MADISON, WI (WTAQ) – A law that would protect children from being placed with admitted child abusers in Wisconsin has cleared another hurdle. The so-called ‘Ethan’s Law’ (Senate Bill 24) cleared the Senate Committee on Human Services, Children and Families on a unanimous, bipartisan vote this week.
“When we have children who are neglected or abused, we shouldn’t be subjecting them potentially to greater harm or as great of a risk of harm as what they’ve already experienced,” said State Senator Andre Jacque of De Pere. “This is something that will reduce the risk for children that currently are at great risk and unfortunately in several cases have suffered serious abuse or been killed as a result of those placements.”
In a press release, Jacque said:
“The bill closes loopholes in state law that allowed Ethan Hauschultz, a seven-year-old Manitowoc boy, to be killed in April 2018 after suffering a pattern of cruel abuse at the home where he had been lawfully placed by county workers, despite a lengthy record of violence by his designated ‘caregiver’.”
He added that the boy was placed in the care of a great-uncle, who had been found guilty of felony child abuse in 2009, among several other violent past offenses. But because of a plea bargain, his record showed the conviction as disorderly conduct, a non-violent misdemeanor.
“In some ways, Human Services professionals are already prohibited from being able to look at this kind of very important and pertinent background information on the locations where they’d be placing children,” Jacque said. “It really is just basic common sense, and the sort of thing that I think people would have thought already would be on the books.”
Jacque cited Tim Hauschultz‘s past, including multiple previous convictions for holding a knife to someone’s throat and beating someone to the point where they spent multiple days in intensive care. There were also incidents involving Hauschultz’s own children. He reportedly hit one with a carpenter level. He also reportedly shattered a board against the head of his own son.
“We’re talking about fairly graphic demonstrative physical acts of violence that he perpetrated but because they were entered into the record in a way that was not disqualifying under current law,” Jacque told WTAQ News.
Jacque argues that the current system in place in Wisconsin failed Ethan, and that it’s owed to his memory to put the proper guidelines in place. Under the bill, human services workers could not place a child with any adult who had been found guilty of abusing a child, entered a plea of “no contest” to a child-abuse charge, or plea-bargained that crime down to a lesser offense.
“If you have, right now, individuals who have committed child abuse, physical or sexual, they are not disqualified from being able to have children in their home. And again, that’s just shocking to people,” Jacque said. “If you have individuals who have been convicted or admitted to child abuse, whether that’s sexual abuse or physical abuse, they are no longer going to be eligible for placement of children in their home.”
Jacque expressed frustration that the bill didn’t make any progress in the last legislative session, and says he asked to be the chair of the Human Services, Children and Families Committee to make sure it received more attention. Now, he’s optimistic that is could be moving along within the next few weeks.
“I can’t imagine if we have a public hearing, that there isn’t some way that we can’t advance this through the assembly as well and get this to the governor’s staff,” Jacque said. “We can have this hopefully on the floor the next time that the state Senate meets on the 16th. I’m hopeful that we will, yet this spring, get these protections into law.”
