The mother of 5-year-old Talia Williams is pushing Congress to require teachers, police, doctors and others on military bases to report suspected child abuse directly to civilian child welfare agencies to prevent another death like Talia’s — who died after nearly seven months of almost daily beatings by her father, a former Schofield Barracks soldier.

Speaking via videoconference from her home in Georgia, Tarshia Williams said Wednesday that she came up with the idea for “Talia’s Law” “so this won’t happen to any other child … so another child can be saved.”

Williams’ push for new reporting requirements comes after attorneys announced on May 26 that the federal government will pay Williams $2 million to settle her negligence and wrongful death lawsuit that claimed federal employees failed to respond appropriately or report the abuse to Child Welfare Services, as required by an agreement between the military and the state.

Despite the agreement, Williams’ Honolulu attorney, Mark Davis, said people who should have reported their suspicions about Talia directly to Child Welfare Services only notified their military supervisors.

Each branch of the military has a person in charge of contacting civilian child welfare service officials around the country but that person in the Army in Hawaii was never contacted about Talia, Davis said.

So on Wednesday Davis urged congressional delegations from Hawaii and South Carolina — where Talia was originally from — to introduce legislation that would require “mandatory reporters” on all U.S. military bases to immediately report any suspicions to agencies such as Hawaii’s Child Welfare Services, formerly known as Child Protective Services.

Talia’s neighbors heard screams coming from her house and military police once found Talia naked in a locked room with feces on the floor, even though the adults said no children were in the house, Davis said.

But no one trained in interviewing a child abuse victim ever stepped in to find out what was happening, even after Talia repeatedly told adults about “daddy’s paddle,” said Susan Chandler, the former head of CPS who served as an expert witness in the trial of Talia’s father, Schofield Barracks soldier Naeem Williams.

And the military lacks the kind of child abuse expertise and foster care system that Child Welfare Services deals with daily, Chandler said.

“There were many, many missed opportunities,” Chandler said.

Two military police officers and a military police investigator testified that they went to Talia’s home on Wheeler Army Airfield after a neighbor reported constant yelling and screaming coming from the home.

Even though the officers and investigators saw scratches on Talia’s face and a healed cut over her left eye, they left after Naeem Williams told them another child had scratched Talia and the cut was from a fall.

Just more than two weeks later, Talia was dead.

If “mandatory reporters” had been required to directly report any suspicions to civilian authorities, Chandler said, “this child would have been protected.”

Tarshia Williams lost custody of Talia a decade ago when a judge in South Carolina ruled that her same-sex lifestyle made Williams unfit, Davis said.

Talia died July 16, 2005, in Hawaii at the hands of her father, Naeem Williams, and her stepmother, Delilah Williams.

A federal jury last year found Naeem Williams guilty of two counts of capital murder in the first death-penalty case to go to trial since statehood. Jurors instead sentenced Naeem Williams to life in prison.

Delilah Williams pleaded guilty to murder in exchange for a 20-year prison term.