214 R.I. Code R. 214-RICR-20-00-1.5

Current through December 3, 2024

Section 214-RICR-20-00-1.5 - Definitions

A. "Caregiver" means a parent or legal guardian or other person responsible for the child's welfare, as defined in § 1.5(K) of this Part.

B. "Child abuse and neglect (CA/N)" means a child whose physical or mental health or welfare is harmed, or threatened with harm, when his or her parent or other person responsible for his or her welfare:

1. Inflicts, or allows to be inflicted, upon the child physical or mental injury, including excessive corporal punishment; or

2. Creates, or allows to be created, a substantial risk of physical or mental injury to the child, including excessive corporal punishment; or

3. Commits, or allows to be committed, against the child, an act of sexual abuse; or

4. Fails to supply the child with adequate food, clothing, shelter, or medical care, though financially able to do so or offered financial or other reasonable means to do so; or

5. Fails to provide the child with a minimum degree of care or proper supervision or guardianship because of his or her unwillingness or inability to do so by situations or conditions such as, but not limited to: social problems, mental incompetency, or the use of a drug, drugs, or alcohol to the extent that the parent or other person responsible for the child's welfare loses his or her ability or is unwilling to properly care for the child; or

6. Abandons or deserts the child; or

7. Sexually exploits the child in that the person allows, permits, or encourages the child to engage in prostitution as defined by the provisions in R.I. Gen. Laws § 11-34.1-1 et seq., entitled "Commercial Sexual Activity"; or

8. Sexually exploits the child in that the person allows, permits, encourages, or engages in the obscene or pornographic photographing, filming, or depiction of the child in a setting that taken as a whole, suggests to the average person that the child is about to engage in, or has engaged in, any sexual act, or that depicts any such child under 18 years of age performing sodomy, oral copulation, sexual intercourse, masturbation, or bestiality; or

9. Commits, or allows to be committed, any sexual offense against the child as such sexual offenses are defined by the provisions of R.I. Gen. Laws Chapter 11-37, entitled "Sexual Assault", as amended; or

10. Commits, or allows to be committed, against any child an act involving sexual penetration or sexual contact if the child is under fifteen (15) years of age; or if the child is fifteen (15) years or older, and (1) force or coercion is used by the perpetrator, or (2) the perpetrator knows, or has reason to know, that the victim is a severely impaired person as defined by the provisions of R.I. Gen. Laws § 11-5-11, or physically helpless as defined by the provisions of R.I. Gen. Laws Chapter 11-37.

C. "Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC)" refers to a range of crimes and activities involving the sexual abuse or exploitation of a child for the financial benefit of any person or in exchange for anything of value (including monetary and non-monetary benefits) given or received by any person.

D. "CPI" means the Department's Field Child Protective Investigator.

E. "CPS" means the Department's Child Protective Services division.

F. "CPS Hotline" means the Department's Child Protective Services Hotline that provides a statewide, toll-free phone number to receive child abuse and neglect (CA/N) reports 24 hours per day, seven (7) days per week.

G. "Department" means Rhode Island's Department of Children, Youth and Families.

H. "Fatality" means the death of any child in which child abuse or neglect is suspected to be a contributing factor.

I. "Medically indicated treatment" means the treatment, including appropriate nutrition, hydration and medication, which, in the treating physician/nurse practitioner's reasonable medical judgment, will be most likely to be effective in ameliorating or correcting the infant or child's medical illness or life-threatening condition.

J. "Near Fatality" means that a child was placed in serious or critical condition as the result of an act of abuse or neglect. The child being placed in serious or critical condition must be classified by the treating physician, and reflected in the medical chart. The treating physician's determination that the child is in "serious or critical condition" is accepted without further assessment by the Department.

i. "Serious or Critical Condition" means that the patient's vital signs are unstable and not within normal limits. Patient is acutely ill, and/or unconscious, and/or has neurological status changes requiring medical intervention.

K. "Person responsible for the child's welfare" means the child's parent or guardian, any individual, eighteen (18) years of age or older, who resides in the home of a parent or guardian and has unsupervised access to a child, a foster parent (relative or non-relative), an employee of a public or private residential home or facility or any staff person providing out-of-home care, which includes family child care, group child care and center-based child care.

L. "Preponderance of the Evidence" means evidence of a greater weight or more convincing that the evidence in opposition to it; that is, evidence which shows that the fact sought to be proved is more probable than not.

M. "Severe forms of trafficking in persons" means

1. sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained eighteen (18) years of age; or

2. the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.

N. "Sexual harassment" means

1. Repeated and unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or verbal comments, gestures, or actions of a derogatory or offensive sexual nature by one resident directed toward another; and

2. Repeated verbal comments or gestures of a sexual nature to an inmate, detainee, or resident by a staff member, contractor, or volunteer, including demeaning references to gender, sexually suggestive or derogatory comments about body or clothing, or obscene language or gestures.

O. "Sex trafficking" means the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act.

P. "Standardized screening tool" means an assessment instrument that is developed based on statistical analysis of identifying factors that statistically predict child maltreatment. The assessment tool is utilized to screen reports made to the central intake center for purposes of screening in CPS reports for an investigation or a family assessment response.

Q. "Substantial risk of harm" means that the risk of harm to a child is so great that the harm is almost certain to materialize without immediate intervention.

R. "Voyeurism" by a staff member, contractor, or volunteer means an invasion of privacy of a resident by staff for reasons unrelated to official duties and not in accordance with program policy and procedure, such as peering at a resident who is using a toilet in his or her room to perform bodily functions; requiring a resident to expose his or her buttocks, genitals, or breasts; or taking images of all or part of a resident's naked body or of a resident performing bodily functions.

S. "Victim of a severe form of trafficking" means a person subject to an act or practice described in § 1.5(O) of this Part.

214 R.I. Code R. 214-RICR-20-00-1.5

Amended effective 1/20/2021