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Erin’s Law was supposed to be the firewall. Simple as that. Teach kids the difference between a safe secret and a dangerous one. Give them the language to say no when someone crosses a line. Train the adults in the building to spot the warning signs and report them. Empower the child instead of leaving them silent and isolated. That was the pitch in 2014 when Connecticut passed SB 203 and Governor Dannel Malloy signed it. Public schools only. K through 12. Age-appropriate curriculum on recognizing sexual abuse, boundary violations, grooming, and how to disclose it without drowning in self-blame.
The media treated it like a no-brainer. Soft coverage. Warm coverage. Victory-for-the-children coverage. Sen. Cathy Osten, the Democrat from Sprague who championed the bill, called it exactly that: “a victory for children.” She went further: “I think this is an extremely important piece of legislation because it’s not about sexual education, it’s about sexual abuse prevention. It teaches children about safe secrets and not safe secrets, about safe touch and not safe touch… By having this legislation, children know there are things they can say no to… There are certain things that should never be kept secret by people.”
Rep. Diana Urban put it this way: “It is a shame that we have to teach these skills to our children, but I recognize that oftentimes the abuser is known by the child and the child is not sure what to do.” Erin Merryn herself, the survivor the law is named after, told Connecticut lawmakers the only people who should oppose it are the sex offenders. The press conferences were full of nods and applause. No real opposition showed up at the public hearing. Coverage in the Courant, CT Insider, NH Register, and local outlets framed it as common-sense child protection. One in five girls, one in fourteen boys in the state abused. Prevention over reaction. Empower the kids. Everybody wins.
That was the sales job. Unanimous in spirit if not always in the final tally. The statute that came out of it, now sitting at CGS § 17a-101q, requires local and regional boards of education to implement a statewide program developed with DCF and the Alliance to End Sexual Violence. Staff training on prevention, identification, response, bystander intervention, and appropriate interaction with children. Student materials on recognizing abuse, boundary violations, grooming, and strategies to disclose. A uniform response policy. Parents can opt out in writing. On paper it looks solid.
Then the culture shifted under our feet.
Gender ideology walked into the same buildings that were supposed to be teaching kids to report boundary violations and secrets that feel wrong. Suddenly the institutions that passed Erin’s Law with smiles started practicing the opposite. Social transition without telling parents. Preferred names and pronouns kept off the official record so mom and dad never find out. Guidance counselors and teachers coached to treat parental knowledge as a potential threat rather than a right. Districts across the country, including ones right here in Connecticut, adopted or tolerated policies that turned the school into the keeper of the child’s “true” identity while the actual parents were left in the dark. The same adults who were trained under Erin’s Law to promote disclosure and reduce self-blame started modeling secrecy and institutional loyalty over family.
Look at the contradiction. Erin’s Law exists to stop adults from isolating children and teaching them that certain touches or secrets must stay hidden. Gender ideology in schools does the isolating. It tells the child that the people who love them most might not understand, might not be safe, and that the school will protect the secret. One is called prevention. The other is called affirmation. The language is different. The dynamic is the same: an adult authority figure encouraging a child to withhold critical information about their body and identity from their parents.
And the politicians who waved the Erin’s Law flag never seemed to notice the hypocrisy when the same institutions started stocking school libraries with books that sexualize childhood under the banner of inclusion. The same crowd that voted for boundary education now treats any attempt to keep explicit material out of elementary and middle school libraries as a book ban. They pass “right to read” measures. They call parental concerns bigotry. They defend curriculum and library choices that blur the very lines Erin’s Law was written to sharpen. You cannot spend a decade telling kids that certain touches and secrets are never okay and then turn around and celebrate books that introduce sexual concepts and gender fluidity as if they’re just another reading choice. The double standard is not subtle.
Here’s where it gets uglier. Private schools got a complete pass. The statute applies only to local and regional boards of education. Nonpublic schools are exempt. So when Nicholas Ricciardi was tickling elementary students at Solomon Schechter Day School in West Hartford—hard enough that kids were distressed, knocked off chairs, and later described the contact in ways that made parents’ blood run cold—there was no Erin’s Law curriculum required in that building. No mandatory age-appropriate prevention program. No statewide staff modules forced on the school. Samantha, one of the mothers, watched her daughter go through it. The school is private. Jewish day school. Excellent academics. And completely outside the law that was sold as essential protection for every child. Ricciardi eventually pleaded out, got probation, lost his license. The families are still dealing with the fallout. Erin’s Law never touched that campus because the legislature decided private schools didn’t need it.
Now look at the other side of the exit door. Parents who decide the public schools have become too ideological, too secretive, too willing to socialize their children into gender confusion, and who choose to teach their own kids at home? Those parents get the full DCF treatment. The same legislature that exempted private schools just passed new homeschool oversight. When you withdraw your child, superintendents must check DCF records on every adult in the household. If anyone is on the central registry or under active investigation, the withdrawal can be blocked. Annual intent-to-educate forms. Background screening through an agency that, according to the latest data, had involvement with 28 dead children in a 17-month span from January 2025 through May 2026. Twenty-eight kids with DCF histories who are no longer alive. Overdoses. Neglect. Failures of supervision. And that is the agency parents must clear if they want to leave the public system and educate their own children.
Private schools: exempt from Erin’s Law. Homeschooling parents: background-checked by DCF. The most private form of education faces the bureaucracy that keeps losing children, while the private institutions that charge tuition and operate outside public accountability get a free pass on the very curriculum sold as non-negotiable child protection.
And enforcement? Where is it? The statute requires implementation. The updates in later years kept pushing the deadlines and expanding the training modules. Yet walk into enough schools and talk to enough parents and you hear the same thing: the program is uneven, under-resourced, treated as another checkbox. Some districts do it seriously. Others phone it in. There is no aggressive state audit, no real consequence for half-hearted compliance, no public dashboard showing which schools are actually delivering the curriculum with fidelity. A law without teeth is a press release. That is what Erin’s Law has become in too many places.
The media that cheered its passage in 2014 has been largely silent on the contradictions that followed. They covered the signing ceremony. They quoted the good intentions. They moved on. When gender secrecy policies collided with parental rights, the coverage shifted to “supporting students.” When explicit books became the issue, the story became “bans.” When private schools stayed exempt and homeschoolers got regulated, the narrative stayed focused on protecting kids from the wrong kinds of parents. The original promise—teach kids to recognize and report boundary violations, promote disclosure, keep adults accountable—got lost in the ideology.
This is not complicated. A law written to stop the isolation of children and the keeping of dangerous secrets cannot coexist with policies that institutionalize isolation and secrets. A legislature that claims child protection as its highest value cannot exempt private schools from prevention education while subjecting homeschool parents to an agency with a body count. And the press that celebrated Erin’s Law cannot pretend the later inversions are somehow consistent with its purpose.
We’re going to keep asking the questions. Why the exemption for private schools when a case like Solomon Schechter shows the risk is real? Why the heavy hand on parents who exit the system while the system itself experiments with secrecy around children’s bodies? Why so little enforcement of a law that was sold as essential? The answers are out there. The records exist. The votes are public. The bodies of those 28 children are not theoretical. Neither is Samantha’s daughter. Neither is the original text of Erin’s Law.
The folks listening already know the difference between protection and performance. It’s time the people who passed the law remembered it too.
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