The Monitor reported last week that the state has reached a $6.75 million settlement with the grandparents of two girls who were sexually abused by their parents while under the supervision of the Division for Children, Youth and Families. The abuse took place during supervised and unsupervised visits, the lawsuit said, including “bath time” while an Easterseals worker was in a different room. The money will pay for badly needed treatment and counseling for the girls, ages 4 and 18 months at the time of the abuse.
One case cost the state nearly $7 million. The price paid by two little girls is incalculable – and they never should have been placed in such a dangerous situation. No child should.
But in New Hampshire, there is no licensing requirement for supervised visitation centers. Only two centers in the state – the Merrimack County Visitation Center in Boscawen and the Strafford County Visitation Center in Dover – are known to follow national guidelines for safety, such as those established by the Supervised Visitation Network. Best practices include onsite law enforcement, surveillance cameras, metal detectors, and staggered arrival and departure times to avoid confrontation or tracking. Two such centers, in Nashua and Jaffrey, closed last year when their federal grants dried up due to increased competition for funding. The Boscawen center is paid for by the county, and the Strafford County center is funded by the federal Justice For Families grant.
If New Hampshire lawmakers truly care about the welfare of children and families involved in domestic violence situations, two things should change as soon as possible. One, all visitation centers should be licensed and, two, the state should invest a total of $1.5 million annually to fund visitation centers for each of the 10 counties.
If a million and a half sounds like a lot for New Hampshire’s notoriously frugal lawmakers, we refer you back to the $6.75 million settlement agreed to last week.
The Legislature doesn’t need a bill establishing a study of visitation centers, because it’s already been down that road. The final report of the legislative Commission to Study Supervised Visitation Centers, released in November 2014, found that: services are insufficient, especially in the North Country and southern tier; supervised visitation centers that follow national guidelines go to great lengths to ensure the safety of parents and children; all centers should be licensed like day cares and certified like juvenile diversion programs. Not much has changed since 2014 – except two much-needed centers have closed.
There is a perception among some that supervised visitation centers are a service for perpetrators, but that is inaccurate. The purpose of the centers is to allow families that have been torn apart by domestic violence and abuse to interact in the safest way possible, while reducing the potential for an even larger tragedy. We have seen what can happen when safety and supervision are not guaranteed, and we never want it to see it again.
The state has limited resources, a fact that we are reminded of on a daily basis, and it can be difficult to anticipate where those dollars will do the most good. What is clear, however, is that New Hampshire could do a lot more to ensure the safety of victims of violence and abuse. By funding a supervised visitation center for each of the state’s 10 counties, and requiring licensing and certification for all centers, lawmakers can provide a safe haven for many of the people who need it most.
To us, that seems like a pretty wise investment.
(Correction: An earlier version of this editorial incorrectly stated that the Strafford County Visitation Center is paid for by the county. It is funded by the federal Justice For Families grant.)