Protecting new babies born to maltreaters: Benji’s law is not enough.

by Marie Cohen

On December 16, 2025, police were dispatched to a residence in Nampa, Idaho and found a 12-day-old infant named Benji dead in a filthy house with dog feces on the floor. Records show that five children had previously been removed from Benji’s parents due to unsafe living conditions–three in 2019 and two in 2022. Both parents’ rights were terminated to all five children, who were adopted by their foster parents. But that did not save little Benji, despite repeated calls from former foster parents and others asking child protective services (CPS) and police to check on the infant. Less than four months after Benji’s death, the Governor of Idaho signed “Benji’s Law” to expedite safety checks when reports involve infants considered at high risk of abuse or neglect. Unfortunately, Benji’s law does not go far enough. It might have prevented Benji’s death, but not the death of infants who were not the subject of calls to CPS or police.

Benji’s case was not unusual. Having one child who died of abuse or neglect seems, not surprisingly, to be a risk factor for another such tragedy. Here are only a few examples that have recently appeared in the news.

• A two-month old infant in Washington State (“F.F.“) was placed on life support and died three days later in December 2024 after allegedly being shaken by his father, who is charged with second degree murder and homicide by abuse. The baby had a brain bleed, four older rib fractures, and a broken collarbone. The father eventually admitted to shaking the baby for five minutes in a fit of anger. The same man was convicted of second-degree crimimal mistreatment after breaking his infant daughter’s femur in 2023. The child was removed and was in foster care at the time of F.F.’s death.
• Prosecutors allege that 14-month-old Tilly Servin was was tortured to death in Long Beach, California in November 2025. Tilly’s autopsy showed repeated instances of inflicted trauma including skull fractures and broken bones, as well as evidence that the child was deliberately starved. Her mother is suing Los Angeles County’s child protection agency for leaving Tilly in the custody of her father, who was previously sentenced to four years in prison for exposing two other children to methamphetamine and other drugs in 2021.
• In Wichita, Kansas, Shanna Whitton was charged with killing her 15-month-old son in August 2025 by intentionally choking him. The Sheriff’s Department has reopened an investigation into the July 2024 death of Whitton’s two-year-old daughter, which was ruled to be an accidental choking. The child had had been taken to the hospital with injuries at least three times before the choking incident that caused her death.
• In the District of Columbia, 20-month-old Kemy Washington was found dead in January 2025 along with the body of her mother, who had overdosed on multiple types of illicit drugs. Kemy had died slowly of starvation and dehydration. Kemy’s older sister had been removed due to her mother’s drug abuse; the child’s guardianship with a relative had been ratified in court only five days after Kemy was born. Kemy’s grandmother called child protective services twice in Kemy’s short life but there was no policy allowing CFSA to investigate Kemy’s safety just because she was born to a mother who lost custody of a previous child for neglect.

Monique Peyre, who adopted three of Benji’s siblings, reported to Idaho News Now that she and others had made multiple calls to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare (IDHW) and local police asking them to check on Benji in the days before his death, given his parents loss of custody of five other children. She said that IDHW told her they don’t consider history when a new baby is born to a family, and that they had no current concern for the infant. It seems that they finally accepted the referral but labeled it as a “Priority III,” requiring a response within three days and seeing the child within five days. A day later, Benji was dead.

Peyre and others urged the legislature to pass a bill that would require a quicker response to a report of a baby such as Benji. They circulated a petition, spoke to the media and testified before the relevant committees. Benji’s Law was approved by the legislature and was signed by the governor on April 2, 2026. It requires that when any report is made by a mandatory reporter alleging that the parent, guardian or legal custodian of a child aged one or younger has one of four risk factors described in the legislation, IDHD must verify within 12 hours that the reported risk factor is accurate, using internal, criminal or medical records. If the risk factor is verified, the department must initiate a “Priority I Response,” which means that the child must be seen immediately, and the invetigator must complete a full written safety assessment which is described in the law.

The four risk factors listed in the law are: (1) the parent, guardian or legal custodian is listed in the child protection central registry for maltreatment that took place within the past ten years; (2) the parent, guardian or legal custodian has been convicted of an injury to a child; (3) the parent, guardian or legal custodian has had their parental rights terminated due to child abuse or neglect; or (4) a previous child was born with neonatal abstinence syndrome.

Benji’s Law is a good start, but it is far from the comprehensive solution that is needed for children born to parents who have seriously abused or neglected a sibling. The main problem is that it requires an initial report to the agency by a mandated reporter. That leaves out all the babies born to known maltreators who are never reported to the hotline, or reported by someone who is not a mandatory reporter. That rules out the grandmother of Kemy Washington in the District of Columbia, who tried twice to alert the agency to Kemy’s situation. It is often family members, who are not mandatory reporters, who notify child protective services of the danger facing a child born to a known maltreater.

It’s not surprising that the foster and adoptive parents who worked on Benji’s law were trying to address the situation they were facing when they were getting no response to their reports. But it is unfortunate that they did not consider the infants that do not have people looking out for them. They probably did not know that there is a solution well within the reach of any state government. Birth records can be matched against CPS and criminal records, which would identify the infants with first three risk factors cited in the bill. Such a process, called “birth match,” was in use in five states as of May, 2022. (At least three of these states adopted these policies in response to deaths of children born to parents responsible for the death of a previous child.) Each state has a different list of risk factors and a different requirement of what type of assessment must be done when these factors exist. Ideally, Congress would pass a law requiring such a policy as a condition of receiving federal child welfare funds.

The birth of a previous child with neonatal abstinence system, which is one of the risk factors in Benji’s Law, could not be identified by matching birth records with CPS and criminal records. This would probably require a match.with health records, which is authorized in Benji’s Law. However, it is not clear whether the birth of a previous child with neonatal abstinence syndrome makes sense as a reason for investigation. It seems more appropriate to assess the safety of a child who is itself born with neonatal abstinence syndrome and not to use a sibling‘s condition at birth as a trigger for investigation.

Apart from the lack of a birth match, Benji’s law has one major loophole in the definition of risk factors. Ebony Washington of the District of Columbia never had her rights terminated because her first child was placed in guardianship rather than adoption. Relatives often choose guardianship, rather than adoption, to avoid the termination of the parent’s rights. Therefore, the risk category should include all parents who have had a transfer of physical and legal custody due to abuse or neglect of their child.

Monique Peyre, the adoptive parent of Benji’s siblings, had it exactly right when she told Idaho News Now that “[w]hen there’s proven history, convictions, removals, termination of rights, I think there should be more urgency to check on future children rather than sending an infant home to a really high-risk situation…” Not considering history is the ultimate source of so many child and abuse deaths today. Children are left, without monitoring, in situations where history tells us to intervene. We must learn from the past to protect children in the present and future. But the laws and policies designed to do this should protect all children with known risks, not just a select few.