No parent wants to contemplate a situation where their child is the victim of abuse. But for Connecticut parents or guardians who unfortunately face that reality, access to records documenting what their children experienced is crucial: to file lawsuits, to facilitate therapy—or even just because they have the right to know what happened.
In theory, Connecticut’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is an ideal tool to help parents and guardians obtain those documents. The law compels disclosure of information agencies might not otherwise want to release, especially if misconduct or oversight errors are implicated, and those with knowledge of what happened don’t want to talk.
But FOIA also has exemptions designed to protect the identity of victims of abuse. While intended to shield sensitive information from the general public, they can also prevent parents from learning the details of their children’s abuse and frustrate attempts to hold abusers accountable.
Inside Investigator spoke to several parents and guardians who turned to FOIA to obtain documents related to the abuse and misconduct impacting their children. In several of those cases, they were not able to learn the details of the abuse their children endured through other means. But despite being the legal guardians, all were denied access to the documents they sought.
That’s largely the result of an extremely broad FOIA exemption for child abuse records and a 2007 Connecticut appellate court ruling finding that FOIA protects the general public’s right to know, not the right of the individual requester based on their relationship to the subject of records they’re seeking.
Abuse at School: FERPA v. Parents’ Right to Know
In February 2024, video of Katie Gerarde’s middle-school-aged son, who is autistic, circulated on the internet. According to Gerarde and Amity Regional Middle School, the video depicted a fight between her son David (a pseudonym) and several other children.
Gerarde told Inside Investigator it was not the first run-in her son had with the group of children who she says instigated, filmed, and spread the video online—actions the school found amounted to cyberbullying under the district’s policies.
According to Gerarde, David had transferred to the school just a few months prior, and the bullying began almost instantly.
In January, David was tripped in the lunchroom and ended up in a knee brace that ran from his upper thigh to his lower ankle. According to Gerarde, things escalated, and David was threatened by the son of a police officer, who instigated much of the bullying.
A week before the fight and video was recorded, David was suspended after an incident in class where the lights were turned off, and David dropped his pencil. According to Gerarde, David air punches when he gets nervous (a form of stimming), and the police officer’s son claimed David punched him. Gerarde says she later learned from a police report that the police officer’s son admitted to lying.
The day of the fight, David went to the guidance counselor’s office and said he was scared because he believed the bullies were planning something. The guidance counselor reportedly told David he would be fine and sent him back to class.
Half an hour later, Gerarde says David was attempting to walk down the hall, and the bullies were waiting for him. One kid stepped into David and bumped him. David attempted to keep moving but was followed by the police officer’s son. The incident escalated from there and ended with the bullies allegedly attempting to pants David. Gerarde said she thinks this was preplanned because the kids had been asking when David’s knee brace was coming off.
One of the bullies recorded the fight and posted the video on social media. That video was eventually pulled down, but not before others in the school viewed it and commented on it. The video also misgendered David as a girl, saying ‘she’ was “begging on her knees to be popular.”
Not only did school officials ignore Gerarde’s and David’s warnings, but Gerarde also said that after the incident, school leadership blamed David and his autism for what happened, claiming he had started the fight. Gerarde said police also blamed David for starting the fight. When Gerarde was able to view the original video, not the edited version that had been posted online, she said it confirmed her son’s account.
Even after the cyberbullying, Gerarde felt the school was not taking the issue seriously. The school blamed David for starting the fight and suspended him for three days. She further said that while the police knew the ringleader of the bullies, the police officer’s son, made the video immediately after the incident, the school was not notified until another student mentioned it during a Title IX investigation.
Gerarde ended up filing a police report due to what she described as the school’s negligence, but said she was ultimately not allowed to bring charges and, instead, police threatened to arrest her son.
Feeling police and school officials had lied and covered up information, Gerarde turned to FOIA to obtain a copy of the investigation the school conducted
“That’s why the investigation was so important.” Gerarde said of her FOIA request to the Amity Regional School District for a copy of the investigation. “[Police] were obviously protecting their own, just like the school was doing in blaming my son.”
“I wanted to know who was on whose side,” she added. “The information could have helped heal my child. They withheld it from me.”
David’s therapist told Gerarde that seeing a copy of the investigation might help. Gerarde also ended up filing a Title IX complaint with the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities (CHRO) and said the investigation would have helped with that process.
But the school district denied Gerarde’s request, citing an exemption in FOIA for records protected by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). FERPA is a federal law intended in part to protect the release of students’ personally identifying information (PII). The law stipulates that federal funds will be denied to schools that release PII in certain circumstances, including when a school official believes they may be releasing it to someone who knows that student’s identity.
