Report Title:

Missing Children, Information, Privacy, and Confidentiality

 

Description:

Establishes rebuttable presumptions in missing child case that concerns about the whereabouts and well-being of the missing child outweigh concerns as to confidentiality and potentially harmful effect on child’s family members, including a minor sibling involved in a protection case. Requires the court to limit release of information concerning sibling.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

H.B. NO.

2099

TWENTY-FIRST LEGISLATURE, 2002

 

STATE OF HAWAII

 


 

A BILL FOR AN ACT

 

RELATING TO CHILD PROTECTION.

 

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF HAWAII:

SECTION 1. Section 587-81, Hawaii Revised Statutes, is amended to read as follows:

"§587-81 Court records. (a) The court shall keep a record of all child protective proceedings under this chapter. The written reports, photographs, x-rays, or other information of any nature [which] that are submitted to the court may be made available to other appropriate persons, who are not parties, only upon an order of the court, after the court has determined that [such] the access is in the best interests of the child or serves some other legitimate purpose; provided that the department may disclose, without order of the court, [such] information [as] that is in the court record in the manner and to the extent [as] that is set forth in departmental rules that have been legally [promulgated] adopted and concern the confidentiality of records; provided further that:

(1) The department shall not disclose parties' names to researchers without prior order of the court; and

(2) The department shall report each disclosure to the court and all parties as part of its next report to the court, after the department has disclosed information pursuant to this section.

(b) In ordering access to information related to cases involving a missing child, the court shall determine whether the access may materially assist authorities in locating the child. Such a determination raises rebuttable presumptions that:

(1) Concerns as to the whereabouts and well-being of the missing child outweigh concerns, raised on behalf of other family members, as to the confidentiality of information; and

(2) Concerns as to the whereabouts and well-being of the missing child outweigh concerns of the potentially harmful effect that access may have to the missing child’s family members, including a sibling who is a minor and who may be the subject of a protection case that is interrelated with the missing child’s case.

When authorized access of information may affect a minor sibling of a missing child, the court shall limit the release of information pertaining to the sibling, so as not to impede any current investigation by law enforcement authorities."

SECTION 2. This Act does not affect rights and duties that matured, penalties that were incurred, and proceedings that were begun, before its effective date.

SECTION 3. Statutory material to be repealed is bracketed

and stricken. New statutory material is underscored.

SECTION 4. This Act shall take effect upon its approval.

INTRODUCED BY:

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