called into the maltreatment call line. And although I wasn’t on the other end listening to her call, I know her. 

And I can imagine the tone of her voice and the words that she was using to describe what she felt this young man was going through. And I think the frustration on my end– I don’t think it, I know it– is that, what person in DCFS, or whoever’s manning the call center– and that’s under the direction of State Police, as I understand it. 

But at what point do we not just hear that this is sincerity in somebody’s voice, and we actually need to look into this? Because this is not somebody who’s just suspecting there might have been something that happened, but they’re not quite sure. This lady knew things were going on, and that it wasn’t neglect, it was abuse. And I don’t know how she knows that. I have not asked her to get into details of the conversation she had with this young man. But I know her, and I know her to be this kind of a person.

 And this is the frustrating part is cutting through all this and realizing we’re dealing with human beings and bureaucracy. Sometimes it gets in the way of things– not sometimes, oftentimes. And I believe this is one of those cases where bureaucracy kind of gets in the way. And Tiffany, Lori, you and I have had conversations offline prior to today’s meeting. And I believe those have been productive conversations.

 And I want to acknowledge that publicly before those here today, that I believe they’ve been fruitful and that we are looking to push in the same direction. But before we can know what needs to change, we gotta know where the failures are. And so while I’ve got you all up here, in your opinions, where was the systematic breakdown here in our process? 

Reasons for System Breakdown

Tiffany Wright So one of the things that we did was bring together the DCFS team that was still here or staff and leadership roles and really review information. And so a part of that information that we saw that’s also outlined in the letter that I wrote to prosecutor Ethredge was around history searches and having quality history searches and really looking at the information that is provided and how we connect all of that information together. 

I think that also just being able to have more cross-collaboration and using our community partners through the multidisciplinary teams and just engaging and having an extra set of stakeholders to participate could have been fruitful in the situation. 

Senator Scott Flippo And those were things that were not taking place with regards to this specific case? 

Tiffany Wright I don’t think that I can answer specific questions about the investigation. 

Senator Scott Flippo We’re talking about the process there though. I mean, I’m not talking about any specifics about the case, just the process. 

Tiffany Wright I think that in the process, we should have leaned more into our community partners, our stakeholders, experts across the community working amongst the families. 

Senator Scott Flippo And I want to be very clear here because I do understand– I’m not an attorney, but I do understand that there are absolutely things that you all nor prosecutor Ethredge nor any law enforcement entity investigating this case, is allowed to discuss publicly. And unfortunately there’s plenty of information, certainly in Mountain Home and Baxter County, about some of the specifics of this case. 

And it’ll make your stomach turn. But what we’re talking about here today is the process. The process worked or it didn’t work. And if the process didn’t work, then it is fully within the scope of this committee, and I believe DCFS and DHS, to speak to those specific instances. All right. Representative Crawford, I’m going to put you in line for a question. 

Representative Cindy Crawford Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m up here. And ladies, you know I respect you greatly. And I know that this kind of has gotten kicked to you guys. So as we ask our questions, know that we do respect you. I guess one of my questions would be to Mr. Ethredge. I’m not understanding exactly when you became aware, when you first became aware of the abuse. 

David Ethredge If you’ll let me look at a note, I’ll tell you pretty close, ma’am. The initial report would have come into my office, ma’am, from law enforcement sometime around the first week in November of 2024, ma’am. 

Representative Cindy Crawford Okay. I’m trying to think because we’re talking 11 years. What happened in those 11 years to where it only became aware to you in November of 2024? 

David Ethredge Ma’am, that’s the first time that my office had contact with anything concerning this individual. 

Representative Cindy Crawford Can you answer why? 

David Ethredge I don’t know. And that’s a terrible answer. I hate  to ever give that as a prosecutor, but I do not know. That’s one of the reasons we’re having some of the questions we have today is when we looked back and saw the history of this particular incident and this child, why there had been that many number of reports and yet there had been no action moving it forward beyond just someone seeing a report. 

I don’t know the answer to that question. But the first time the prosecutors in the 14th Judicial District had it was when that came in to us through the Mountain Home Police Department. 

Representative Cindy Crawford Okay. A couple more questions about some things that you said. January 3, 2020, and I believe it was February 7, 2020, someone contacted you about juveniles who had committed murder, correct? 

David Ethredge Yes, ma’am. That’s a totally separate matter. I brought that up just to discuss that this issue has been out there. 

Representative Cindy Crawford But it’s in the county, same county, is that correct? 

David Ethredge Correct. I’m in Baxter. It’s in my judicial district, yes ma’am. I have four counties in my district. I have Baxter, Boone, Marion and Newton. And this particular one we’re speaking about today took place in Baxter. The two homicides I’m speaking about took place in Boone. 

Representative Cindy Crawford Are they close? 

David Ethredge Yes, ma’am. It takes me, it’s 47 minutes for me to drive from one to the other. Yes, ma’am. 

Representative Cindy Crawford Okay. I think what I’m looking at here is trying to paint a picture of that area in where, if 11 years abuse went on with a child and he couldn’t get free from it, and then you have two separate juveniles who commit murder, my mind goes to well, of course, if you have been abused for 11 years– and I know I’m mixing the cases, just follow me for a minute. 

David Ethredge Yes, Ma’am. 

Representative Cindy Crawford If you have been abused for 11 years and you get out on your own and feel like you have a little bit of control and that anger takes over, things like juvenile murder will happen. So I guess in painting this awful picture that Arkansas should not have because we are a Andy Mayberry state, right? 

David Ethredge Yes, ma’am. 

Representative Cindy Crawford How in the world is– okay, let me ask you this. 

Senator Scott Flippo Okay, Representative Crawford, get to a direct question here. I got a lot of people on the queue here. And I want to make sure that we’re not attributing this case or another. So if we can speak to this current case. I don’t want there to be any illusions that this automatically is going to lead to juveniles committing murder. 

There’s going to be kids that come from good homes that can do this. But as far as the process in this case, or if Mr. Ethredge to speak to the process and the two cases that he brought up with the homicides in Boone County. But let’s talk to the process as far as DCFS’s role, the prosecutor’s role, law enforcement’s role, and any specific questions you have about that process. 

Representative Cindy Crawford I just believe that if we continue down this road that we will be here a lot with a child who after 11 years has been harmed because of our state. 

Senator Scott Flippo Thank you, Representative. Representative Gazaway. Then Senator Clark. 

Representative Jimmy Gazaway Thank you, Mr. Chair. So to follow up on Representative Crawford’s question, I mean, I think she tries to get to what I think is just the big point. Prosecutor Ethredge’s office found out about this case in November 2024. But prior to that, there were 29 calls to the child abuse hotline or the DHS was made notified about of reports of abuse or neglect. 

And the first time he ever heard about it was November of 2024. And apparently there had never been, as far as I can tell or I’m aware, any substantiated report, any effort to remove the child from the home, any effort to conduct a criminal investigation. And so I think the big question is why, over the course of 11 years or however many years it was, were 29 calls made and nothing ever happened. 

Tiffany Wright And I think that, one, is when the reports are accepted in the hotline, we do conduct our investigations. And one of the things that we learned was that we did not have adequate history searches. There’s lack of documentation. And that we also were, and I’m not making an excuse but giving you a picture of where the system was, we were having significant amount of maltreatment reports that were overdue. We were having significant turnover and just navigating all of those things and then multiple counties involved. And so, again, this was where the whole system was not operating together. 

Representative Jimmy Gazaway Okay, that’s very helpful because I made a list of all of those things. And so I think what we have to do is, how do we address each one of those things? History searches, lack of documentation, the fact that you’re overwhelmed with too many reports– hard for me to read my own writing here– significant turnover, multiple counties involved. 

So communication between counties, ensuring that you guys can keep a workforce where you’re not changing employees every other day, ensuring that you have sufficient staff so that you can handle the number of reports that you get, ensuring that you’ve got all the systems necessary to make all the documentation that you need to document when these reports come in, and then the ability to search the history. These all seem like solvable problems. So how do you respond to that? 

Tiffany Wright I would say that we’ve been, one of the things we’ve been doing as a state is rolling out structured decision making, which leads to consistent safety decision making, being solution focused, leads to more engagement both with the family, but also relies on safeties of support and networks of support. 

And so we started implementing that in 2022 and 2023. And we’re hopefully in the final stretch of that. So it’s a big systems rollout. And so we started with the front door, which would be that the hotline, and we’ve been working through maltreatment reports to our in-home and protective services cases. And now the last part of that is around appropriate case planning and reunification and doing those appropriate safety and risk assessments. 

