Colorado Supreme Court to decide if state wrongly denied child abuse hotline data to media orgs

By Jennifer Brown | The Colorado Sun

The news agencies wanted to know the number of times child residential treatment centers had called the child abuse hotline but were denied by state human services officials

A legal battle over child abuse hotline data requested four years ago by The Colorado Sun and 9News has reached the Colorado Supreme Court. 

The case centers on the news organizations’ joint request under the Colorado Open Records Act for the number of calls made to the state child abuse hotline from three child residential treatment centers in the Denver area from 2018 to 2021.

Journalists sought the information while investigating the safety of children in residential centers, including the death of a 12-year-old boy who ran away from Tennyson Center and was struck and killed by a vehicle. 

The Colorado Department of Human Services denied that request in 2021, saying that providing the number of calls to the hotline per residential center was a violation of privacy for the children living at the three centers. At the time, the centers — Cleo Wallace, Tennyson Center for Children and Mount Saint Vincent — were state-licensed residential centers. 

The records request did not ask for children’s names or details of the reports to the hotline. It asked for the number of calls made during those three years from each center and the number of calls that were investigated. 

The homes are places of last resort for foster youth who’ve been through multiple placements and for kids who have such severe mental health issues that they’re not safe living with their parents.

In arguments before the seven justices of the state Supreme Court on Monday, the child welfare department’s lawyer said that if investigative journalists knew the number of hotline calls made from a specific address, they could use that information to identify a child who was abused. 

Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Carty referenced a 2021 Colorado Sun article that mentioned a juvenile at Tennyson who broke into a medicine cabinet and overdosed on medication, ending up in a hospital for four days. The details came from a report from the state Office of the Child Protection Ombudsman.

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