Arkansas

How does state law define child abuse and neglect for reporting purposes?

• Reporters must report child maltreatment. “Child maltreatment” means abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, sexual exploitation or abandonment, as defined in Arkansas Code 12-18-103 and any case law and other legal guidance interpreting the statute.
• “Abuse” means any of the following acts or omissions by a parent, guardian, custodian, foster parent, person 18 years of age or older living in the home with a child whether related or unrelated to the child, or any person who is entrusted with the child's care by a parent, guardian, custodian, or foster parent, including, but not limited to, an agent or employee of a public or private residential home, child care facility, public or private school, a significant other of the child's parent, or any person legally responsible for the child's welfare, but excluding the spouse of a minor:
  • Extreme or repeated cruelty to a child;
  • Engaging in conduct creating a realistic and serious threat of death, permanent or temporary disfigurement, or impairment of any bodily organ;
  • Injury to a child's intellectual, emotional, or psychological development as evidenced by observable and substantial impairment of the child's ability to function within the child's normal range of performance and behavior;
  • Any injury that is at variance with the history given;
  • Any nonaccidental physical injury;
  • Any of the following intentional or knowing acts, with physical injury and without justifiable cause:
    • Throwing, kicking, burning, biting, or cutting a child;
    • Striking a child with a closed fist;
    • Shaking a child; or
    • Striking a child on the face or head;
  • Any of the following intentional or knowing acts, with or without physical injury:
    • Striking a child six (6) years of age or younger on the face or head;
    • Shaking a child three (3) years of age or younger;
    • Interfering with a child's breathing;
    • Pinching, biting, or striking a child in the genital area;
    • Tying a child to a fixed or heavy object or binding or tying a child's limbs together;
    • Giving a child or permitting a child to consume or inhale a poisonous or noxious substance not prescribed by a physician that has the capacity to interfere with normal physiological functions;
    • Giving a child or permitting a child to consume or inhale a substance not prescribed by a physician that has the capacity to alter the mood of the child, including, but not limited to, the following:
      • Marijuana;
      • Alcohol, excluding alcohol given to a child during a recognized and established religious ceremony or service;
      • A narcotic; or
      • An over-the-counter drug if a person purposely administers an overdose to a child or purposely gives an inappropriate over-the-counter drug to a child and the child is detrimentally impacted by the overdose or the over-the-counter drug;
    • Exposing a child to a chemical that has the capacity to interfere with normal physiological functions, including, but not limited to, a chemical used or generated during the manufacture of methamphetamine; or
    • Subjecting a child to Munchausen syndrome by proxy or a factitious illness by proxy if the incident is confirmed by medical personnel; or
  • Recruiting, harboring, transporting, or obtaining a child for labor or services, through force, fraud, or coercion, for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.
• “Sexual Abuse” means:
  • By a person 14 years of age or older to a person younger than 18 years of age:
    • Sexual intercourse, deviate sexual activity, or sexual contact by forcible compulsion;
    • Attempted sexual intercourse, deviate sexual activity, or sexual contact by forcible compulsion;
    • Indecent exposure; or
    • Forcing the watching of pornography or live sexual activity;
  • By a person 18 years of age or older to a person not his or her spouse who is younger than 15 years of age:
    • Sexual intercourse, deviate sexual activity, or sexual contact;
    • Sexual intercourse, deviate sexual activity, or sexual contact;
    • Solicitation of sexual intercourse, deviate sexual activity, or sexual contact;
  • By a person 20 years of age or older to a person not his or her spouse who is younger than sixteen 16 years of age:
    • Sexual intercourse, deviate sexual activity, or sexual contact;
    • Attempted sexual intercourse, deviate sexual activity, or sexual contact; or
    • Solicitation of sexual intercourse, deviate sexual activity, or sexual contact;
  • By a caretaker to a person younger than 18 years of age:
    • Sexual intercourse, deviate sexual activity, or sexual contact;
    • Attempted sexual intercourse, deviate sexual activity, or sexual contact; or
    • Forcing or encouraging the watching of pornography;
    • Forcing, permitting, or encouraging the watching of live sexual activity;
    • Forcing the listening to a phone sex line;
    • An act of voyeurism; or
    • Solicitation of sexual intercourse, deviate sexual activity, or sexual contact;
  • By a person younger than 14 years of age to a person younger than 18 years of age:
    • Sexual intercourse, deviate sexual activity, or sexual contact by forcible compulsion; or