Also we are hoping that we’ll see some outcomes around the pay plan that we were able to receive in July and how that will impact our workforce in a positive way, as well as seeing the history searches in this situation. We’ve already started some work on how can we use our current system to do some level of notifications around history searches, like automatic. I don’t know, something innovative that puts it more in the forefront of the workforce’s face is probably not the right word to use. But in the face so that they know that it’s there, some kind of trigger around that. 

We’re also working on how we use the continued quality improvement contracts we have to continue to enhance how we’re responding to families. Also continuing our intensive in-home contract to keep kids safe and have those services available to children and families that need them. Continuing to navigate and work with our staff around critical incidents so we can learn from them and continue to expand and change and listens to systems issues that are happening whenever we have a critical incident. 

And then, obviously, continuing training conversations. The system is big and sometimes you might hear what we pay attention to gets all the attention, and so how do you spread out the attention and get more specialized and have that work that’s happening? And then obviously our relationships with the multidisciplinary teams across the state, as well as law enforcement and prosecutor’s office to ensure kids are safe on all fronts of the system. 

Representative Jimmy Gazaway Okay, thank you very much. And that all sounds like good work and all things that can be improved upon. I guess there are a lot of issues here. I mean, we could go over probably in detail each one of those things and how you’re improving. And as you said, starting with the hotline. That’s where most of these investigations start. 

Someone makes a call to the child abuse hotline and it kind of proceeds from there, and I think there will be a lot more discussion about that, about how that process works, how decisions are made, what reports are generated, who receives those reports, etc. I think that we’ll probably get into that a little bit later. But again, because there are so many issues here, setting that aside and going back to the issue in the specific case working with prosecutor Ethredge to get him the information that he needs. 

I would think as a prosecutor, if I’m preparing a case, number one, I need to know the history of these people that I’ve charged. I need to know if they’ve been involved in past incidents of abuse before. That’s very important to my case because I may be able to admit evidence in that case that their prior conduct may be admissible to prove that they acted in conformity with it. May not be admissible for that purpose, but it may. 

And so as a prosecutor, I’m very interested in that. And then two, as a prosecutor I have an obligation to turn over to the defense any exculpatory information that may exist. And some of that may be found in these past reports. And I mean, that’s a good way as a prosecutor to get sued, to get in trouble with the bar, for failing to disclose exculpatory information. I don’t know if that exists or not unless I have access to these reports. 

I would think as a prosecutor, I ought to be able to just pick up the phone. I don’t remember how this worked when I did it, seemed to be kind of how we did it. But I could just pick up the phone and call someone at DHS and say, hey, I’m working on this case. I need all of this information. You guys would prepare it and send it to me. 

Number one, is that how this process works? Is it as simple as prosecutor Ethredge picking up the phone and calling someone and saying, Hey, I’m working on this case. We have these two individuals charged. I need this information. And you guys get it to him? Number one, I want to know the process there. And then number two, if it is that simple, why didn’t it happen like that in this case? 

Tiffany Wright So I would say, yes, it is still that simple. And I would say as DCFS, if you were calling the local county worker office supervisor, they would be notifying our office of privacy that these were requested. And then they handle getting the records out the door appropriately and safely, right? And my understanding is that the records were given to law enforcement.

 And I don’t know if prosecutor Ethredge specifically called and asked for them, but my understanding is that they were all released to Mountain Home Police Department. So I’m struggling to answer your question because they both could have them, but I’m unsure if he specifically called and asked for those records or not on this case. But I do know they were released to law enforcement. 

Senator Scott Flippo And I want to just expound upon, you mentioned, to make sure– I forget the position, but whoever receives these reports and then makes that determination. You say you release that information safely and appropriately. What’s that? 

Tiffany Wright Oh, I think they– please don’t quote me on this. But I think they’re using like move it, to move the records, if they’re emailing them, not snail mailing them. That’s what I mean by safely. 

Senator Scott Flippo Okay, okay, great. Thank you for the clarification. 

Tiffany Wright Not dumping them to a fax number, like, how do we make sure that the records are going where they need to be? 

David Ethredge When we ask for records of that nature, of any type like that, there’s some safeguards we have to put in place to allow them to be transmitted, whether it be criminal histories, things of that nature. We have to not just send them by, again, by snail mail or by fax. 

They have to be encrypted and that’s what she’s speaking of. And I’m going to go back to Representative Gazaway’s comment, it would be best if we could pick up the phone and call one person and say, This is who we want it from. If you’re asking me for an improvement, that’s an easy improvement for us. 

If we had– and I hate to pick on the Crime Lab. They’re not here. But the Crime Lab has an individual that we go through all of our subpoenas, for all of our information. That’s who we reach out to when we need something. 

I think the same thing being in place from the department in this case would be beneficial that we know we reach out to whoever it is and make that request, whether it be through an electronic request or a direct phone call. That may help everybody, that we know who to ask for, who to get it from. And that person then has a relationship with the prosecutor’s office for us to have that. 

Senator Scott Flippo Okay. Senator Clark. You’re recognized for questions, sir. 

Senator Alan Clark Thank you, Mr. Chair. Tiffany, this current case that we’re talking about is open, right? 

Tiffany Wright Yes, sir. 

29 Previous Reports

Senator Alan Clark Okay. But with reports going back to 2013, were there cases that were opened and closed? 

Tiffany Wright There was child maltreatment investigations. 

Senator Alan Clark Yeah. 

Tiffany Wright There were child maltreatment investigations. 

Senator Alan Clark That were opened and closed? 

Tiffany Wright Yes. 

Senator Alan Clark Okay. I wanted to be clear on that. Mr. Ethredge. And let me say, I’m not assuming that anybody’s done anything. They may look like they have. They may have. There’s a lot of questions that we can’t get answers to today. 

I think there’s a lot more we could find out than and not, and it’s not their fault, than what we’re getting to. But Mr. Ethredge, so far from this meeting, I know that there’s a child who we had lots of reports on for a long time that from what you’ve seen and probably from what they’ve seen at this point has been abused. 

David Ethredge Yes, sir. 

Senator Alan Clark Okay. So I know that. But what I don’t know– and let me tell you also what I know is there’s a lot of political niceties, and I get it. If I was in your position, I’d be doing exactly what you’re doing. Whatever problems we had, they’re over, they’re done, we’re playing nice now, and we don’t want to say anything bad about anybody. I get that. But that’s not conducive to solving problems. So what did you ask for? What did you ask for that you didn’t get right away? 

David Ethredge Senator Clark, and I appreciate the way you phrase what you do. We have a long relationship because, a lot of times the session, and so I want to be very blunt with my answer to you. We were just asking for information about this particular child that was not coming to us as fast as we should get it. My problem in this case– and they know this. 

My problem in this case, and I’m going to be really blunt since you’ve asked me to be, is the fact that I know that a kid was in this situation for 11 years and nothing happened. That’s what stoked my frustration and my anger in all of this. And I don’t want to get emotional in these things. 

But the fact that that took place and that kid lives where I live at, and that could happen in the state that is, so rightly put, in Mayberry, that’s not what I want to see happen. So there’s where my anger is, if you want to know about it. I don’t have the answers. And that’s what bothered me, that no one did anything to protect this child over the last 11 years.

And so that’s pretty blunt for me, and that’s where my anger comes from. Do I have what I need? Absolutely. We’re good. And I may have had some frustration, and I can live with that frustration. My frustration is the last 11 years for this little boy, and I don’t like that. 

Senator Alan Clark Well, I want to get down, possibly later, to why we had a problem. And this particularly concerns me for different reasons. Not from the community, don’t know the community, but my investigation in the Stanley case was 2015. I started here in 2013. 2015, and we’ve made a lot of things better, much better. And not just DCFS, but others. But at the same time, with us at least in the background with that investigation and others, that we still had this going on with this child. 

And there is other venues, chairs, where we can look at this deeper behind closed doors. We do not need your permission or recommendation, but I’d like to see this committee today recommend that it go to that committee so that we can go deeper and get more into what came out, what happened, and what we did wrong. That’s why we exist. And it’s simply so that we can fix it.

And we send a report to the governor or report to the legislature at the end of every two years about what we have found that needs to be changed, what we found that needs to be fixed. We don’t get into details. But I think it ought to go there. And I’m also concerned, Tiffany. I mean, you can only answer for what you’ve been in charge of. And you know that I like the past director. And I actually like the one before that, who resigned. But it’s like education. We go four, six years, and then we change what we’re doing. And we start measuring all over again. 

And our measurements are getting better from that point, but they’re not better than they were from way back when. And of course, we’re always going to be changing people. Those things are always going to be happening. And so we’re all concerned that any child is left in conditions like this, none of us. And so we’ve got to dig down, not hurting anybody, into how did we do it. 

Tiffany Wright Yes, I would agree. And we made a step to do that and saw some of the things that I’ve talked about at a high, high level here today and shared that information in that prior question and so. 

