An Act related to the videotaping of interviews with children who are alleged to have been abused or neglected.

House Bill 269 establishes an 18-month pilot project to study the use of videotaping of interviews with children who are alleged to have been abused or neglected. The project would begin no later than January 21, 2001 in the Fairbanks North Star Borough. The Department would be required to submit an interim report to the Legislature in January of 2002 and a final report in January 2003 that would outline the problems encountered, benefits discovered and other information relevant to whether the videotaping requirement should be implemented statewide.

The bill provides an exception to the videotaping requirement if "it is determined that an interview is immediately necessary because of exigent circumstances or that, due to extraordinary circumstances, videotaping equipment is unavailable or inoperable." In addition, the bill provides that the failure to videotape an interview of a child does not affect the admissibility of the interview, or the authority or ability of a state or municipal law enforcement or prosecution agency to use the interview or information obtained from it.

When this program has been considered on a statewide basis in the past, it has been accompanied by a fiscal note of up to $2.1 million. House Bill 256, a bill mandating the use of videotapes in child abuse interviews that was introduced this year by Representative John Coghill, is accompanied by a $3.1 million fiscal note. I believe a pilot project as proposed in my bill could be structured to avoid most of these costs while providing valuable information on the feasibility of this requirement. I believe that careful implementation of an interview videotaping system will discourage false allegations and allow us to focus scarce resources on true cases of child abuse.