While the school district provided Gerarde with a report that summarized the investigations’ findings, it denied release of the underlying documents, citing FERPA. Gerarde appealed the denial to the Freedom of Information Commission (FOIC). After reviewing the investigation records in camera, the commission upheld the school district’s denial, citing the law’s provision about an individual who knows a student’s identity and another provision in the law that says if records identify more than one student, a parent may view information only about their child.
The commission found that because the records contained interview notes with multiple students, they could not be redacted to “adequately protect the confidentiality obligations that the respondents have to the students discussed in the records who are not [Gerarde’s] son.”
Inside Investigator viewed the report that the district shared with Gerarde. It contained the district’s conclusions based on the investigation and the district’s determination that conflict following the fight “created a hostile environment at school and at home” for David and that conflict between David and the bullies was “disruptive to [David’s] learning environment.”
The report lists steps the district took to limit contact between David and the bullies, including making sure David and the bullies have no contact in the lunchroom and in hallways and do not have the same classes, but no details about the underlying investigation.
While the report says the district is confident the measures to limit contact will make David feel “safe” and able to “enjoy the rest of the school year,” David has been homeschooled since the video was shared online.
Gerarde said the Amity Regional School District won’t pay for David’s schooling unless he goes to a school in-district (David previously attended the other middle school in the district but transferred because he was placed in a behavioral classroom and he was not a behavioral kid), but David no longer feels safe, particularly since the video was shared online and viewed by kids across and outside the district.
Gerarde feels that, had a police officer’s son not been involved, the school would have handled things differently. As proof, she said that she was able to obtain the full investigation, including the names of students involved, following a bullying incident involving David a year prior.
Gerarde’s CHRO case is still pending and she is considering other options available to her.
The DCF Exemption: Abuse Records v. Tracking DCF Spending
FERPA is one of a handful of exemptions in Connecticut’s FOI law that incorporate separate laws where rules around disclosure of records are guided not necessarily by FOIA or the FOIC, but by what’s stipulated in those separate laws.
For example, FERPA prohibits the release of any PII, except directory information, in education records without the written consent of the parents of the student involved. There are quibbles around the edges of the law—what’s considered directory information and whether records are directly held by educational institutions—but disclosure of records that contain student PII is not open to interpretation.
The section of state statute that governs the Department of Children and Families (DCF) contains another similar exemption, which broadly prohibits the release of records related to child abuse and actually goes further than the federal law it cites—even to the parent or guardian of a child named in a DCF case.
It’s so broad that, as Dayna Arriola found out in a 2025 FOIC case, it even prohibits the release of DCF financial records.
In March 2025, Arriola submitted a FOIA request to DCF seeking financial records, including travel expenses, related to DCF’s attempt to place her grandson with an extended family member in California.
Arriola told Inside Investigator that her grandson (referred to throughout by the pseudonym William) had been placed with her on and off since birth. After William’s mother passed away suddenly, William was set to be placed with Arriola.
But then, according to Arriola, a cousin of William’s mother, whom she hadn’t seen in eight years, expressed an interest in gaining custody of him. Arriola said the cousin, who lived in California and had never met William, was childless in her late 30s and wanted a child. DCF took steps to place William with the cousin, including flying him to California and flying her to Connecticut.
Eventually, the cousin decided she did not want William and decided to send him him back after only five days. According to Arriola, that’s an outcome DCF never wants to happen, but the agency “went with a narrative” and dug their heels in.
Arriola was able to get custody of William, but not before Arriola spent tens of thousands of dollars on legal action and DCF officials spent taxpayer funds not only flying William and his mother’s cousin across the country, but on a variety of other expenses related to DCF’s involvement.
“Part of what was so bad [about the case] was the abuse of taxpayer money to enforce their narrative on a 4-year-old, putting him through absolute Hell.” Arriola said.
Just how much taxpayer money DCF spent on William’s case remains unknown, despite Arriola’s attempts to use FOIA to find out.
Arriola’s FOIA request did not ask for records related to findings or determinations in William’s case.
Among the records Arriola sought were costs associated with William’s case under the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children and costs associated with a psychological evaluation of William (which Arriola had previously requested and offered to pay for).
She also sought travel expenses, including the cost of plane tickets, accommodations, rental cars, and meals for the cross-country plane trips for William, his mother’s cousin, and the DCF employees who travelled with William. Arriola was also told that the cousin had been provided gift cards, in violation of DCF protocols, to use when she was in Connecticut. Arriola’s request also sought those expenses.
