West Virginia prosecutors balk at potential shift to private lawyers representing DHHR in abuse-and-neglect cases

A rider to an existing bill in the West Virginia Legislature seeks to change that, according to Catie Wilkes Delligatti, Berkeley County prosecutor and president of the West Virginia Prosecuting Attorneys Association.

“The bill that it’s tucked into is a foster care bill that is primarily to give Child Protective Services workers some extra pay,” said Frank Hartman, lobbyist for the association.

“And then other things have been tacked on, so it goes to finance. I think the sheer volume of abuse-and-neglect cases each county has, which continues to increase each year, the volume and expense, I can’t imagine what the fiscal note’s going to be for something like that,” Hartman said.

Increasing pay is “hugely needed,” Delligatti said.

“But it also permits the department to basically decide they’re not happy with how the prosecutor is representing them in abuse and neglect cases and get their own attorney,” Delligatti said.

“We are greatly concerned with this, considering the environment that we find ourselves in with the department right now. I guess we wonder what the motivation is and also are concerned about the funds to pay for that many attorneys,” Delligatti said.

Harrison County Prosecutor Rachel Romano, the Prosecuting Attorneys Association secretary, said they’re “very, very concerned as to why all the sudden abuse-and-neglect attorneys should be hired by the DHHR on their own and not in the prosecutor’s office.”

“There’s really no rationale that we can see for it, and none has been provided to us, either,” Romano said, noting that it’s a “nonstop job” for her lead abuse-and-neglect assistant prosecutor, Trish Dettori.

“These are seasoned attorneys that are abuse-and-neglect attorneys now. Sometimes I feel like [the Legislature is] looking for a fix for a problem that’s not there. There may be problems within that part of the system, but I’m not sure that I’ve heard complaints that it’s coming on the prosecutors’ end that’s handling the abuse and neglect cases. And I can’t for a minute imagine that this is something that our judicial body would support,” Romano said.