The state of Hawaiʻi says it’s bound by law to protect the confidentiality of anyone involved in the foster care system — names, histories, reports of abuse or anything else from their files. Even the names of foster parents, paid by taxpayers, must be kept secret.
That’s why the Attorney General’s Office says it’s trying to block Civil Beat from seeing documents in a civil lawsuit about a foster parent who a judge found had sexually and physically abused children in his care.
The lawsuit was filed against the foster parent and the state. And here’s the kicker: The state itself had included those supposedly verboten items, including names, histories and intimate details of maltreatment of one-time foster children, in its own publicly available filings in defending itself in the case…