Senator Alan Clark And what I’m fixing to say now is not to inundate y’all with lots of phone calls, but it may. 

Tiffany Wright Okay. 

Senator Alan Clark Legislators– with your permission, Mr. Chair– you can get hold of DCFS and find out all the details. They have to tell you anything about a case if you ask the questions. So if you’re confused about what happened and you’d like to know, you can find out. You cannot share it, right, any more than they can share it. 

But behind closed doors, you can find out so that you’re not confused as to what happened. Because there’s all kinds of things that could have happened when it comes to reports and caseworkers and a case could have been closed legitimately. We may find that somebody didn’t do their job at all. 

But you have to really look at it before you know. But like I said, if you want to know– a lot of new legislators, especially, don’t know this. And if you need help with what questions to ask, just call me. I’ll help you. But they’re very good about answering your questions. They’re very good about letting you know what’s going on. 

And so you don’t have to be blind. Because from listening to this today, I ain’t learned much. I’ve learned a little bit. But if you want to find out what really happened, you can. And if there’s enough of you, they may want to bring you all in at one time so they don’t have to go over it. But thank you, chairs, for your indulgence. But I think it’s important that our colleagues know that they can know what’s going on in these cases. 

Senator Scott Flippo Thank you, Senator. 

Senator Alan Clark Thank you all. 

Senator Scott Flippo Representative Nazarenko, you are recognized, sir.

Representative Jason Nazarenko Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, Ms. Wright and Ms. McDonald, Mr. Ethredge for being here. I appreciate it and I appreciate the time we took, Ms. McDonald and Miss Wright with Senator Flippo and I. I appreciate that. And I know Mr. Ethredge was on the phone. And we all know that there’s been a failure. We’ve talked about it. We’ve talked about it multiple times. And we’ve talked about where the failures occurred, different things. 

And we’ve talked about, you have mentioned different safeguards you’ve put in place and different things we can do to make sure that this doesn’t happen again. My question is twofold. First, number one, with those safeguards in place, if I’m a concerned citizen or I’m a legislator that knows that I’ve got an issue in my area or I suspect there’s a problem near me as a concerned citizen, what is the procedure right now? 

Because I’m going to trust that that procedure is working because we want it to work for those children. So what is the procedure right now that I should take if I’m a concerned citizen in order to report something? And then what should I expect is going to happen behind the scenes? 

Tiffany Wright I think I’m going to answer it twofold. Because I think it depends. I think if you’re a concerned citizen and you want to report child abuse or child neglect, you need to call the child abuse hotline. 

Representative Jason Nazarenko Which is? 

Tiffany Wright We also have a mandated reporter. Are you going to– you want me to give you the number? 

Representative Jason Nazarenko Yes please. 

Tiffany Wright Oh, I don’t have the number memorized. It’s 1-800-482-5964. 

Representative Jason Nazarenko 1-800-482-5964. 

Tiffany Wright Or you can use the mandated reporter. 

Representative Jason Nazarenko There are people watching. That’s why I wanted to announce it because there’s concerned citizens that are out there watching. They’re very concerned about what’s going on. And they may have something in their area, so it’s very important we get that out there. 

Tiffany Wright Yes. And then if they’re a mandated reporter, they can use the mandated reporter. They just type in Arkansas mandated reporter and it pops up and they can type in the information. They don’t have to make a phone call to the child abuse hotline. So then to answer the question, if they’re a concerned citizen, they need to make a report, they would make a report. 

And then depending upon if the report is accepted or not, it would be assigned to a specific agency, Crimes Against Children Division or DCFS. And then at that point, they would hear from the assigned investigator and be able to share further information about what they have reported. Does that answer the question? 

Representative Jason Nazarenko It does. When you said, ‘if it’s accepted,’ what’s the trigger for it to be accepted? 

Tiffany Wright So there has to be some child maltreatment, has to meet the definition of the Child Maltreatment Act for what is defined as abuse or neglect. And then there’s a whole lot of information in that. But the hotline, if they make the phone call, the hotline will ask them questions as they share the narrative using the tool to make the decision around if it’s accepted or not. 

Representative Jason Nazarenko Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

Senator Scott Flippo Thank you, Senator Hammer. You are recognized for a question, sir. 

Senator Kim Hammer Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I just feel– it may turn out good, it may turn out bad. I don’t know. But I really do feel, Mr. Ethredge, that you’ve alluded that past difficulties have been experienced, in your opinion, as far as why you had difficulty getting information out of DHS. That wasn’t with either of the two ladies sitting at the table next to you. Is that correct? 

David Ethredge That’s absolutely correct, sir. 

Senator Kim Hammer Okay. I think that’s fair to them, that we know that these two ladies at the table are not who you’re referring to. That’s number one. And then number two, I’ve been sitting here on my phone going back and forth with somebody because about a year or so ago there was a situation in a school in my district where multiple calls have been made over a two year period by mandated reporters from the school with regards to drugs in the home, multiple arrests of people in the home, boy getting shot with a BB gun, multiple calls with me and and others. 

And so systemic problem of, how many calls does it take before finally the decision is made to pull somebody from the home? So that’s one thing I’d like to ask is criteria for making that determination. Because I know your field representatives are in a tough spot because y’all want reunification, all the things we’ve been pushing for. Tough spot though. But you hear 29 times. So give a little education about that. 

Senator Scott Flippo And Senator Hammer, before you all educate us on that, I’m going to have Carly go down there and I’m going to ask for Lieutenant Colonel Aaron and Mr. Mack with Administrative for Crimes Against Children Division Hotline to come on up to the table because I just think, given the conversation, it’d be easier just to have all relevant parties here at the table. 

So Carly’s going to bring a chair up here. And if you all will, you get to the table and have a seat. If you’d introduce yourselves and tell us your position for the record, and then Senator Hammer, I will allow you to proceed. 

Senator Kim Hammer Thank you, sir. 

Senator Scott Flippo Thank you, Carly. All right, gentlemen. 

Jason Aaron My name is Jason Aaron. I’m a lieutenant colonel with the State Police. I supervise our Crimes Against Children Division, our Highway Patrol Division, and our Criminal Investigation Division. 

Dan Mack And I’m Dan Mack. I’m the administrator of the child abuse hotline of the Crimes Against Children Division. 

Senator Scott Flippo Thank you for being here, gentlemen. All right, Senator Hammer, please continue. 

Senator Kim Hammer Tiffany, who wants to take the question? 

Tiffany Wright I can answer. I think the answer is, when we’re assigned a child maltreatment investigation and if DCFS is assigned and we’re working it, removal is dependent upon both the assessment of the history, the current safety of the children and what’s going on. And so typically rising to the level of removal is around imminent danger that we can’t mitigate through a safety planning and supports being in the home. And so on your specific situation, I know you can’t tell me here, but I would like to know who the family is to do some research and review around that. 

Senator Kim Hammer Okay. So based on your answer, I got two. And I’ll be short, Mr. Chair. Based on your answer, why was this child not removed sooner than later? Was it just a system failure, personnel failure? What would you identify, then, as the problem? Or you weren’t privileged to it at the time, I guess, were you? 

Tiffany Wright Privileged to Baxter County? 

Senator Kim Hammer Yes. 

Tiffany Wright I would say I’ve reviewed the history. And so I would say that there was lack of documentation, lack of investigation, doing the investigation, as well as interviewing appropriate interviews and then all the other system pressures that I mentioned before. 

Flagging Multiple Reports

Senator Kim Hammer Okay. And do you track or do you have the ability to track that when you get, say, 10 or more calls on a particular child– just grabbing the number 10– what point does it get above the radar screen that you say, you know what, this is a lot of calls to one particular family? That it gets above the radar screen so it doesn’t lack for attention? 

Tiffany Wright I think that is one thing that we’ve seen that didn’t happen, right? There was not extensive history search. We weren’t reviewing the history. We weren’t taking that all into consideration with the continued reports coming in from the hotline and being assigned for investigation. 

And so that is one thing I have mentioned we’re working on some kind of flag, system flag for staff. So if it says like, Hey, there’s more than– I think the number we landed on was five– there’s more than five reports on this family. But we’re still working through what that would look like and how we could change our operating in our system around that history. 

Senator Kim Hammer Could you pull a current report now with the systems you have in place or is that not possible? 

Tiffany Wright Pull a current report, like more than five?

Senator Kim Hammer How many cases out there do you have right now– and maybe the gentleman can weigh in this. How many cases do you have out there right now where you’ve gotten 10 calls on any one particular child? You don’t have the systems in place right now to do that? That’s what you’re working on developing? 

