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Kudos to Wisconsin for having the courage to track and post reports of child death and life‑threatening harm done to their youngest citizens.
Only a handful of states—Wisconsin, Colorado, California, Arizona, and Iowa—have taken concrete steps to publicize child‑abuse and child‑protection data in ways ordinary citizens can see. Wisconsin’s critical‑incident site is an especially rare example of a state willing to expose egregious harm and child death in real time.
Wisconsin’s public child protection website does something every state should be doing: it openly tracks child death, serious injury, and egregious incidents linked to maltreatment and suspected maltreatment. This state site provides a near real‑time snapshot of life‑threatening incidents and child deaths in Wisconsin, making it harder for extreme abuse to remain invisible.
Wisconsin’s Public Incident Reporting: A Model Worth Copying
The Wisconsin State website for Child Protective Services incidents offers public notifications and follow‑up reviews when a child dies, suffers serious injury, or experiences an egregious incident tied to abuse or neglect. It is not perfect—but it is honest. It admits that some children are being killed and severely harmed while known to CPS, and it lets the public see those cases.
Recent notifications and local coverage have described:
- Children beaten so badly that court commissioners call the case “the worst” they have ever seen.
- Infants dying in homes where CPS and other agencies have already been involved.
- Day care abuse incidents so severe that licenses are revoked and new victims keep emerging.
This kind of disclosure does not fix the harm, but it forces the system to look at it. It shows leadership where the system failed, and it gives advocates and legislators a place to start when they demand change.
Minnesota: Safe Passage Fatality Report Shows Murder, But Not Near‑Deaths (which are exponentially more common).
Building on the recent Safe Passage investigative report of Minnesota children murdered by their parents and caregivers while known to Child Protective Services, we can see the power—and the limits—of our current data.
The Safe Passage report documented 88 Minnesota children who died from maltreatment between 2014 and 2022. It described how they died (fentanyl poisoning, blunt force trauma, drowning, medical neglect, gunshot wounds, starvation, and more) and identified patterns: repeated CPS contacts, known domestic violence, substance use disorder, and torture elements in homes where children were left for years.
But the Safe Passage study did not include near‑death experiences or egregious harm that did not end in a fatality, because those incidents are not systematically reported by CPS in Minnesota. Had we counted those cases, the numbers would have been exponentially higher.
Knowing that the true numbers are in the thousands, not the hundreds, is the first step in facing the inadequacy of our child protection system.
Why Tracking Near‑Death and Egregious Harm Matters
Tracking child fatalities alone is not enough. If we only count children after they die, we miss the majority of extreme abuse and neglect and lose the chance to intervene earlier.
Wisconsin’s practice of publicly reporting serious injury and egregious incidents, alongside deaths, offers a better model:
- It recognizes that a child whose heart stops but is revived is no less a victim of extreme abuse than a child who dies.
- It treats near‑fatal overdoses, suffocation, torture, and severe neglect as system‑level alarms that require practice reviews.
- It gives legislators and the public visibility into the true depth and scope of deadly child abuse, not just the final outcome.
Minnesota—and other states—need to move in the same direction. Until officials know how many children are coming close to death, suffering torture, or surviving severe assaults, they cannot honestly judge whether child protection is working.
Until Minnesota Counts, Child Abuse Remains a Tolerated Human Rights Abuse
Until Minnesota officials know the real depth and scope of child abuse and child death in our state—including near‑deaths and egregious harm—this will remain the most tolerated human rights abuse in our state.
We cannot fix what we refuse to measure.
We cannot protect what we refuse to see.
If Minnesota wants to stop children from being tortured, raped, beaten, starved, and poisoned while known to CPS, it must:
- Require public tracking and disclosure of critical incidents: child deaths, near‑fatalities, severe injuries, torture indicators, and egregious neglect.
- Integrate those incidents into outcomes‑based metrics, not just process metrics like time to case closure.
- Use them to drive policy changes, resource allocations, and accountability for leadership.
Forward This to Your State Representative
Please forward this post to your state representative, with a note about why this kind of reporting will save lives and interrupt the trauma and torture of hundreds of children.
You can find your U.S. House Representative here:
https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
Where ever you live, send a similar note to your state legislators. Tell them:
- You support Wisconsin‑style public reporting of child deaths and egregious incidents.
- You want near‑fatalities and serious harm tracked, not hidden.
- You believe this transparency is essential to protecting children and holding systems accountable.
SHARE THIS.
Email your State Rep Find them here.
It just takes a few minutes.
You could save a life.
Is CPS Creating What It Was Designed to Stop?
There are many forces at play on Child Protective Services today.
- The punishment model still rules in courts, schools, and public policy. Most systems fall far short of reacting to childhood trauma with the tools needed to help children heal and develop the skills they need to succeed in school and society.
- Data systems still focus on inputs and efficiency, not child outcomes. Most Child Protection Systems share very little meaningful data.
- Leadership still rewards case closure and low removal rates, even when children in “low‑risk” tracks are dying.
Better tracking and reporting of outcomes‑based metrics in Child Protection—like child safety, stability, healing, and reduced involvement in juvenile and adult justice—will save abused children from:
- Early death
- More trauma
- More punishment
- A lifetime of dangerous behavior
“What we do to our children, they will do to our society.”
(Pliny the Elder, 2,000 years ago)
Help KARA Find Other States Telling the Truth
KARA’s new book, America’s Children in One Hundred Charts, needs information about new and hard to find information (like which other states track child death and egregious harm in a meaningful way). Read the draft here.
If you know of a state or county that has a public system similar to Wisconsin’s—tracking child deaths, serious injuries, and egregious incidents—please send an email to:
mike@invisiblechildren.org
Use “States Reporting” in the subject line.
You could help make invisible children visible—and help drive the reforms that keep children safe alive.
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KARA reports on the issues of invisible children. This article was submitted by Former CASA Guardian Ad Litem Mike Tikkanen.
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INVISIBLE CHILDREN – KARA (Kids At Risk Action)
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