High-profile child deaths encourage transparency among social service agencies

After two 5-year-old Indianapolis girls died separately from abuse in the past two years, Indiana Republican state Sen. Julie McGuire said lawmakers can’t get basic answers from the state agency responsible for child safety.

McGuire told Stateline that Kinsleigh Welty was known to the child welfare system before she was found starving in a closet in 2024. Shortly afterwards the girl died. Zara Arnold’s death last May raised questions about what government officials did about her mother’s pleas to protect her child from a father who had a documented history of violence.

McGuire said she called the Indiana Department of Child Services to ask what happened, but was told the agency couldn’t share details due to state confidentiality laws. So McGuire sponsored Billwhich passed unanimously and went into effect in March, requiring the agency to promptly make public additional information when child abuse or neglect results in death or near-death, including reports it receives about the utilize of violence and actions taken by the department.

The goal, she said, is to identify patterns that could prevent another death.

“We have a billion dollars of taxpayer money for this agency, but as lawmakers who create the rules that DCS is supposed to enforce, we have no control over that,” McGuire said. “The only way to fix the situation and improve the system is to shed light.”

Indiana is among several states that have passed or were considering legislation this year aimed at increasing reporting and supervision of child neglect and abuse. Some of the novel laws came into force after high-profile cases of deaths or abuse, with lawmakers citing red flags such as repeated visits from child services providers or complaints about an unsafe family situation. This issue often meets with support – even unanimous – across party lines.

Some of the novel measures require more information to be released to lawmakers and the public to highlight trends that could enable policymakers and social workers to prevent future cases. Other measures require state agencies to initiate investigations more quickly or thoroughly to prevent harm.

In Oklahoma it was passed law in May, which requires school administrators who receive allegations of violence against a student by a school employee to report it to law enforcement within 24 hours. In April, Iowa passed law allowing courts to grant investigators access to children in alleged abuse cases, even if parents refuse to cooperate. Lawmakers approved both measures without a single dissenting vote.

Also in April, Idaho passed “Benji’s Law” Require the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate and verify within 12 hours any report of abuse and neglect by a caregiver of a high-risk newborn. The bill was named in honor of little Benjamin, or “Benji,” who died in December in Nampa despite agency calls to officials asking them to check on him. The families expressed concerns about the child’s parents, who had previously been convicted of child abuse and had been deprived of parental rights over five other children, The Idaho Capital Sun reported.

AJ McWhorter, a spokesman for the Idaho Department of Health and Human Services, told Stateline that hotline workers will check within 12 hours to see if a child under the age of one is in a home with certain warning signs. These include whether a parent or guardian is on the central child abuse registry or whether an infant was born with neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome.

McWhorter said the agency is confident it can meet the novel requirements and will assess staffing needs as they arise.

But Dr. Mical Raz, a professor of public health and policy at the University of Rochester, cautioned that while everyone wants to prevent child deaths, measures to encourage more habitual and faster reporting and investigations do not always have the desired effect.

“There is really no evidence that more reporting and more investigations keep families safe,” Raz said. “We should stop thinking of parents as children’s enemies and start thinking of the family as a whole.”

Raz said the downside of pushing for more reports and investigations is the disproportionate over-surveillance of some families, especially Black, brown and low-income families.

The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform notes that over a third of all children: and more than half of black children — will experience an investigation into abuse or neglect before reaching adulthood. Critics say many of the conditions that trigger neglect investigations are simply manifestations of poverty.

High profile cases

Other states have also introduced or adopted measures to protect children in high-profile deaths this year.

In Arizona, lawmakers passed a bipartisan bill that went into effect in April directed at improving communication between the Department of Child Safety and tribal nations following the death of Emily Pike, a 14-year-old San Carlos Apache girl who disappeared from a group home and was later found dead. Her murder remains unsolved.

In February, Ohio established a bipartisan group of lawmakers Bill create Kei’Mani’s law, which would require schools to appoint child protection liaisons.

The measure was named in honor of 13-year-old Kei’Mani Latigue, who was found dead in an abandoned Toledo home after she was reported missing in March 2025. Tiara Kasten, her mother, said in a statement in support of the bill: “The pain of losing my daughter, someone who saved my life before her life even began, will never truly end. But today, I utilize my pain to fuel us as society forward.”

Authorities alleged that Latigue was the victim of sexual assault and mutilation. Her father was charged with aggravated murder, rape, kidnapping and more.

In Louisiana, lawmakers introduced Bill this session, which lawmakers say has expanded and clarified how child abuse, neglect and death are reported stated that they had not been notified regarding the death of a 5-year-old from starvation.

In New Mexico, it is the state child welfare agency under the microscope and in the face of a lawsuit filed by the state’s attorney general, Democrat Raúl Torrez, over allegations that he abused state confidentiality laws to conceal systemic errors.

“I Saw Myself”

When North Carolina state Rep. Carla Cunningham, who is not affiliated with either party, read the case file regarding Dominique Moody — the 6-year-old who died in December 2025 after years of severe abuse and neglect — she looked at it through the lens of her experience as a nurse.

Cunningham told Stateline she had many questions that weren’t answered in police or agency reports about Dominique’s death: Was Dominique verbal? Was she a special needs child? Were there signs that someone trained to recognize abuse or neglect should have detected it earlier?

The case prompted Cunningham present a bill bearing the Dominique surname, which would enable the creation of a child welfare case escalation team, expand training for social workers and require greater scrutiny of high-risk cases with an extensive history of child protection services.

Cunningham said the goal of the bill currently being considered by the committee is to facilitate agencies and others involved in child welfare recognize “missed signals or patterns” that could prevent future deaths.

She said Dominique’s case remained within Cunningham’s circle because she, too, was raised by people other than her parents, moved from home to home before graduating and changed schools about 20 times.

“When this case came out, I didn’t sleep for several nights,” Cunningham said. “I saw myself.”

The so-called database Life has been cut miniature – a joint effort by the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute and the University of North Carolina – collected over 4,000 cases of children who died as a result of abuse or neglect between 2022 and 2026. Researchers found that many cases were not included in state and local statistics.

The tool is publicly available and enables families, journalists, policymakers and the public to understand death patterns across states. Naomi Schaefer Riley, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Stateline she hopes lawmakers will find red flags in the thousands of cases found in the database.

“People come to terms with (this issue) in very shocking ways,” Riley said, often when the death of a particular child impacts their family, community or state. “But once the immediate grief wears off, people start asking harder questions, like: How can this be prevented?”

According to the database, only 11 states – Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin – Post notifications of any child fatalities, death threats, or other “egregious” incidents.

Cunningham said the goal of her bill is not to place blame on agencies like the Department of Human Services — which she admits reviews hundreds of mentally taxing death and abuse cases — but to facilitate those departments that have staffing problems.

According to Cunningham, one of the more glaring red flags in the Moody case was that Charlotte police visited the apartment where Dominique lived 59 times over a four-year period.

“It’s not like we are putting pressure on DSS departments locally. We want to help. We know the caseload,” she said. “We want to help on the front in any way we can so that we don’t have to see the numerous deaths.”

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at: sequenceira@stateline.org.