Column: Why no ‘Erin’s Law’ from Legislature?

There is a nationwide movement to pass “Erin’s Law” in every state, a bill that would require all public schools to implement age-appropriate sex abuse prevention education for students and teachers from pre-kindergarten through high school. The bill has already been passed in 38 states, and all 12 of the remaining states have introduced or are planning to introduce it in 2023/2024.

In Hawaii, 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys have been sexually abused before their 18th birthday, but it’s estimated that only 10% of abuse cases even get reported, and the numbers are increasing. A special education teacher at Castle High School was recently arrested for sexually assaulting a student. This is an epidemic that can be helped with the passage of Erin’s Law.

A couple of quick searches of the keyword “Erin’s Law” on the state Legislature’s archive page will show you that some variation of Erin’s Law has been introduced in Hawaii every year since 2015. There are often at least two to four versions of the bill per year, often introduced by powerful legislators, and are often included in the Keiki Caucus priority package. In 2017, House Bill 930 even made it all the way to the last legislative hurdle — conference committee — but it failed to get scheduled for the final hearing. Despite all these valiant attempts, the Legislature has failed to pass any meaningful version over the past nine legislative sessions. With zero opposition testimony over all those years, the big question is: WHY?

In 2022, the Legislature managed to pass a study: Senate Concurrent Resolution 216, which asked the state Department of Education (DOE) to assess how its current policies align with Erin’s Law, and to submit a report to the Legislature by January 2023. The DOE report shows that they do have some optional training materials available for DOE schools to choose whether or not to utilize, but the status quo is nowhere near the standards set in Erin’s Law.

This report shows that the DOE has all the necessary materials and capacity to align with Erin’s Law standards that are being implemented nationwide — but it won’t adhere to mandatory training from pre-K to 12 until the Legislature passes Erin’s Law to require all DOE schools to comply.

So that must have meant that the Legislature passed Erin’s Law in 2023, right? Unfortunately, the chairs of the House Education Committee (Justin Woodson), and the Senate committees of Health and Human Services and of Education (Joy San Buenaventura and Michelle Kidani, respectively) all failed to schedule this year’s bills for even a single hearing.

Perhaps they didn’t bother giving it the first hearing because they saw the bill faced almost certain death in an unusually long line of subsequent committees. This begs another question: Why were the bills assigned so many committees in the first place? House Speaker Scott Saiki referred HB 548 to three separate committees, and Senate President Ron Kouchi gave the companion Senate Bill 308 a whopping FOUR-committee referral.

This year’s version of the bill was just a task force to nail down the logistics of implementing Erin’s Law. So why did each chamber feel the need to include its judiciary committee when it doesn’t have anything to do with the Judiciary branch? Why did both chambers assign the bill to their respective finance committees when it didn’t contain anything that would impact the budget? Why did the Senate president assign the Health and Human Services Committee to be the primary subject matter committee when the issue primarily deals with the Department of Education?

Whatever the answers are to these questions, it all adds up to mean that passing Erin’s Law is clearly not a priority for either chamber of the Legislature. Perhaps the 10th time will be the charm?

CLARIFICATION: Although House Bill 548/Senate Bill 308 did not pass, Erin’s Law will be implemented by the Department of Education over the next several years. This year’s state budget bill includes funding for four full-time positions plus training, outreach and curriculum materials to establish this program in the DOE.

Sara Kim is a Honolulu resident who is concerned about the safety and lifelong well-being of Hawaii’s children.