Tiffany Wright Our staff can search the history and review it right now. Like, they can type in the name of the family and review all of the history, but what we’re talking about is how do we have some level of notification that’s happening. And I don’t know if I can pull out of the system right now and say like the Smiths have five reports, for example. I don’t know if– I would have to ask. I can circle back to you on that. 

Senator Kim Hammer Could we get the gentleman to weigh in on those questions, Mr. Chair? And I’m done. Thank you. 

Jason Aaron I’m just, real quick for the committee’s sake, I know it gets kind of blurry between CACD and DHS. But just to be clear for the committee, the hotline is manned and operated by the Arkansas State Police Crimes Against Children Division. And that division is broken up between our hotline operators and our investigators. Dan Mack here, he is here as the supervisor of the Hotline Center. So most of these questions in this nature I’m going to defer to Dan Mack. 

Dan Mack To piggyback kind of what Director Wright was saying, we don’t have a way to just pinpoint how many calls have been made at the hotline. Because you’ve got so many mandated reporters, it was earlier mentioned about teachers and educators, you may have three or four educators from the same school make a report to the hotline because they’re all mandated to make a report to the hotline about one child. 

We may have three or four reports on that same child with the same report, same allegation, same offender. So one of those would be accepted, but maybe three of those would not be accepted because they’re all reporting the same thing. And then those would be kind of hit. So it’s hard to say how many reports are stacked like that. We don’t have a way of filtering that in our system. We can see that there’s been entries, but we don’t know why they’re unsubstantiated or why they’re screened out or why they’re accepted at the very first when we’re on a call with somebody. 

Senator Scott Flippo Mr. Mack, are you aware of any other states whose call centers operate in a similar capacity, where there is like a centralized database. So if an individual has five reports to the child maltreatment abuse hotline where that gets centralized, so you’re not going through and having to reference that specific case number and pull that up and go through each one individually? 

Dan Mack Right. We don’t per se, but there are some states. I know Missouri has their intake. And then they also have what they called a team of searchers. And they would be handed the information from the intake process and they would do the actual search through their database. And they would gather all that information while the intake operators or intake workers would stay on the phones, keep gathering more information. So there are states that do that aspect as well. 

Senator Scott Flippo Okay. And then just for the benefit of the chair and then maybe other members of the committee, can you briefly tell us, why is it that the maltreatment abuse hotline is under the you know the umbrella of State Police and not DCFS? 

Because DCFS still has oversight of it, although it’s State Police that operates it. And I believe there was a court ruling years ago. So if you don’t mind, just briefly walk us through why it’s structured this way. 

Dan Mack I know there was a lawsuit that created the hotlines have a central intake unit years ago. The maltreatment reports were called in to each individual county office to determine a maltreatment. So the belief was to streamline it to make one central intake unit. And at first the hotline was under DHS and they were under there, maybe, I don’t know, five or six years. 

I don’t know the number, but round about late 90s, 97 or so, it was deemed to create something for the hotline or for the State Police to have the severe cases be presented for prosecution. And through the powers that be with legislation, we were created, the State Police family protection unit, was kind of created. 

And it was later named Crimes Against Children division, to be more specific that we dealt specifically with children. And it’s been there the whole time I’ve been there. It was there, I think 97, 98 was when it transferred. 

Senator Scott Flippo So you aren’t just dealing with the worst of the worst cases. But this is any case where there’s allegations of abuse, neglect, or maltreatment with a child? Okay. All right. 

Tiffany Wright So just to clear, so that lawsuit was Angela R. It started in 1991. It ended in 2004. And my understanding, I’m not an attorney, but the 12-8 sections of law are all the codified agreements that came out of that Angela R lawsuit. 

Senator Scott Flippo Okay, thank you. Can you just briefly walk us through the process? So somebody calls in, say a teacher calls in. She’s got students in her class, and she calls into the hotline. Walk us through the process of how on your end, once that call is received, what is the process to determine whether or not an investigation is warranted? 

Dan Mack Okay. So when they first call in, we’re going to let them go ahead and have them speak of what they’re saying. They pretty much say that they want to make a report, and we’ll kind of walk them through it. The operator’s going to gather the demographic information, particularly who the victim, child or children are. And are there any siblings in the home, who the caregivers might be, and then who’s the alleged offender. 

And then we kind of want to ask them to tell us what’s their reason for calling today, what’s prompted you to make a report. So we’ll let them kind of just tell us the story of what they have. We want to determine like who did what to whom, what happened, where did it occur, how did the offender have access to the child, why did something occur to the child, if it was out of anger, or if it was an accident and so on. 

So based on that kind of questioning, we ask them specific things about what they’re reporting. If they’re reporting physical abuse to a child, we’ll ask who the offender is, what is the relationship of that offender to that child. Was the offender in a caregiving role? Because parts of the law require that the offender must be a caregiver. Where was the child struck? Does the child have any injuries from from being struck? If so, can you describe and get in detail what those injuries look like, what it may have been caused by and so on. 

Sometimes depending on the age of the child, they really can’t get a lot of information out of the child. Sometimes there may be deficiencies mentally or emotionally with the child, or if they’re older children and they just don’t want to give the information. So we’ll try to discern what we can figure out as far as if it’s abuse, if it’s a neglect, if it’s sexual abuse. 

Director Wright mentioned the definitions that are laid out in the Child Maltreatment Act. We take their information and match it up to that. And if we can define it through the SDM, the structured decision making tool, we can go ahead and accept a report for investigation. At that point, we can assign it to either DCFS or CACD, depending on the severity of the allegation. And then base it also through with our MOU of which agency will get the assigned report. 

Senator Scott Flippo Is there ever time where you refer the case to local law enforcement? So this instance in Baxter County and Mountain Home, from my understanding, that was referred to– and, David, you can jump in here. Correct me if I’m wrong. Was that referred to, turned over to Mountain Home Police Department to investigate? Okay, David, why don’t you–?

David Ethredge No, sir. This case did not come about. This came about a phone call that was made and Mountain Home took the report. And so it did not come through this process. 

Dan Mack When the hotline accepts a report for investigation, we typically won’t forward it on to a law enforcement agency because the investigator is going to have that information. If we can accept a report for investigation and we believe there may be some criminal aspects involved, maybe drug use or maybe other aspects that aren’t maltreatment but there could be a criminal issue, then we’ll try to forward those on the law enforcement for follow up from their standpoint. 

Senator Scott Flippo Mr. Mack, and I’ve got plenty of people in the queue, so I don’t want to take up too much more time. And it’s a difficult question. In your professional opinion, what do you think is the single most important thing that we can do? 29 unsubstantiated, 29 calls that were deemed unsubstantiated. This kid, as I said, I don’t know what the fine line is between abuse or torture, but I think this kid was tortured. So that being said, what is the single most important thing that you’d believe that could be done to improve this process, specifically the call center? 

Dan Mack  If there were 29 investigations, that means there were 29 accepted reports to the hotline. So I think from a screening standpoint those were seen as– 

Senator Scott Flippo Are all reports accepted when they’re called in? The report is called in and it’s accepted? 

Dan Mack No, sir. It goes through the process of that. So if it’s deemed to be accepted and forwarded on to an investigation, then we’ve done at the hotline what we’re supposed to do in regard to assessing the information and forwarded on to the investigations. We can see that there are reports that were unsubstantiated, but we don’t go into the reports to determine why. 

So that’s part of kind of– unfortunately for us, we do this, we don’t know the outcome of that report because of the sheer volume of what we deal with. We just have really no way to follow up to see what happened with that report. Now if it comes out in the news, then we can, I remember that report. But it may have been, here it is, October and we were dealing with a report that was in in November of 24. 

So we may not have people that were there or they just don’t remember that. But I think when you’re accepting reports at the hotline and sending for investigations, we’ve done what we’re supposed to do. And sometimes it comes down to educating reporters to be better reporters. Some don’t know how to make a report, and that’s okay. We, if they can call the hotline, we’ll walk them through the information of what we need to get a report through. 

Senator Scott Flippo Thank you. Representative Gazaway, you have a question? 

Representative Jimmy Gazaway Thank you, Mr. Chair. And so I guess just following through that process exactly what it looks like. Someone makes a call to the child abuse hotline. I made a call recently to the child abuse hotline when I got some information in a case that I had. I felt it was incumbent upon me to report at the child abuse hotline. I did that. I don’t know if I’m a mandated reporter or not, but I did. 

Someone answered the phone and took my information and let me explain why I thought I needed to be calling. Who makes the decision on whether or not a report is accepted or then substantiated or unsubstantiated and whether or not it has a criminal element, whether or not it should go to DCFS for dependency, neglect? Who makes that decision? Is that the person who I call and talk to on the phone? 

