Law That Expunges Child-Abuse Complaints Needs Changing

Law That Expunges Child-Abuse Complaints Needs Changing

LEAD: To the Editor:

To the Editor:

The grim reports of the death of 6-year-old Elizabeth Steinberg because of beatings by her putative father again highlight a gross mistake in New York State's child-care procedure: the destruction of complaints of a child's abuse or neglect by his or her parents (news stories, Nov. 5, 7). In 1983 and 1984 there were complaints of parental abuse or neglect of Elizabeth, but case workers of New York City's Department of Social Services decided the complaints were ''unfounded'' (in the department's terminology). Under a state law adopted in 1973, the entire file in an ''unfounded'' case must be expunged; whether there were other complaints about Elizabeth's treatment that Social Services dismissed and expunged is unknowable.

Change in the 1973 law, enacted without public attention to its consequences, was emphatically recommended by the Public Child Fatality Review Committee in 1986; that committee of nongovernmental specialists in the field studied the records of all the 1985 child deaths in which abuse or neglect was suspected. The committee endorsed one important exception to the confidentiality of an ''unfounded'' complaint: that it should be available to Social Services workers, who could coordinate with the police in the event of a new complaint.

We cannot know in Elizabeth's case whether knowledge of the old expunged complaints, filed after her parents' regular employment ceased, would have been sufficient warning at the time of the last one. But we do know from the 1985-86 study that a coincidence of false reports from unmalicious separate sources is improbable and that reports from separate sources alone show the need for more careful investigation of a parent's denials. The study also showed that an expunged record might have warned at the time of a later complaint that a parent's mental disturbance was longterm and dangerous.

The committee further found that an ''unfounded'' decision on some complaints simply reflected a case worker's values or misjudgment. In a case where the fingernails of a 10-month-old boy fell off because his parents bound them tightly and harshly to prevent thumb sucking, the complaint was ''unfounded'' because the worker thought the parents were penitent; a month later the child was brought back to the hospital in a coma with bite marks on his stomach, broken limbs, bruises and wounds over his head and body. A full record of a child's injuries and the parent's attempts to explain them is important history.

The well-intended but misdirected expunging of neglect and abuse complaints originated with the expunging of records of criminal arrests. The purpose there was mainly to prevent employers from refusing to hire people who had been accused but not convicted. However, there is no possibility of discriminatory use of ''unfounded'' neglect and abuse complaints. If the law is changed, as it should be for the sake of child health and safety, ''unfounded'' complaints will only be appraised professionally in the event of a new complaint, to supply clues that were at first ignored or downplayed. NANETTE DEMBITZ New York, Nov. 8, 1987 The writer, a former Family Court judge, was chairwoman of the Public Child Fatality Review Committee.