While DCF was considering placing William with extended family, DCF also supervised elements of his care, including transporting him to and from therapy sessions. While the sessions were ten minutes away from where Arriola resided, the case was being handled out of DCF’s Hartford office because that was where Arriola’s daughter had resided. Staff had to travel from Hartford to the Willimantic area where Arriola resided, another aspect of the case Arriola questioned. Despite the distance, the case was never released from the West Hartford office. Arriola’s request also sought records related to travel and mileage for those appointments.
Arriola’s request was denied by DCF. Agency officials cited Section 17a-101k of the General Statutes. That portion of the law provides for DCF to create a registry of findings of child abuse and neglect. It also contains an express prohibition on disclosure of information contained in the registry: “The information contained in the registry and any other information relative to child abuse, wherever located, shall be confidential, subject to such statutes and regulations governing their use and access as shall conform to the requirements of federal law or regulations.”
The portions of state statute that govern DCF also define records as “information created or obtained in connection with the department’s child protection activities or other activities related to a child while in the care or custody of the department.”
The FOIC found that, even though Arriola was specifically requesting financial records, the records in question were “created in connection with [DCF’s] child protective activities and are part of a minor child’s case file” and that disclosure of the costs associated with child protective activities “would confirm the investigative steps that [DCF] took.”
Arriola, of course, already knows the steps DCF took because she—and William—lived through them. In addition to what Arriola believes to be the trauma of temporarily removing William to a distant relative in California he didn’t know, Arriola asserts there were problems with the agency’s handling of the case, which at one point saw William become a ward of the state.
According to Arriola, DCF officials took Social Security payments William was owed through his mother and didn’t mention it. After Arriola was able to adopt William, she said she called the Social Security Administration immediately and said she was shocked to learn that use of the money had not been accounted for. Arriola believes the money may have been used to pay for the flights to and from California.
Though she was able to attribute certain costs associated with the case, such as estimating the cost of flights and looking at overtime DCF employees involved with William’s case accumulated, the total cost of the agency’s mishandling of it (Arriola said the final judge involved in the case had never seen anything like it) is essentially unknowable.
Though some DCF employees attempted to point her toward some of what she was seeking, Arriola was ultimately told she would probably never get to see the case file. William will be entitled to the records she was seeking when he turns 18.
“DCF says the worst thing you can do is say you want a child and then not keep them. It’s what they facilitated, and they spent thousands on it.” Arriola told Inside Investigator.
The DCF Exemption: Blocking Parental Access to Records at Other Agencies
The outcome of Arriola’s FOIC case was essentially dictated by a 2007 appellate court ruling finding that the exemption in state statute for DCF records wherever they are located mandates denials of requests related to child abuse.
The FOIC’s ruling cited Groton Police Department v. Freedom of Information Commission, in which the appellate court overturned an order from the commission to turn over child abuse records to the parent of a victim, on the basis that, as a parent, the confidentiality provision of Section 17a-101k of the General Statutes was implicitly waived.
Following the Groton decision, the FOIC’s rulings in cases seeking records detailing allegations of child abuse, regardless of the agency involved, have been essentially identical.
In 2025, the commission upheld the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection’s (DESPP) denial of a request for an investigation report involving allegations of sexual abuse at a daycare.
The request was filed by Jane Doe (who spoke to Inside Investigator on condition of anonymity), the mother of a toddler allegedly the victim of sexual abuse by a daycare staff member. Doe filed the FOIA request for the investigation report after learning from the Connecticut State Police (CSP) that charges were not being filed against the alleged perpetrator.
The case had been investigated by CSP as the daycare involved is in a town served by a resident state trooper. Jurisdiction in the case was also transferred due to the alleged perpetrator having a connection to CSP, something Doe believes played a role in charges not being brought.
Doe was not able to learn the full details of the abuse her child allegedly endured. Managers of the daycare did not share details of the situation with parents. CSP refused to give Doe a copy of the report because it involved multiple minors.
Doe told Inside Investigator that, after she learned charges weren’t being filed, she was told by both a district attorney and a CSP officer who investigated the case that she should file a FOIA request for the report.
Doe did, paying DESPP’s standard $16 fee to obtain an investigation report. She then waited months for the agency to respond. They did not, and Doe appealed to the FOIC.
During the appeal, DESPP’s lawyers argued the record was exempt under Section 17a-101k and that neither the district attorney nor the CSP officer are trained in FOIA and should never have told her she could obtain the report. Doe said the state’s position during the appeal was essentially that her child could view the investigation report when they turned 18.
As in Arriola’s case, the FOIC upheld the denial of Doe’s request, citing the exemption for DCF records related to child abuse.
Again, they cited Groton.
The Groton Ruling
Like Doe’s case, Groton involved a parent attempting to obtain a police report of an alleged sexual assault in which her minor child was a victim. The Groton Police Department denied the request, but the mother, identified as “S” in the subsequent court case, appealed to the FOIC. While the hearing officer initially recommended the commission dismiss the complaint, the FOIC ordered disclosure after conducting an in camera review and finding the allegations were corroborated by the contents of the document.
