Report of Verbal Abuse Leads to Charges for Mandated Reporter

Police have charged an elementary school teacher in Pennsylvania with violating the mandated reporter law. A child’s grandfather told her that the child’s father was aggressive toward the child, but that he (the grandfather) didn’t want to make a report because the father had drugs and might get in trouble.

The teacher told investigating officers that she only heard about verbal yelling from the grandfather and didn’t know what types of drugs the grandfather was talking about. The police, deciding that a reasonable person would believe the child to be in the presence of illegal drugs, charged her with failure to report within the statutory 48 hours.

I’m not a Pennsylvania lawyer, but I can find no mention in the state’s mandated reporter law that reportable abuse includes being in the presence of drugs. It does contain a provision for “causing a child to be present at a location while a violation of 18 Pa.C.S. § 7508.2 (relating to operation of methamphetamine laboratory) is occurring, provided that the violation is being investigated by law enforcement.” Being in the presence of a drug lab that’s under investigation is very different than being in the presence of other illegal drugs. Nevertheless, police believed they had probable cause to charge the teacher.

There are two lessons here. First, mandated reporters need to know many intricacies of their state's mandated reporter laws. Most training is cursory and doesn’t deal with nuances such as this one. For example, I can find no training for mandatory reporters in Pennsylvania that mentions the presence of drugs. Nevertheless, mandated reporters are responsible for knowing the law, so you need to seek out detailed training.

Second, the standard is not just what the statute says, but how the police in your jurisdiction will interpret the statute. They usually don’t have to take the training that mandated reporters take, and law enforcement usually interprets its mandate as expansively as possible. So view your training and your state’s statute in the same light.