Heath Haussamen / NMPolitics.net
A statue outside the Roundhouse in Santa Fe.
A bill that would help clarify how New Mexico educators identify and report cases of sexual abuse against students cleared its first legislative hurdle Wednesday when the Senate Education Committee unanimously advanced the measure.
Senate Bill 31, sponsored by Sen. Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque, seeks $100,000 from the state general fund for the Public Education Department to provide experts who can train public school administrators and teachers on how to detect and report sexual violence in schools.
Stewart, a retired teacher, told the committee members that educators know how to detect signs of physical violence that are obvious. “We see the bruises. … I’ve seen cigarette burns on children’s arms,” she said.
But signs of sexual assault and trauma are not easily visible to the naked eye, she said.
“It’s not that we’re not doing training,” she said. “The training is more focused on physical assault. … We’re not going to fix everything with this [bill]. But we’re going to increase expertise” among educators.
That extra training and knowledge could make a difference in a state where more than 8,200 high school students reported that they had been forced to engage in sexual activity, according to a 2015 statewide study asking youth to self-report drug and alcohol use, sexual activity and physical abuse, among other issues.
Julianna Koob, legislative liaison for the New Mexico Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs, told the committee that New Mexico’s rate of child sexual abuse is 12 percentage points higher than the national average.
Koob said one problem is that some school personnel are unsure of what to do if a student tells them about sexual abuse. As a result, they sometimes do their own screening process before reporting the case to the state Children, Youth and Families Department, as per state law.
Stewart said sexual abuse may be one reason for the state’s high suicide rate among youth. New Mexico Department of Health statistics from 2016 say suicide was the second-leading cause of death in youth 10 to 24 years of age. Fifty-nine such deaths were reported that year, a steep decline from 2015, when the state saw 80 youth suicides. Even with the decline, however, the state rate surpassed the nation’s.
The financial cost to the state is also high. Sammy Quintana, executive director of New Mexico Public Schools Insurance Authority, told the committee that in the past few years the authority has paid out more than $7.2 million in judgments and settlements related to sexual abuse cases in the schools.
Both Republican and Democratic senators on the committee told Stewart they support the bill, which will next go to the Senate Finance Committee for consideration.
Contact Robert Nott at (505) 986-3021 or rnott@sfnewmexican.com.