On March 9, Sen. Beth Mizell introduced Bill 329 to push Louisiana toward greater transparency when children die due to suspected abuse or neglect. This bill follows legislators’ frustration that they were not told about the starvation death of 5-year old Marley Perilloux.
State law currently requires notifications to lawmakers when a child dies of abuse or neglect. But real accountability comes not from private briefings within government. It comes from information released to the public.
Louisiana currently publishes formulaic, aggregated child death review reports that largely restate public health guidance about safe sleep and medication storage. They are typically released several years after the reviewed deaths occurred and provide little or no information about the actions or inactions of mandatory reporters, child protection, law enforcement or the courts – the individuals and institutions best situated to act when a child is in crisis. Without timely disclosure and relevant case details, the public is kept in the dark as to how taxpayer-funded agencies are fulfilling their responsibility to keep children safe.
The public never learned about the 1-month old baby who died from fatal traumatic injuries in 2023, or the 4-year old who died of abusive head trauma in 2022. No data were released. There was no media coverage. And we still don’t know their names. We know about these two child homicide victims in Louisiana only because the Lives Cut Short project filed a public records request.
In other states, agencies are required to be much more transparent – and accountable – for the protection of children in communities.
In Nevada, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin, the public is notified of every child whose death is being investigated for abuse and neglect. Information about the individuals involved is kept confidential while the investigation is ongoing, but routine disclosures allow for media, ombudsman offices, and others to analyze years of deaths and identify common themes. These analyses can help legislators respond to pervasive flaws, rather than reacting to the circumstances of a single tragedy.
Opponents to transparency on child maltreatment deaths emphasize the privacy rights of the family, including surviving siblings. But, for years, states across the political spectrum – including Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, Oregon, New York, Tennessee, and Wisconsin – have released detailed reports about their death investigations. Some states elect to withhold the names and other identifiable information of the children and adults involved, whereas others opt for full transparency.
Even states with more limited releases of information – such as Arkansas, Indiana, or Texas – still disclose case-level information concerning children who have died due to abuse or neglect, including any recent involvement the family may have had with the child welfare system.
The media are a crucial institution for government accountability, but they cannot fulfill this role without greater transparency. Given major declines in local news, few news outlets are covering child protection issues. Most are stretched too thinly to go through the endless hoops of public record requests or to continue coverage after the initial outcry of a specific death has receded. As a result, many children’s preventable deaths never reach the public, and residents may never learn whether any of the reforms promised in response to a recent legislative task force are preventing these tragedies.
If lawmakers are serious about transparency, accountability, and child safety, they must change laws to ensure that child deaths are not hidden from the public.