Dan Mack More often than not, yes. The operators are trained through– they’re educated and trained on the maltreatment law, the STM tool. They’re trained on the MOU to make the decisions themselves. We let them know that you’re going to tell the reporter that the report is accepted for investigation, what the allegation may be, and which agency is going to receive the investigation. At that point, that’s where we would stop. The substantiation of an investigation, that all goes to the investigative agencies with CACD or with DCFS. 

Representative Jimmy Gazaway So how many employees do you have manning the hotline? 

Dan Mack Currently we have 32 operators, five supervisors and myself as the administrator. 

Representative Jimmy Gazaway Okay. And they’ve all been trained on how to take these reports? And they’re the initial decision makers on whether or not something’s going to be referred for investigation or not, to be clear? 

Dan Mack Correct. If they accept it for investigation. If they decide that it’s not going to be accepted for investigation, that gets reviewed by a supervisor. They have to speak with the supervisor or present their narrative of the report to the supervisor to verify that, yes, it can be screened out or, no, that it shouldn’t be. Or maybe you need to call the reporter back for more clarifying information from the reporter before that’s done. 

Representative Jimmy Gazaway Okay. So back to the point that’s been made earlier, and I’ve made it and others have made it, but 29 times. Now I don’t know that all of those were hotline reports. I take it that many of them likely were. But I heard Senator Clark say that there’s a number of reasons that we don’t know why these 29 times, this case was never followed up on. We don’t know the workers who were involved. 

And in other words, we don’t know the people answering the phone, if they were following protocol or not, if they were taking this as seriously as they should, or if it went to the next level, whether or not those employees did what they were supposed to do. I’ve heard a lot of– and I hate to call them excuses– reasons, excuses, whatever you might say, of lack of appropriate interviews, lack of appropriate investigation, lack of the ability to do history searches and a lot of things about why this happened 29 times. 

But I just find it hard to believe. It might be one thing if there have been one or two calls about this child that something falls through the cracks. That is capable of happening. But 29 times seems unbelievable to me. So is there any explanation for that? 

Dan Mack Yeah, well, again, all I can say is, based on what the hotline, basically the role we play in this part, it comes into us. If we send it for investigation, and we sent it 29 times. We’ve accepted it, we’ve sent it on to the agency who’s supposed to be the investigation part of it. 

We don’t see that report again. We’re going to be on the phone to take the very next report. So we don’t have anything to do with the findings and the determinations and anything about that, as far as whether it’s substantiated or it’s found true. That part is all through investigation.

Representative Jimmy Gazaway Sure, I understand. And even if it is accepted or substantiated, it’s then going to get referred out, I guess, based on certain protocol, to possibly a criminal investigation or possibly to DCFS for dependency neglect type analysis. And apparently I’m not right about that. 

Tiffany Wright So I think I can help. So the hotline will accept or screen out the report. If they accept it, that’s the end of their– that’s where they stop. Their involvement stops right there. Then it’s either assigned to Crimes Against Children division, which is underneath Arkansas State Police as well, or DCFS. 

Okay, so, lets go, if it’s assigned to Crimes Against Children and they’re investigating, they’re working that investigation, if they don’t feel like a child is unsafe based on that investigation, then DCFS isn’t ever involved. If they feel like they have a safety issue, then they call us in to assess the safety. And that’s how we get involved and collaborate with Crimes Against Children. If DCFS gets the report, then both agencies are working for a true finding or an unsubstantiated finding. 

But let’s say during the course of either of these investigations, there is risk of danger, imminent danger, and the safety that we cannot keep those children in the home, then we, DCFS, would take what we call a 72-hour hold and place the child into foster care. And then that’s what starts the dependency neglect process. Did I help, clarify, make it worse? 

Representative Jimmy Gazaway Absolutely, yes. That helped a lot. 

Tiffany Wright Okay. 

Senator Scott Flippo Thank you, Representative. Representative Rose, you are recognized for your question, sir. 

Representative Ryan Rose Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think we can all agree that the individuals who committed this absolute horrible atrocity on a child are monsters. We’ll start there. They’re responsible, and their actions were evil. Following that, as we keep referencing the 29 reports, I imagine for the rest of your life, 29 will be your least favorite number. 

It probably for the rest of my life will cause me to twitch because of the span of time that abuse or torture took place. And I read in your letter that DHS recognizes the responsibility that they bear. So at some point, in addition to those who are committing the crimes, DHS is bearing some responsibility because the crimes were being allowed to continue after people had called and said something bad is happening. Is that correct? You searched the database to figure out that there were 29 reports that had been initiated. 

Tiffany Wright Yes. 

Representative Ryan Rose So, briefly, because I’ve got a couple of questions here, but briefly, can you tell me how you were able to determine that there were 29 reports? Were you able just to search the names of those guardians? 

Tiffany Wright Yes. So we have the ability to search the name of the parent, the child. And it will provide the information to us around who. And then you go in and read each of the investigations. 

Representative Ryan Rose So, Director Wright, Chief of Staff McDonald, you’re much more adept at this than me, and I’m sure far superior in your knowledge and understanding. I’m sure you’re already making changes. But if it hasn’t already been discussed, I’m just going to throw a suggestion out there that you guys think about, is that every report, when you receive it as a protocol, now we’re going to immediately search that name and see how many other reports come up. 

So that 28 times it doesn’t go by without being caught until the 29th time. With that, you’ve now seen, okay, we searched this. We saw we had 29 reports. I’m sure you can see who took the reports, who investigated to some degree. All of those reports were found to be unsubstantiated for some reason. Has any disciplinary action taken place amongst staff? 

While you consult for just a second, I’ll say, I sit on the Charitable, Penal and Corrections Subcommittee. And we had this Calico Rock prison break. And they immediately dealt with staff who were responsible. Fortunately, in that instance, nobody was hurt in the prison break. Nobody was hurt, but staff members were immediately released. 

Disciplinary Actions Against Staff (Not taken)

Others were punished, demoted, etc. In this case, a child was significantly harmed over a long period of time. So I’m curious if, in your investigation to those 29 reports, have you taken any disciplinary action against any staff members? 

Tiffany Wright Sorry. Some of those employees no longer work for the agency, given the length of time. And some of them are in within different roles. 

Representative Ryan Rose Let me, let me pause. I want to let you continue. Does it happen that you rehire staff members after they’ve left? Can they come back in the future? 

Tiffany Wright We do rehire some staff. 

Representative Ryan Rose So for those who were involved who no longer are on staff, are you guys making any kind of notation to their employee file or anything along those lines? I hear you saying, well, they don’t work for us anymore. There should be accountability. 

So I would like you to at least consider that for those who are no longer a part of your department or your division. If they don’t work here anymore, that doesn’t mean: Let’s just forget it. It’s no big deal. If they want to come back, that’s fine. We won’t put it on their employee record. For those who are in different roles or in same roles, has any disciplinary action taken place? If the answer is no, you can just go with no. 

Tiffany Wright No, I mean, there has not been disciplinary action for staff who remain in–. 

Representative Ryan Rose In your letter you say, We will do everything in our power to prevent this from ever happening again. So 29 reports, nothing was done, nobody’s punished. Does that sound like you’re doing everything in your power to prevent it from happening again? 

Tiffany Wright I think, when we brought our staff together and reviewed the incident and had everyone in one room and started reviewing the case, we assessed their accountability. We assessed their engagement in learning and improving practice. And so that’s why the decision of no discipline for staff was not made. 

Representative Ryan Rose Have you individually reviewed every one of those 29 reports? 

Tiffany Wright I have reviewed those 29 reports. 

Representative Ryan Rose Do you know the names of the employees who still work for you who took those reports or pursued those investigations? 

Tiffany Wright Not off the top of my head. 

Representative Ryan Rose But do you know them? Like, you have records? 

Tiffany Wright Oh, I can see who’s, I can see who was assigned to each of the cases. 

Representative Ryan Rose Have you spoken individually to each one of those employees about what went wrong? Or did you just have a group setting? 

Tiffany Wright It was not individually. But we’ve had some hard conversations about this. 

Representative Ryan Rose So there’s been no disciplinary action taken. Nobody’s been dismissed. 

Tiffany Wright Yeah. 

Representative Ryan Rose I find that hard to believe. What is the likelihood that there are dozens more cases like this poor child’s that have gone unnoticed? 

Tiffany Wright I would hope that there’s not, but I can’t give you an answer on that today. 

Representative Ryan Rose So the database that you use, can you export data from it, like an Excel file, a CSV or anything along those lines? Have you guys exported that and done any kind of analysis to determine if there’s significant number of reports against any names? 

Tiffany Wright That was an additional question that we received. 

Representative Ryan Rose Have you done it? 

Tiffany Wright I have not done it. 

Representative Ryan Rose So how long ago did you discover the 29 reports for this one name? How long ago was that? 

