DELAWARE News

The state Legislature is set to pass legislation designed to improve
reporting requirements of child abuse by medical practitioners.
The problem is the session is set to end Wednesday, June
30, and no bills have yet been introduced. That could change Tuesday,
June 1.

Rep. Pete Schwartzkopf, D-Rehoboth Beach, said the goal of
the legislation is to make it clear who has a responsibility to report
allegations of misconduct to the Board of Medical Practice. Schwartzkopf
expects to have some legislation ready for when the General Assembly
goes back in session.

“We expect to have some of the bills ready to roll. We’re
going to make it very clear about whose responsibility it is at
different parts of the process if there is an allegation or if there is
an investigation. It’s going to cover a lot of different areas,” he
said.

The need for improving the reporting statute was spelled
out in a report by Dean Linda Ammons of the Widener University School of
Law and another report by the Attorney General’s Office – related to
the Dr. Earl Bradley sexual abuse case in Lewes.

Both reports cited failures by medical professionals,
Beebe Medical Center and the Medical Society of Delaware to report
allegations of Bradley’s misconduct – he is accused of sexually abusing
over 120 children.

The reports also call for increased openness in the
meetings of the Board of Medical Practice, the body that oversees the
medical profession in Delaware.

Sen. George Bunting, D-Bethany Beach, said, “There’s a lot
of egg on a lot of agencies’ faces. Everyone involved had a little
something they could have done differently, some larger than others. All
these agencies have got to be so cognizant of when something comes up
that they look into it and follow-up with it closer than what has
occurred in the past.”

Sen. Gary Simpson, R-Milford, called for
whistle-blower-style legislation.

“It’s inherent in the system that physicians and hospitals
are afraid of being sued by individual practitioners. I think one of
the most needed pieces of legislation is something sort of like a
whistle-blower law that would take some of the fear of liability away
from someone that was turning in someone they felt was a bad physician,”
he said.

Simpson said he thinks most of the legislation could be
passed very quickly, although a whistleblower law could be problematic.

“The trial lawyers would probably be against withholding
immunity from suit. That could become the most controversial but could
also be one of the most important issues,” Simpson said.

Bunting said he didn’t know what legislation would come
up, but it should be made clearer who has a responsibility to report.

“We have to put in place as many preventive measures as we
can and ensure all the bodies that are responsible for taking care of
our children are reporting properly. Just because you are a professional
does not mean things cannot happen,” he said.

Bunting said it is important to set some stringent
guidelines for reporting to catch something like the Bradley case early
on. Bunting was a bit wary of a whistle-blower law; while he did say
there is a duty for people to report, there should be some guidelines
attached that provide some protections for the accused as well.

“The majority of the General Assembly is on board with
wanting to make it better. I don’t know anyone there that doesn’t want
to make the process better,” Schwartzkopf said.

“I think that we can fashion some legislation that can
prevent something like this from happening in the future,” Simpson said.


Bunting said, “Part of the issue is we only have 14 days
left of session. To take legislation now just to ram it through, I don’t
think is a good way of doing government either. If it’s an important
piece of legislation it should have proper hearings.”

He said he thinks the most important pieces of legislation
should be passed first, although Bunting said he wasn’t sure how much
was going to get passed before session ends.

Still, all three want to make sure nothing like the
Bradley case happens again.

Simpson said, “It’s a terrible thing that happened.
Certainly no one wants to see any part of this happening again.”

“It’s such a sad scenario, and I know when I spoke to my
caucus about it, I told them the focus should be on the parents,”
Bunting said. “Hopefully most of the children will not remember any of
this. The strong concern should be whatever can be done by whatever
agencies, plus the public, to help out the parents going through all
this and helping them deal with it.”

“It’s affected our area the most. This is where it
happened. It’s devastated this area; it’s our constituents that have
been affected,” Schwartzkopf said. “I think you’re going to see a lot of
bipartisan support. We might fuss and fight up there a lot over
seemingly small things, but when it’s something this serious and
something this devastating to community, we can work together to get
this thing done.”

