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FOI Columns
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November-December, 2002
Sun-Sentinel uses FOI-powered spotlight to find missing children
by Charles Davis

Those who oppose the public's right of access to information are quick to label FOI as special interest legislation, a bone thrown to the press with little practical application for the public.

In every area beyond the courtroom, the courts have held that public records are creatures of legislative mercy rather than constitutional dictate -- in other words, we enjoy access to public records because the legislature passes freedom of information laws. Lawmakers support access for a variety of reasons, ranging from reformist populism to fear of the electorate, but every time a government offcial attempts to control access, you can bet you'll hear this line of argument: "The press just wants access to that record to sell papers and drive ratings."

When you hear that refrain, watch out, for the "special interest" of the press is most often the public interest in knowing what government is (or is not) doing.

A case in point: In Miami last April, Florida authorities discovered that a 5-year-old foster child named Rilya Wilson had been missing for 15 months before the agency reported her disap-pearance. Florida's Department of Children and Families came under intense criticism after reports that 500 foster children were missing.

Shortly after the Rilya Wilson case broke, six girls, ranging in age from 11 to 15, were found to have been left in a motel in West Palm Beach, and they, too, were under the care of the state agency, the Florida Department of Children and Families.

Following that case, a 1-year-old toddler in Tampa was found dead on the side of the road on the same day that a state caseworker claimed she had gone to visit the boy and his family and that everybody was fne.

Fact-laden picture
In times of crisis, government offcials often dissemble, pick on lower-ranking employees and shift the blame. From behind the podium come stern statements of seeming fact, challenged only by those with the temerity to oppose their superiors within the halls of govern-ment. Fault for the missing children of Florida, and Rilya Wilson in particular, was placed squarely on the shoulders of a Department of Children and Families caseworker and a supervisor -- until a team of reporters at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, using FOI to cut through the undergrowth of half-truths and outright lies, challenged the official line.

Megan O'Matz, Sally Kestin, Diana Marrero and other reporters and editors at the Sun-Sentinel made a series of FOI requests that resulted in more than a dozen hard-hitting stories. In May, June and July, the newspaper's coverage painted a factladen picture of a dysfunctional agency raft with incompetence, apathy and bureaucratic paralysis. From its early coverage of the Wilson case to its dramatic story locating nine of the 24 children listed as missing by the DCF, the reporting of the missing children of Florida is as compelling an example of the public interest served by FOI as exists today.

"These stories are not written without FOI laws," says Marrero, who continues to work the story. "We could not have gotten the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's spreadsheet of missing children cases, we could not have gotten the incident reports, and without those documents, we would have been relying on word of mouth."

Without the intervention of the Sun-Sentinel's lawyers, the DCF may well have balked at releasing the child abduction logs central to the inquiry. The paper was forced to sue for access to the case fles of the 24 South Florida children. Without the legal sword of the Florida public records law, and without a newspaper willing to expend precious dollars to see the battle through to the end, these stories would never have seen the light of day. How many more children would have fallen through the drafty netting of DCF's system?

O'Matz, for one, doesn't even want to think about it. "What's truly frightening is to realize that in other states with weaker FOI laws, these stories are sitting untold," she says.

Still missing
Statewide, the department cannot account for 532 children missing from the child welfare system.

A task force, headed by police, recently concluded that the missing children problem was exaggerated. Its report justifed that assertion because many of the nearly 400 children the agency still can't account for are either runaways or were taken without permission by relatives.

Buried in the task force report is the fact that the task force has identifed the whereabouts of less than half of the missing children. Where are the rest?

Thanks to FOI laws, the Sun-Sentinel and other Florida reporters, we may one day find out.


Charles Davis is executive director of the Freedom of Information Center, an associate professor at the Missouri School of Journalism and a member of IRE's First Amendment task force.