Tiffany Wright That would have been November of 2024. 

Representative Ryan Rose So in almost one year’s time, you discovered that there were 29 reports for one name, and it hasn’t occurred to anybody to export the data? I just thought of this sitting here. It hasn’t occurred to anybody to export your entire database and just search and see if there’s somebody else mass abusing a child and it going unnoticed? 

Tiffany Wright No. 

Representative Ryan Rose So in summary: No disciplinary action, no employees dismissed, and you guys haven’t simply done a search to see if there’s any other children out there who’ve had these kind of reports filed. 

Tiffany Wright No. 

Representative Ryan Rose All right, I’m finished. 

Senator Scott Flippo Thank you, Representative. Representative Richardson, you’re recognized for a question. 

Representative Jay Richardson Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah. So I gotta tell you, for there to be no disciplinary action to these employees is unacceptable. And I think you would agree with me that with you being in a leadership position managing these employees, I would have assumed that there was something done with these individuals. Tell me, how much training are these individuals who carry these cases getting on an annual basis? 

Tiffany Wright So to become a caseworker, you get about nine months of initial training. And then we do, for our investigations team, at least twice a year, if not more, we’ll do trainings where we bring them all together and do additional trainings and talk about case reviews and practice issues we may have identified along the way. And we also host follow up Zoom calls and things like that with them to just continue their education, share information, review data, that kind of thing. 

Representative Jay Richardson And out of the individuals that you have identified, and you had your group meeting with that didn’t receive any disciplinary action, has there been any history with any of those individuals that some of these same instances have happened in the past? 

Tiffany Wright I can’t recall that information. I would have to circle back and provide that to you. 

Representative Jay Richardson And how often are those employees that are the case managers, how often do they remove themselves from investigation based on conflict of interest? 

Tiffany Wright I don’t track that information, conflict of interest. 

Representative Jay Richardson Do you know of that having happened? 

Tiffany Wright I do know of cases where staff have said, I’m related to this person, I can’t work this investigation. And we reassign out of the county, maybe out of the area, maybe within the county, just depends on the circumstance. 

Representative Jay Richardson Are you aware of people that are reporting instances to you and have notified you that these people are involved with this investigation and they’re still involved? Has that been made known to you? Does that question make sense? 

Tiffany Wright No. Ask me again. 

Representative Jay Richardson And– go ahead. 

Lori McDonald Yeah, Representative Richardson, I think I’m familiar with what you’re referring to. Whenever a worker notifies a supervisor of a conflict of interest, a possible conflict of interest, there should be a staffing on that. And the likelihood of that worker being removed is great. I’m familiar with what you’re referring to. 

Representative Jay Richardson How do we avoid that? And this is slightly different from the case that we’re talking about. And I apologize, Chair. How do we fix that? You know what? I’ll get with you offline and we’ll discuss that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Senator Scott Flippo Thank you. Representative Gazaway, do you have a couple of follow-ups? 

Representative Jimmy Gazaway I do. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So to follow up a little bit on Representative Rose’s line of questioning. You guys have a difficult job. Everyone employed in this process has a difficult job. And I just want to say, to his point, I mean, in this case, with 29 calls, I would think somewhere along the way, it would have been identified that this child was being abused. 

Seems to me somewhere in that process it should have happened. But with that being said, you guys also, and I know from practicing law for 19 years, having had enough cases, that you guys get a lot of bogus reports too. And there are people that will call the hotline. 

I’m aware of cases, even one today, that someone made a call and DHS showing up over things that are really insignificant. Not abuse, not neglect, but the parties may happen to be involved in a divorce. And you have one person who’s just calling the hotline all the time because they’re trying to gain an upper hand in a divorce setting, for instance. And so I think the challenge is, seems pretty clear, is to distinguish between what is legitimate and what is not. 

And you may get five reports on the same child in a very short period of time because you have a crazy person. These people exist, who are calling the hotline every other day over bogus things because they’re trying to gain an upper hand in their custody dispute or things of that nature. So can you expound upon that also? 

Tiffany Wright I don’t know. I think Dan may want to take that at the hotline side. But I think once it’s assigned for investigation, we don’t have a choice but to work that investigation. So once it’s assigned, and it’s been accepted, we have to go out and work those reports. 

Representative Jimmy Gazaway So in response to that, I think my point to you would be, in any comments that you have on this, I would like to hear. But it’s the protocol that you have in place and the ability to distinguish between what is legitimate and what is not legitimate. You also need to have a process in place similar to what Representative Rose is talking about to search your database quickly and find out that this child has been called on 29 times. 

Now, with that being said, we know that there are going to be some of those examples where a child, there’s been a call about a child, for instance, 10 times. And we know that they’ve all turned out to be unsubstantiated because you’re dealing with, for lack of a better way to put it, a crazy person who keeps calling the hotline over bogus things. 

So the real, I think, challenge that you have that you have to solve, in terms of proper protocol and training for the people that are answering these calls and responding to these calls, is how you distinguish between what is legitimate and what is not legitimate. And you can address that. And the second point I want to make, however, is, again, I’ve practiced law for 19 years. 

And unfortunately, I have been involved in these cases and I’ve seen what has happened. I talked to a friend of mine, another lawyer friend of mine, last night, who has done parent counsel work in DHS court. Part of what he talks about is that DHS sometimes will strain at a gnat, to borrow a phrase from the Bible, but swallow a camel. So you may have something that’s really insignificant that would in most people’s estimation never constitute abuse, probably not neglect, and you have kids removed from homes, placed in foster care, et cetera. And then you have cases like this where a child is being tortured. 

And there’s been 29 reports, and it takes 11 years before there’s any action. And so, again, it’s a difficult job. But part of what you have to solve for is not removing kids and taking drastic action in cases that are minor, relatively minor, if serious at all, and then not taking action in the serious cases. So I realize I’ve said a lot and I’ve not asked any particular question. But can you respond to those remarks? 

Collaboration Between Agencies

Tiffany Wright I will do my best. I think that you’re right. We do get reports as you’ve described. I think that if you look at our data of the maltreatment reports that are accepted, approximately 20% of those are found true. And so I think that maybe one thing together as a collaborative, we could focus on, how do we accept the right reports and make sure that we’re getting to the right kids and how do we mitigate and families who may just need help or like you said, swallow the camel, swat the gnat. Or I said it backwards, I apologize. 

But anyway, yeah, what I’m saying is we do sometimes get tied up into things that are custody battles or those different situations. And then those reports are coming in on top of more severe reports. And I actually have a couple ideas, but I don’t want to put my partners at Crimes Against Children’s division on the hot seat right here. 

But in our partnership, I have a few ideas of things that I’d like to talk about with their leadership team and our DHS administration about as well. So just trying to strike the balance and making sure that when we have a report that comes in off the hotline, we are looking at the history and understanding the family that we’re serving so we can keep kids safe. I don’t know if that satisfies your questions. 

Representative Jimmy Gazaway Well, I don’t know that I had a particular question. I just wanted to make that point. If witnesses from the hotline have any comments on that, because that’s where those reports are initially received, that’s where that initial decision is made. How do they distinguish between what is legitimate and what’s not? And what are they doing to search the history, like Representative Rose said? 

Dan Mack So it’s kind of like Director Wright said. We’re obligated to go ahead and accept the report for investigation if the reporter gives us the information and it meets criteria to accept, according to the Child Maltreatment Act. We may have an underlying thing that this is a custody issue or this is that issue, whatever. 

But it still meets what they’ve said in the black and white meets child maltreatment. We’ve got to send it on for investigation. Very few reporters have been quote unquote banned from making reports to the hotline due to mental instability, harassing nature of stuff. We  do have some of those. 

And we’ll have law enforcement agencies, we’ve had prosecutors contact the hotline and say, Hey, how can we get these people– or investigators, we keep getting these malicious reports and what can we do? And we just refer them to the prosecuting attorney. We can’t put a ban list, if you will, together without somebody saying they’re mentally incompetent or they’re this or they’re that and they’ve been told not to contact the hotline anymore. 

Representative Jimmy Gazaway One last question, just for the benefit of the committee. Arkansas State Police Crimes Against Children Division, which mans the hotline and then does conduct investigations, are they commissioned law enforcement officers? 

Jason Aaron No sir, they’re not. They’ll work their case and if it looks like it’s going criminal, then they will parallel that with the local jurisdiction, whatever jurisdiction that crime was committed in. 

Representative Jimmy Gazaway So I just wanted to make it clear. When you say Arkansas State Police Crimes Against Children Division, and that certain of these investigations get referred to them, that is not a trained commissioned law enforcement officer conducting a criminal investigation. They’re really acting kind of under the authority of DHS. 