Groton officials appealed that decision, which led to the matter being remanded to the FOIC. The hearing officer in the case ended up issuing several proposed decisions, the first two recommending the complaint be dismissed, that commissioners disagreed with. A third hearing officer’s report recommended the record be released with redactions.
The FOIC again ordered the release of the records, finding that while the police report contained information related to child abuse within the meaning of the statute, because S was the parent of the alleged victim, the statute’s confidentiality requirement was implicitly waived.
Again, the Groton Police Department appealed the case. Again, the Superior Court ruled in favor of the police department, expressing concern that implicitly waiving confidentiality could open records to members of the general public.
The case was again appealed to the state appellate court, which issued a ruling not just reviewing the appropriateness of the FOIC’s actions under the Uniform Administrative Procedure Act, but issued a ruling looking at the statutory construction of Section 17a-101k.
“The matter before us, however, presents an unusual situation in which the subject of the information sought and the requestor are the same person; S acted in a dual capacity as both the decision maker for her child and as a member of the general public seeking information. Mindful of this anomaly, we must determine whether S could implicitly waive the protections afforded to her child by the sweeping scope of [the DCF exemption].” the court wrote in its decision, which ultimately found in favor of the Groton Police Department.
The court noted that federal regulation requires that “[t]he State must provide by statute that all records concerning reports and reports of child abuse and neglect are confidential and that their unauthorized disclosure is a criminal offense.”
They further noted that while federal regulations allow a state to use discretion to authorize disclosure to certain persons or agencies, including “[a] child named in the report or record alleged to have been abused or neglected or (as his/her representative) his/her guardian or guardian ad litem” Connecticut’s statute does not do that.
“Our legislature, in enacting § 17a-101k(a), used unrestricted language that states that “any other information relative to child abuse, wherever located, shall be confidential ” and is only “subject to such regulations governing their use and access as shall conform to the requirements of federal law or regulation.” the court’s decision found. “In other words, the General Assembly has not employed the permissive discretion, as authorized by the federal government to allow for disclosure to any of the persons or agencies listed in the regulations.”
In other words: Connecticut could, theoretically, stipulate in statute that parents and guardians are entitled to records of alleged child abuse for their children, but the explicit language of the state’s current statute does not allow for this, going further in limiting disclosure than federal statute would allow.
As a result, the court concluded that the records S was seeking were exempt from disclosure and that S’s paternal status was irrelevant.
“It is clear, therefore, that S’s status as the parent of the alleged victim is immaterial to the request for the police records under the act. We agree with the statement of the court that “S is not seeking the information as a parent.” By invoking the act to request the records, S is not seeking the records as a parent but, rather, as a member of the general public. This case, therefore, is unlike the situation in which an employee or teacher, the subject of the requested information, waives nondisclosure protection. We conclude, therefore, that S’s status as a parent, in the context of her request pursuant to the act, has no bearing on the issue of whether she had waived the confidentiality requirement of §17a-101k and was therefore entitled to the police records.” the court concluded.
That ruling has controlled the commission’s ruling on cases involving requests for child abuse records since.
FOIA Legal Action: Separate but Intertwined
At a hearing on Doe’s complaint, an attorney for DESPP noted that the report she was seeking was discoverable through other means and that the Supreme Court has said those other ways, chiefly legal action, are supposed to be separate and independent of the FOI process.
While that is true, and the FOIC has acknowledged this in multiple decisions in cases that have been debated alongside legal action (such as in recent decisions finding the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority mishandled FOIA requests from the state’s electric utilities), the two are still often related.
Doe, Arriola, and Gerarde all ended up taking legal action to attempt to access the documents they were denied—the process public officials told them to follow in several of their cases. But all three were also seeking documents via FOIA, at least in part, to help make determinations about whether legal action was necessary and where it should be focused.
State statute does allow DCF records of child abuse to be obtained by parents and guardians in certain circumstances. A person who is named in a record, or their authorized representative, can obtain information about themselves or their biological minor child if their parental rights have not been terminated. Information identifying an individual who reported abuse or neglect can also be obtained if a court determines a report of child abuse was likely false.
But that does not help people like Doe, whose child was not involved with DCF but was blocked from obtaining records through the exemption for DCF.
According to Peter Yazback, DCF director of communications, the agency receives over 6,000 records requests annually from “clients, former clients, attorneys, law enforcement, out of state CPS agencies, courts, etc.” But the agency does not break down those requests by the number that come from parents or guardians seeking records of abuse involving their children.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
