Supreme Court to Weigh Child Abuse Against Family's Privacy

Feb. 28, 2011— -- The Supreme Court will debate the sensitive issue of child abuse on Tuesday as it hears arguments over whether a child protection investigator should have obtained a warrant or parental consent before pulling a 9-year-old out of class and interviewing her about alleged sexual abuse in the home.

Children's rights advocates on both sides of the issue are carefully watching the case. The issue pits the privacy rights of students and their families against a state interest in aggressively combating child abuse.

It's been 21 years since the court has heard a case involving the child welfare system.

The case stems from the 2003 arrest of Nimrod Greene, a man accused of sexually abusing a seven-year-old boy in Oregon. As a part of that case, investigators became suspicious that Greene may have been also sexually abusing his own daughters.

Bob Camreta, a caseworker for the Oregon Department of Human Services, and James Alford, a deputy sheriff, visited one of the daughters' schools and interviewed the child for two hours about her relationship with her father, asking whether he had touched her inappropriately.

Based on the girl's responses, Greene was later indicted on six counts of felony assault.

His daughters, known in court documents as "S.G." and "K.G.," were put briefly in foster care.

S.G. later recanted much of her testimony and the charges that Greene abused his daughters were eventually dismissed.

The girls' mother, Sarah Greene, sued Camreta arguing that he violated the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable search and seizure when he interviewed her daughter without her consent or a warrant.

In court papers, lawyers for Sarah Greene say that S.G. was removed from her class by two unknown men, one "with a gun visible in his holster" and brought to an empty conference room.

"Nobody explained to her why she was there and she was too scared to ask," the court papers say.

"In the process [the investigator] educated S.G. about child sexual abuse; S.G. had been unfamiliar with the topic."