    • Attempted sexual intercourse, deviate sexual activity, or sexual contact by forcible compulsion; or
  • By a person eighteen (18) years of age or older to a person who is younger than 18 years of age, the recruiting, harboring, transporting, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a child for the purpose of a commercial sex act;
• “Sexual contact” means any act of sexual gratification involving:
  • The touching, directly or through clothing, of the sex organs, buttocks, or anus of a person or the breast of a female;
  • The encouraging of a child to touch the offender in a sexual manner; or
  • The offender requesting to touch a child in a sexual manner.
    • Evidence of sexual gratification may be inferred from the attendant circumstances surrounding the specific complaint of child maltreatment.
  • “Sexual contact” does not include normal affectionate hugging
• "Neglect" means those acts or omissions of a parent, guardian, custodian, foster parent, or any person who is entrusted with the child's care by a parent, custodian, guardian, or foster parent, including, but not limited to, an agent or employee of a public or private residential home, child care facility, public or private school, or any person legally responsible under state law for the child's welfare, but excluding the spouse of a minor and the parents of the married minor, which constitute:
  • Failure or refusal to prevent the abuse of the child when the person knows or has reasonable cause to know the child is or has been abused;
  • Failure or refusal to provide necessary food, clothing, shelter, or medical treatment necessary for the child's well-being, except when the failure or refusal is caused primarily by the financial inability of the person legally responsible and no services for relief have been offered;
  • Failure to take reasonable action to protect the child from abandonment, abuse, sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, neglect, or parental unfitness when the existence of the condition was known or should have been known;
  • Failure or irremediable inability to provide for the essential and necessary physical, mental, or emotional needs of the child, including the failure to provide a shelter that does not pose a risk to the health or safety of the child;
  • Failure to provide for the child's care and maintenance, proper or necessary support, or medical, surgical, or other necessary care;
  • Failure, although able, to assume responsibility for the care and custody of the child or to participate in a plan to assume such responsibility;
  • Failure to appropriately supervise the child that results in the child's being left alone:
    • At an inappropriate age creating a dangerous situation or a situation that puts the child at risk of harm; or
    • In inappropriate circumstances creating a dangerous situation or a situation that puts the child at risk of harm;
  • Failure to appropriately supervise the child that results in the child's being placed in:
    • Inappropriate circumstances creating a dangerous situation; or
    • A situation that puts the child at risk of harm; or
  • Failure to ensure a child between six (6) years of age and seventeen (17) years of age is enrolled in school or is being legally home schooled or as a result of an act or omission by the child's parent or guardian, the child is habitually and without justification absent from school.
• “Sexual Exploitation” means:
  • The following by a person eighteen (18) years of age or older to a child who is not his or her spouse:
    • Allowing, permitting, or encouraging participation or depiction of the child in: Prostitution;
      • Prostitution;
      • Obscene photography; or
      • Obscene filming; or
    • Obscenely depicting, obscenely posing, or obscenely posturing the child for any use or purpose;
  • The following by a caretaker to a child:
    • Allowing, permitting, or encouraging participation or depiction of the child in: Prostitution;
      • Prostitution;
      • Obscene photography; or
      • Obscene filming; or
    • Obscenely depicting, obscenely posing, or obscenely posturing the child for any use or purpose;
• “Abandonment” means:
  • The failure of a parent to provide reasonable support and to maintain regular contact with a child through statement or contact when the failure is accompanied by an intention on the part of the parent to permit the condition to continue for an indefinite period in the future or the failure of a parent to support or maintain regular contact with a child without just cause; or
  • An articulated intent to forego parental responsibility
• “Abandonment” does not include:
  • Acts or omissions of a parent toward a married minor; or
  • A situation in which a child has disrupted his or her adoption and the adoptive parent has exhausted the available resources;

Are child molestation, sexual abuse, rape, statutory rape, incest, intimate partner violence, sexual exploitation and/or trafficking of a minor reportable as child abuse or neglect and if so, how are they defined and what is reportable?

For the most current definitions of abuse, neglect and other terms under the Child Maltreatment Act, refer to Arkansas Bureau Legislative Services at the Lexis website.