Legislation was filed today to address government and regulatory
failings surrounding the investigation into alleged child molester Dr.
Earl B. Bradley.
The seven bills address issues including who is responsible for
reporting suspected child molestation and training for law enforcement
officers. The bill stiffens penalties for individuals who abuse a child
and are in a position of trust or authority over that child. The
package was divided between the House and the Senate to speed their
passage before the June 30 end of the legislative session. The bills
were drafted by the Governor’s and Attorney General’s offices.Bradley
has been charged with molesting more than 100 children after repeated
complaints against him failed to lead to his losing his medical license.The
legislation requires an adult be in the room when a child under 15
years old is undressed or partially undressed, increases requirements
for physicians when applying for a license, and increases penalties for
those who don’t report suspected abuses.One bill would
rename the Board of Medical Practice to the Medical Licensing and
Discipline Board in an effort to make the public aware who accepts
complaints about physicians.The legislation would increase
the authority of the board to investigate allegations of misconduct and
work with police officers.House Majority Leader Pete
Schwartzkopf, D-Rehoboth Beach, who is the prime sponsor of the House
bills, said the training element of the bills is important since often
agencies and law enforcement officers act independently of one another.Schwartzkopf
described it as a puzzle, saying each agency is like a piece that must
learn to fit in with other pieces in order to achieve the best outcome.“Some
people weren’t talking to other people because they didn’t realize they
have a responsibility to,” Schwartzkopf, a former state police officer,
said. “You don’t think too much about the other end.”The
bills have overwhelming support from both parties and chambers in the
Legislature and list nearly every lawmakers as a co-sponsor.
Schwartzkopf said he anticipates unanimous support for all of the bills.“We
fuss and fight all the time in this place,” Schwartzkopf said. “We’ll
put the party stuff aside and will act as one.”

In Delaware, legislators have swiftly passed a package of bills that
would toughen oversight of the state's medical practitioners and those
who monitor them. The new laws were prompted by the case of a
pediatrician who was charged with abusing patients as young as 3 months
old. The rules have been called the Bradley
Bills, after Earl Bradley, the pediatrician currently behind bars on
charges of abusing nearly 130 young girls and a boy. Bradley operated
out of an office on the coastal highway in the beach town of Lewes.
He'd worked there for years before a complaint
last year by one girl's mother prompted police to investigate.
"These are the right steps," says Gov. Jack Markell.
"This is certainly nothing to celebrate, but I think it's a positive,
that a bipartisan group of legislators came together to do the right
thing." When Markell signed the bills in
Dover, he was flanked by Attorney General Beau Biden, whose office
helped draft the legislation. Earlier this year, Markell ordered an
independent investigation into how Bradley might have been able to
operate for so long. Linda Ammons, dean of
the law school at Widener University, investigated for four months and
issued her report in May. "People weren't
scrupulously following the law," Ammons says. "It says that if you think
a physician is impaired or should not be practicing for a variety of
reasons, there are certain actors who are supposed to report that to a
certain entity — so balls were dropped all along the way."
Ammons made 68 recommendations in her report, many of
which made it into the final legislation. The bill was approved
unanimously in both houses. The changes
include requiring that doctors be fingerprinted every 10 years, to help
with background checks. Everyone applying for a medical license in
Delaware will have to say whether they've been investigated in the past.
And every six months, the medical licensing
board will check the criminal histories of every licensed doctor in the
state. One of the red flags in the Bradley case that authorities might
have used against him was that he'd been investigated when he practiced
in Philadelphia — more than a decade before he arrived in Delaware.
"We think the way the bill's written now will
allow for appropriate protections and appropriate chaperon policy," says
Wayne Smith of the Delaware Healthcare Association, which represents
the state's seven medical centers. Smith is
talking about another change mandated by the law: Children may be
physically examined by doctors only when a chaperon is present. Smith
says hospitals are working out individual policies that will go into
effect later this summer. Much of the
scrutiny into the Bradley case has focused on the local Lewes hospital,
where Bradley served as an on-call pediatrician. The hospital is also
being investigated for not following up on complaints against him. Smith
says any action against the Beebe Medical Center will affect the whole
town of Lewes. "Beebe hospital is and will
remain the lifeblood and the core of the Lewes community," Smith says.
And there is real concern that lawsuits will
hurt the hospital's finances, something all of its employees rely on.
And that is just another example of how the fallout in the Bradley case
has affected everyone in this small town.