Accused Child Molester Fights to Delete His Name From State Registry

Jack Copeland’s life has been hell since 1994, when he was accused of molesting three grandchildren.

Things were supposed to get better for him after the accusations were recanted and police cleared his name. But they didn’t.

A state agency--the Division for Children, Youth and Families--deemed the accusations “founded” and added Copeland’s name to the state registry of those accused of child abuse and neglect.

Now Copeland, 56, is spearheading an effort to file a class-action lawsuit, hoping to force the agency to use a higher standard of proof, hoping to clear his name.

“If the police department didn’t do anything, didn’t arrest me, never called me to question me about it, never indicted me, then why did [the division] do what they did?” he asks.

Although his campaign has been delayed by difficulty in getting records from the state, the Portsmouth man wants to gather others who say they have been wrongly branded as child abusers and to force the state to change its system. They plan to rally Wednesday at the statehouse to draw attention to their plight.

Around the country, people who say they have been unfairly listed in registries similar to New Hampshire’s are speaking up. Increasingly, courts and lawmakers are listening.

During the last two years, courts in two states, New Jersey and Georgia, have declared registries a violation of the right to due process, and others have begun overhauling registry laws.

Complaints that Iowa’s list was too broad prompted a change in the law in 1997 to exclude less serious offenders and those least likely to repeat offenses.

Former Iowan Kevin Hurt is suing the state for adding his name to its list. Hurt was a conservation officer in 1996 when he was accused of groping schoolgirls during a scavenger hunt. He was acquitted, and an administrative judge said his name should be removed from Iowa’s list. But the state human services department refused.

“One person decides who goes on,” says Hurt, who now lives in Waynesville, Ohio. “Then it takes literally an act of God to get removed.”

Copeland says police as well as social workers should be involved in abuse investigations, which should follow procedures for criminal investigations.

Registry laws in 40 states were enacted after years of ignorance about child abuse and chaotic child welfare systems. Ten states do not keep lists: Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

Theresa Costello is associate director of Action for Child Protection, a consulting group based in Charlotte, N.C., that evaluates child welfare policies. She says the point of the lists is to keep child abusers from working with children.

Schools, day-care centers and other such employers use registries to check the backgrounds of prospective employees and volunteers. The records are confidential, so in most states employers must call to see if someone is on the list.

New Hampshire created its registry in 1979. It contains roughly 6,000 allegations that, like those against Copeland, the division classified as “founded.”

Before last fall, when the state Supreme Court ordered the standard raised, an allegation was deemed “founded” if there was “probable cause” the offense occurred. But “probable cause,” which police need to make an arrest, can fall far short of what prosecutors need to win a conviction.

But some state registries, including New Hampshire’s, contain records of unfounded allegations. New Hampshire has 15,000 such records, which are kept for at least three years.

Rogers Lang, legal coordinator for the division, insists such records are used only to evaluate subsequent allegations. “If you keep getting calls,” he says, “you look at the pattern.”

But critics say there’s no place for lists of unfounded allegations. Claire Ebel, director of the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union, calls them “an affront to privacy and to civil liberties--and to all the other constitutional rights we enjoy.”

Critics also complain that errors in registries can cost innocent people their jobs and reputations--and cost taxpayers money.

For example, a man from Cabot, Ark., received $75,000 last summer from the state after his name was placed in error on its child abuse registry. And Nebraska is restructuring its registry after a report in December that some names on the list shouldn’t be there.

Costello, of Action for Child Protection, says states including Florida and Colorado are considering abandoning their registries as error-prone and ineffective. And Ned Gordon, a state senator in New Hampshire, has sponsored a bill calling for a study of his state’s child protection policies.

But Copeland expects quicker action from the courts. “This is what will change the system,” he says.

“We have laws in this country that were enacted for the simple reason that they are to protect the innocent. The innocent ones are not always just the children.”