Jason Aaron They’re almost kind of like a liaison. But some of our investigators, and Kalika may clear this up, but either all of them or some of them may have certified training in forensic interviews. And some of these police departments or law enforcement agencies across the state do not have that resource or asset available within their agency. 

And so that CACD investigator will pick up that role. They may already have a rapport with the victim or the suspect in this potential criminal case. And so the CACD investigator will plug along with it, but the CACD is not carrying the criminal case. That law enforcement agency is carrying the criminal case. 

Representative Jimmy Gazaway But the CACD investigator is employed by the Arkansas State Police? 

Jason Aaron Correct. It’s a civilian employee. 

Representative Jimmy Gazaway As a civilian. And then what exactly is the interplay with DHS? 

Tiffany Wright We operate on a MOU together and have agreed upon understanding about our roles and expectations between the two agencies. 

Representative Jimmy Gazaway Thank you. 

Senator Scott Flippo All right, we’ll do Senator Clark, Representative Rose, then Representative Woolridge. Senator Clark, you are recognized. 

Senator Alan Clark Thank you, Mr. Chair. To the State Police and the hotline, you cannot accept a report on every call, correct? Your people are trained: We can accept this. We don’t accept this because we have people that are concerned that kids are out on their bicycles. 

Jason Aaron Their holy grail is the child maltreatment act, and it specifically defines what that operator can accept and can screen out. 

Senator Alan Clark And what they cannot. And even at that, we still, not blaming y’all, because you’re going by the rules you have, we still have the one of the highest rates in the country of accepting calls, which could be a problem. 

On the other side of what happened here, because we’ve got to remember this is never just one sided. This is a terrible thing that happened. But you accept that call and it goes then to DCFS, may go to CACD if it looks more criminal in nature. But we’re going to say it goes to DCFS. You have to investigate. If the government comes to your house to investigate you about your parenting, you think that’s traumatic or not traumatic? 

Tiffany Wright It’s traumatic. 

Senator Alan Clark It’s traumatic. So if you’re one of the most perfect parents there ever was, it’s a traumatic experience. Now there is no not guilty. 

Tiffany Wright Correct. 

Senator Alan Clark It’s unsubstantiated and true. 

Tiffany Wright That’s right, because these are not criminal investigations. 

Senator Alan Clark Now if you come investigate my parenting, because somebody called in, they accepted a call, how long once I have that unsubstantiated, not guilty, unsubstantiated report, how long does that take? 

Tiffany Wright Unsubstantiated, it’s not on the central registry, but it’s within our database for history. 

Senator Alan Clark It’s within your database. Because I agree with everything that Representative Rose  said. I agree with everything Representative Gazaway said. But it’s in your database. 

Tiffany Wright That’s correct. 

Senator Alan Clark And so you are, if another call comes in– how long is it going to be in your database? 

Tiffany Wright Forever. 

Senator Alan Clark Forever. So if you have that person, and we do, that keeps calling and knows the right things to say, that they have to take the report, and then you have to investigate. And whether y’all will admit it or not– I may try to get you to admit it. If you’ve got five or six unsubstantiated, even though you’re one of the most perfect parents that we would find, there is some tendency, I find, that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. 

Tiffany Wright There is some perception about where there’s smoke there is fire. 

Senator Alan Clark If we kept getting calls, there must be something wrong even though I never did anything wrong. So I agree with Representative Rose on you got to be pulling those out. But on the other hand, we got to be careful, don’t we, that we don’t come up with the wrong idea about people who are perfectly innocent. So we’ve got to do everything we can to stop this kind of case. 

But we’ve also got to be careful because I work with way more cases where we should have done less than cases where we should have done more. And the thing is that a lot of times, including in my own family, those are tragic cases. And in our case, I know the caseworker. And turns out it would have been best if the child had been removed and placed with his paternal grandmother. 

But at the same time, we want to keep families together. And so a lot of times there is no perfect call. This one looks like it was– and I want to get into it– looks like it was probably obvious. But when we get into it, we’ll see. But so we agree that it’s not just one-sided. We have to be very careful on the other side that we don’t become a police state when it comes to parenting. 

Tiffany Wright That’s right. We have to walk a balance and have both and– 

Senator Alan Clark Very narrow. 

Tiffany Wright –manage both sides of the system. 

Senator Alan Clark Okay, Mr. Chair, I would like to make a motion. 

Senator Scott Flippo What’s your motion, Senator?

Referral of Case to Legislative Oversight

Senator Alan Clark That we refer the closed cases– we can’t look into the open case– that we refer the closed cases on this child to the Child Maltreatment Investigations Oversight Committee for them to look at, recommend that they look at. 

Senator Scott Flippo The motion by Senator Clark is that we refer the closed, did you say cases? Okay. Closed cases specific to this child? 

Senator Alan Clark That’s what we’re here for.

Senator Scott Flippo Yeah, okay. So the closed cases specific to this case in Baxter County and Mountain Home to the Child Maltreatment Investigations Oversight Committee. 

Senator Alan Clark Yes. And may I also say while I’m making the motion that members who are not on it can come to the chair, who is currently me, and ask to be there. I can’t allow the whole room to come. 

But if you have a very specific interest and would like to be there, because we have never had a leak and I’m very proud of that. It’s very necessary. So you’ve got to understand, if you want to come and be part of it what the rules are and how careful we have to be. So it is possible for some of you if you wish to be in attendance when we look at these things. But that’s the motion.

Senator Scott Flippo Okay. Do I have a second on that? Got a second by Senator Sullivan. All in favor, say aye. Opposed? Congratulations. Motion carries. And let me just add, Senator Clark, how long have you served on that committee? 

Senator Alan Clark When did we create it? 

Tiffany Wright Was it 2017 or 2018? 

Senator Alan Clark 2017. 

Senator Scott Flippo Did you run the legislation that created the–? 

Senator Alan Clark We did. And we looked at every way to try to have oversight. And this was the only way we came up with and everybody said it was impossible because the press wasn’t going to allow it. And the press understood the problem. I went to AP and the TV stations and the radio stations and they understood the problem and were willing to let us do that. And we’re very careful that we have a very narrow scope. 

Senator Scott Flippo Senator Clark, I’ve served with you for 11 years. There’s not a member of this legislature that I think’s worked any harder or been in the weeds any more than you have when it comes to issues regarding  children, family and youth and DCFS and or family courts. And I know that you have a heart for this and a passion for this. I think you’re an excellent chair there. 

And so I feel very comfortable with your committee taking this up because, at the end of the day, I think people are tired. You want accountability, but what people are tired of is just the finger pointing to this and that is like we want a better process. We want better kids. 

And unfortunately, I think we live in this society, and you all are dealing with the fallout. Some of these people, I hate to even use the word parents because they’re so far from it. And I know you all have to see. I’m disgusted by what I know about this case. I can imagine what you all see just in an average week at DCFS. 

Abuse Allegation Stats

But one thing that’s come to me today and is, and I’ll ask this question, ballpark me, how many calls do y’all get? Or this is a case of a couple going through a divorce and somebody’s just trying to make the other spouse look bad, or I’m upset with my sister, so I’m going to call in some manufactured case. And I know that these things have to exist. I don’t know how to quantify it. Like is it an issue or is it a minor, yeah, it happens, but not any degree of frequency? 

Dan Mack I think, from our standpoint at the hotline, we know what happens. We can see spikes of our call volume and when the exchange of custody is happened on Sunday evenings. We can see it after long holidays when they’ve been with the non-custodial parent and summer visits and so on. So we see those types of reports, but some of them are legitimate concerns. 

Director Wright probably would have more insight regarding the investigations part because they see, which most of those are bogus and which aren’t. We believe what we are being told. Granted, we only know it’s 50 percent of the story. We just don’t know if it’s the true part or the false part. But if it meets criteria to accept them, we’re going to accept it and let investigations run its course. So Director Wright would probably better answer. 

Tiffany Wright I don’t have a good data point on that, except to say that, of the reports that come in in a state fiscal year, we’re only finding true on 20 percent of those. 

Senator Scott Flippo Is that in line with other states? Is there a national average? Are there any national data or states that we border that we look at to see how we’re doing in comparison? 

Tiffany Wright I think we are over accepting. I think the data would show that Arkansas is over accepting at the front door on the hotline reports. The data would show that. 

Jason Aaron Sir, I think, just to give you an idea of the call volume, about 65,000 calls are taken in the hotline center every year. So 20 percent of 65,000. 

Senator Scott Flippo So 20 percent of that. All right. Representative Rose, excuse me, and then Representative Wooldridge. 

Representative Ryan Rose Thank you, Mr. Chair. Miss McDonald, October, over the last 11 years, if we’d pose the question, Hey, why don’t you do a database search of every report that’s been filed and see if any name comes up 20-plus times? If we’d done that a year ago or two years ago or three years ago, we could have stopped the abuse of this one child sooner. Would you agree? 

