House panel advances bill on parental rights

BOISE — The Idaho House State Affairs Committee unanimously passed a bill Monday that would add to the list of circumstances when a parent’s rights to their children can be terminated.

Presented by Reps. Barbara Ehardt, R-Idaho Falls, and Heather Scott, R-Blanchard, HB 463 would make it so that a parent convicted of sexual abuse against any child could have their rights to their own children revoked. The bill adds a singular line to existing Idaho code on terminating parent-child relationships, which currently gives a court grounds to terminate a parent-child relationship only if the parent is convicted of sexually abusing their own child.

“Where the law has gone wrong is if that same parent didn’t sexually molest his children, but sexually molested … other children, he has full access to his children,” Ehardt told the committee. “This has created a problem, and I think you're going to hear a little bit about it.”

Scott said that judges would be enabled to consider these situations in termination decisions, but that it wasn’t a “must.”

“This is a ‘may,’” Scott said. “This doesn’t mean that they automatically will get their parental rights terminated, but it will allow the judge to take that into consideration.”

One testifier was present at the meeting. Kristina Hardy talked about her experience being acquainted with an Idaho resident who was convicted of felony child abuse of another minor, but was granted unsupervised visitation rights with his own children.

Hardy detailed how the man’s son went on to commit the same crimes, being convicted at 16 of sexual abuse of a minor.

“I can’t help but wonder if this law was in place at that time if that son’s future might have turned out differently,” Hardy said. “I believe that at least in part, this teen perpetuated the cycle of abuse because his father had … custody, which the courts allowed.”

Rep. Chris Mathias, D-Boise, said the bill coincided with an issue he was personally researching related to a previous meeting with the Department of Correction.

“I did find in a recent study that 64% of the women in Idaho prisons report being victims of sexual abuse before the age of 14,” Mathias said. “I think it’s coincidental and fortuitous that this came in front of us today, because I see this as a mechanism to try to remove the environments within which that kind of stuff is happening.”

Committee Chairman Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa, asked whether the bill sponsors had a plan of progression to the Senate if the bill were to clear the House.

“At this point, potentially,” Ehardt responded. “We have not had a firm commit, and it would not be in the same committee.”

The committee unanimously voted to send the bill to the full House, where it may receive further consideration.