To protect Alaska's children against sexual predators and ideological zealots, I'd like to propose a new amendment to the Alaska Constitution. I'm calling it "The Children's Bill of Rights." Those rights should include:
1. The right to learn about their bodies, including sex education, what causes pregnancy, and information about gender and sexuality.
2. The right to learn how to prevent pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.
3. The right to age-appropriate information about sexual abuse and where to go to stop it.
Why is this necessary? Right now, even with the deplorable rate at which children are victimized in Alaska, some of our legislators are trying to strip kids of these rights.
Sen. Mike Dunleavy, R-Wasilla, has just managed to take legislation designed to empower children against sexual abuse -- HB 44, commonly referred to as "Erin's Law" -- and turn it into something that actually undermines that objective. The original purpose of Erin's law was to provide age-appropriate information to all children so they can recognize sexual abuse and have the resources to report it. Erin Merryn, the champion of this law, has emphasized that this education is supposed to be mandatory. But Sen. Dunleavy has inserted a provision into the house bill that allows parent to "opt-out" and not just of the essential information about how children can protect themselves from sexual abuse.
Dunleavy's modification of Erin's Law expands the opt-out provision so that parents can also deny their children access to basic health education, including information about how their bodies work, and how to prevent pregnancy and sexually-transmitted disease. It would even allow parents to withdraw their child from an activity, class, or program because of "inquiries into personal or private family affairs of the student or family that are not a matter of public record or subject to public observation." This leaves children with all the rights and protections afforded the family sofa.
Imagine a stepfather molesting his grade-school-age daughter. Not only would this predator have the authority keep his child out of any program that taught "good touch, bad touch," he could also prevent her from learning where to go to report the abuse. Thanks to Dunleavy, the stepfather could deny this child basic information about the purpose of sex organs and the nature of sexual activity. He could keep her in the dark about what he was actually doing to her. And he could prevent her from giving any information to the school that might hint at what's happening at home. For the child predator, ignorance is power.
As has already been reported in this newspaper, Merryn was horrified at Dunleavy's modifications. In response, the senator commented that "sometimes when you're outside the legislative process, it looks pretty strange, and it's certainly subject to criticism."
So, in order to understand this seemingly unhinged legislative act, I decided to take a look inside the process -- at least as much as I was allowed to see. While the House was busying itself passing HB 44, back in April, the Senate Education Committee, headed by Dunleavy, was holding public hearings on a Senate version of Erin's Law sponsored by Sen. Lesil McGuire, an Anchorage Republican.
Given the fact that nowhere in the entire country are children more at risk of sexual abuse than in Alaska, you might have thought that passage of Erin's Law might be worthy of some urgency. Remember, this is the second year that a version of the law has been before the state Legislature. In 2014, the Senate passed Erin's Law but it failed to clear the House before the end of the session.
According to statistics generated by the Office of Children's Services for the sponsor of HB 44, in 2014 alone there were 2,640 allegations of child sexual abuse with 2,110 unique victims. 897 of these cases were sent to law enforcement and OCS went on to assess 1,028 allegations. In other words, each year of legislative foot-dragging adds to this deplorable tally of damage to our children.
But rather than a sense of outrage and the will to act, the predominant sentiment in the Senate Education Committee, as it convened on April 2, seemed to be hand-wringing over the fact, as expressed by member Sen. Cathy Geissel, R-Anchorage, that "this is a very difficult area." One of the main difficulties appeared to be that the program would be administered by a government institution. As Geissel remarked, "I get the idea that we want to protect children. At the same time, I get the idea that government can't protect everyone from everything." McGuire, agreeing to an opt-out provision in her bill, echoed Geissel's sentiment: "As a Republican, frankly, I do see that philosophical line where you start ebbing too close to police state."
The problem, of course, with this anti-government paranoia is that state and municipal institutions such as schools are a safe haven for children whose homes hide a predator. I don't know if our legislators realize this, but children are not typically abused by strangers who jump out of the bushes. Perpetrators of child sexual abuse tend to be members of the child's own family: stepfathers, fathers, mothers, grandparents, uncles. When the family is the problem, children need to be able to turn to the state for help.
In the end, rather than passing the bill out of committee -- even with the opt-out provision -- the committee seemed content to pat themselves on the back for the courage to address the issue. Here is McGuire: "Even just having this hearing is so much better than it was 15, 20 years ago. If there's somebody out there watching, that has had this happened to them, know that as lawmakers we can sit in this room and we can talk about it and we don't feel shame ourselves, and we're recognizing this is a very serious issue and there aren't any easy right answers or else it would have been solved already."
I'm glad that McGuire and the Senate Education Committee have found a safe space to talk about sexual abuse. Maybe someday they'll find the will to give the same opportunity to children.
Marcelle McDannel has been working in criminal law for almost two decades, both as a prosecutor and as a criminal defense attorney. She currently practices criminal defense statewide. Contact her at marcelle(at)alaskadispatch.com.
The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com.