When the Oregon Legislature passed House Bill 3328 – known as Karly’s Law – in 2007 by a 59-0 vote, the message was clear: More should be required to detect instances of physical abuse of children before it’s too late.

The law was named after 3-year-old Karly Sheehan from Corvallis, murdered in 2005 by her mother’s boyfriend. For about a two-year period, although Karly had seen her physician and people from both law enforcement and Child Protective Services for suspicions of having suffered abuse, the awful truth of the situation fell through the cracks.

“Somewhere in there we did not catch what was happening,” said Jennifer Schindell, a forensic nurse and deputy medical examiner for Linn and Benton counties.

She and Stacey Daeschner, state CPS program coordinator, hosted a Monday workshop teaching Umatilla County multidisciplinary team (MDT) members how to best comply with the new regulations. The MDT comprises representatives from law enforcement, Department of Human Services, prosecutors, school personnel and others.

The new law states, for example, any MDT member investigating a child with suspicious physical injury must immediately photograph the injuries, something not done in Karly’s case.

“You can’t possibly take too many pictures,” Schindell emphasized more than once.

Schindell showed several slides to highlight common mistakes in photographic evidence, such as failure to show what body part is being photographed; not enough detail; having too much or too little light; not showing the wound in relation to a measurement scale; and not taking follow-up pictures.

Photographers, she said, should take pictures of any discoloration, swelling or otherwise disrupted skin, and also look for patterns in the wound that might help show whatever object contacted the skin.

She suggested workers document natural skin marks for helping to identify children should they ever go missing.

Also under Karly’s Law, MDTs must designate a trained medical professional – a doctor or nurse practitioner – to conduct medical assessments within 48 hours of discovering a suspicious physical injury on a child.

That is difficult in some rural counties – including Umatilla County – where there are few such practitioners, according to Deputy District Attorney Simonne Weyand.