Lori McDonald Yes, sir. 

Representative Ryan Rose If today we made the suggestion and it was followed through upon to do that search in the database and you guys pick the number– 10, 15, 20, 30. I don’t know what the magic number is. But you guys are the subject matter experts. And we said, if it hit this many with one name, we’re going to invest some time in pursuing why this is happening. Do you think that that would be a productive method to hopefully stop some children from being abused? 

Lori McDonald I certainly think that it would be a good tool, a good measure. 

Legislative Suggestions and Discipline

Representative Ryan Rose There are still employees who took reports or investigated or were in some shape or form involved in the 29 reports that were deemed unsubstantiated. Do you think it would be beneficial to have a one on one review with that employee, as well as the standards and practices that they’re exercising in their report taking or their investigating to determine whether they need correction or discipline or to be removed entirely? 

Lori McDonald Yes, sir. I’d like to go back and talk with our legal counsel, as well as Director Wright, and be able to look into that more deeply. 

Representative Ryan Rose I don’t want to rabbit trail too much here, but can you think of some job performance related offenses that are fireable? What would those look like in any given position within your department? You can use broad terms. 

Lori McDonald Job performance terminations? 

Representative Ryan Rose Yeah. What would rise to the level of being relieved of their job? 

Lori McDonald Sure. Dishonesty, theft. There’s a host of reasons. 

Representative Ryan Rose What if they were just bad at their job? Are they performance related? 

Lori McDonald Yes, sir. 

Representative Ryan Rose If they failed to do their job adequately and it caused harm to happen to somebody or for something to be missed that was significant, would that rise the level of being fired? 

Lori McDonald That would certainly rise to the level of taking that to our legal council for consult. Yes, sir. 

Representative Ryan Rose Director Wright, in your letter, I want to go back to, you said, we will do everything in our power to prevent this from ever happening again. In your letterhead, it says, we care, we act, we change lives. I would like to suggest and challenge that you consider immediately doing a database search for any large number of reports that come back to an offender or a child’s name and give those a significant review to make sure there’s not some other kid who’s been in an abusive or torturous situation for over a decade or even three to five years. 

I would also like to suggest that you consider immediately upon receiving a report of child abuse, that part of your protocol is that that name is put into a filter, whether it is simply that the employee goes to the database and searches John Smith address or DOB or whatever else information that you take to see if there’s a long list of names or a long list of reports that show up. And if that were to happen, that they would then also pursue further investigation into that or referring it to an investigation.

And the other thing that I would like to suggest is that one-on-one follow-ups are done with the employees who are still with you, regardless of their position, but if they’re still with you, if they were involved in any of these unsubstantiated reports. Whether it was on the paperwork side, the investigation side, that you have one-on-ones, that you review their body of work, and that you pursue whether or not there should be disciplinary action taken. 

After just having my exchange with the chief of staff, it seemed that these were meritable considerations. And so I would like to suggest that you consider those and then report back to the State Agencies committee and let us know your findings, whether you decided to follow those suggestions or not. 

And if you did follow them, what results you came up with. And I hope this does not come across harshly. But you said, I hope there are no other children that fall into this category. Hope is not a strategy. You have data and tools at your disposal. You and your team have to act because none of us can let this happen again on our watch. Would you agree? 

Tiffany Wright I agree. 

Representative Ryan Rose Thank you. 

Senator Scott Flippo Thank you, Representative. Representative Wooldridge, you are recognized for a question, sir. 

Representative Jeremy Wooldridge Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you for being here. I know that you all are as equally bothered by this as we are. So I know we talked about 65,000 reports, roughly 12-13,000 are accepted. When those are found as unsubstantiated reports, are those staffed with a supervisor? Are they staffed through peer to peer review? What does that look like? 

Tiffany Wright For DCFS, when we unsubstantiate, before we close an investigation, there is a supervisor or consult that occurs on each investigation. 

Representative Jeremy Wooldridge And I know the hotline already answered that. They said if they don’t accept a report, it’s reviewed by a supervisor. So for DCFS, every unsubstantiated report is reviewed by the supervisor? 

Tiffany Wright It doesn’t matter, unsubstantiated or true. Before the closure happens, there is a review that occurs. 

Representative Jeremy Wooldridge Okay. So I guess then the question, and I don’t know that you can go into the answer or an answer for this question. So 29 times this was reviewed, not only by a caseworker but by a supervisor, and found to be unsubstantiated? 

Tiffany Wright Yes. 

Representative Jeremy Wooldridge Okay. All right, thank you. 

Senator Scott Flippo All right. Representative Gazaway, you have some follow ups? 

Representative Jimmy Gazaway I do. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So it looks like we may be nearing the end of this meeting, but before we go, this is the State Agencies committee. DHS is a state agency. Arkansas State Police is a state agency. I think we all want to be problem solvers here. 

And so the question is, how do we improve? What can we do as a legislature to help you guys ensure that what happened in this case never happens again? And so I heard you say earlier that you had issues with, number one, you have a significant number of reports, and that you’ve had significant turnover in staff. So that sounds to me kind of like a staffing issue. 

And so I don’t know how we can help you in terms of staffing, but I would ask that you let us know that. And you may want to generate some kind of report following this meeting about recommendations about what we can do as a legislature to help you. But some of that sounds like staffing. Some of it sounded like there were maybe software problems in terms of being able to search histories, that maybe there were protocol problems because those who were charged with taking the reports didn’t document things properly. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do about that. You may have all the protocol in place that you need, and if people won’t follow it, that’s not your fault. 

But what we need to know is if there are things that need to be changed, in terms of you need different or better software, you need resources related to staffing, you need training and more money for training, protocols that need to be put in place. I don’t want to leave this meeting of the Joint State Agencies committee without coming to some kind of resolution as to how we can help fix a problem because ultimately that’s what we’re here for. And so will you guys commit to letting us know what we can do to help you? 

Tiffany Wright Yes. 

Representative Jimmy Gazaway All right. Thank you. 

Lori McDonald Absolutely. We appreciate it. Thank you. 

Senator Scott Flippo Thank you, Representative Gazaway. And it would be my intent to have at least one more State Agencies meeting between now and the end of the year as a follow-up, as far as what DHS, DCFS, State Police are doing, and what the legislative branch needs to be doing as far as potential legislation. 

I’ve got three or four things that I’ve jotted down here that I’ve looked at as like, well, isn’t this worth a consideration of us talking about it amongst ourselves about whether or not this would warrant legislation. Let me end it with this. I think I’m accountable for the mishaps of the ball being dropped just like you are, Tiffany, Lori. 

I mean, when state government fails, we don’t need to know what position, what title. Let’s collectively put ourselves in there. There’s a failure in this system. And at the end of the day, what people want is they want an acknowledgement that it failed. And I believe we’re getting that today. But more important, just as importantly, we know what the hell we’re going to do to fix it. 

Everybody in this room knows there’s no such thing as 100 percent guarantee, 100 percent fail-proof process. I wish to goodness there was. I’m sure you all do too. But when there’s a failure, there’s got to be an acknowledgement of it. I appreciate the conversations we’ve had today. It’s important that we do it in public and that we do it in a way that is constructive. 

And I understand Senator Clark’s committee is going to meet in private. I don’t think that y’all, Senator– it’s closed to the public and the members of the media. Some members can attend, but there is a strict confidentiality portion to that. But I know you, Alan, and I know how serious you take this work. And I know how you work with people you agree with, you disagree with, because you’re actually interested in trying to make the system better. 

And one thing that we can all take of this today is we can’t get this young man the 10 years that he’s essentially lost of his life back. But we can be working together to make sure that we’re holding ourselves accountable and that we’re doing more than just holding ourselves accountable, that we’re actually working together to come up with real world ideal solutions that are viable and that we can implement and that we can show the people of this state immeasurable results. 

And I’m looking forward to working with you all to do that and then to make sure that– I don’t want to hear any more if there’s a if a prosecutor or law enforcement agency asked for a specific case file. Let’s get them what they got. If they’re legally entitled to it, there doesn’t need to be– it should be a very simple, straightforward process. Mr. Ethredge shouldn’t have had to reach out to me, should have never had it happen. But in that, the people of this state, I think there’s good– everyone of you all down there, I know personally. A good person. 

I think my colleagues here on this side, good people. Sometimes  good people can make mistakes, or the people under us can make mistakes. We’re still accountable for that. But in all that, the people of this state deserve our very best. And in getting our very best, that means sometimes we have to have hard but necessary conversations in the public sphere. And with that, seeing no further questions and no further items coming before this committee, we are adjourned.