Some seven years ago, Senior Family Court Judge Mark Browning did something extraordinary to help protect Hawaii’s children. He drafted and put in place the Hawaii Family Court Tort Protocol. It was not some arcane, obscure legal document. To the contrary, it was simple and straight-forward. It called for anyone, including court-appointed guardian ad litems (GALs), social workers, teachers, medical personal — all those highly trained front-line professionals charged with the care of our children — who even suspect a child might be suffering from physical of emotional harm, to report to the judge hearing the case. It doesn’t say “may,” it says MUST. When that happens, the judge may appoint a volunteer independent special master to investigate.

It was a common-sense sort of judicial edict. After all, who would not want to come to the aid of a child in distress, especially skilled professionals whose careers are devoted to the safety and care of our most vulnerable citizens?

And there is something else. With that inspired stroke of the pen, Judge Browning did something no other state in the nation had done: gave access to counsel to children who are the subject of child custody or foster care proceedings in Family Court. The only other jurisdiction where such a protocol exists is Los Angeles County. Incidentally, that county has recovered more than $18 million in third-party reimbursements that taxpayers would otherwise be paying for medical bills from Med-QUEST and other expenses.

Sadly as recent headlines have reminded us, child abuse is no stranger to our community. The recent disclosure that a special-needs child and her siblings were placed with a convicted violent felon who reportedly subsequently tortured, starved and murdered her at age 6 is only the most recent nightmare.

Before that, right down the street in the same community there is the Kipapa family accused of and sued for warehousing foster children who were so reportedly abused that one of them finally killed the mother because of the abuse. And of course there is Peter Boy Kema and Shaelynn Lehano- Stone, both returned repeatedly to documented violent, abusive families that finally killed their own children.

But I digress. I was extolling the virtues of the safety net masterfully put in place by Judge Browning seven years ago.

Each one of these children had a social worker from Child Protective Services (CPS) or the Department of Human Services (DHS), and each one of them had a GAL from the tax-supported Judiciary CASA Program. ALL of these children were subjected to repeated cycles of abuse sometimes lasting for years. Surely one of these highly trained professionals would have noticed something that would give cause for a report to the presiding judge.

I have looked for such a record over almost seven years in all of Hawaii’s counties as to how often the Hawaii Family Court Tort Protocol has been invoked by any judge. Absent the Peter Boy Kema case and one case in Waimea on the Big Island, I can find no record that this enlightened, indispensable process to protect our children has ever been utilized.

Further, there is no record that any mandated reporter, such as a CPS worker or GAL, has ever been sanctioned for having failed to report the obvious. Shaelynn Lehano-Stone had a GAL and enough social workers over the years to fill a small room. They kept sending her back again and again, battered and bruised, to a murderous family who finally chained her to a pipe in the basement and let her die of starvation.

Several years ago, several child advocates and attorneys introduced a bill in the Legislature to codify Judge Browning’s protocol into statute. It made perfectly good sense. Not only was there no cost to the state involved, it promised to return millions of dollars in revenue to the state each year by way of third-party recoveries.

The bill was opposed by DHS and the attorney general and never made it out of committee.

And our children are still dying.

Steve Lane, a licensed foster parent who raised four foster children through college graduation, has been a court-appointed special master and GAL in multiple Hawaii cases, and helped draft Hawaii’s Foster Care Tort Policy.