Assembly Health Committee Supports Meow Meow Foundation Bill

Assemblymember Chris Holden, Meow Meow Foundation President Doug Forbes and foundation board member Liliana Coronado testify at the state capitol April 6 in support of AB 1737, their camp safety bill.

Sacramento — The California Assembly Committee on Health voted 10-0-5 to support AB 1737 (Holden), an unprecedented camp safety bill that will affect millions of children and thousands of camps.

One Democratic committee member, who represents a smaller district, chose not to vote on the record. All four Republican committee members chose not to vote on the record.

See Doug Forbes Testify

(Start at 1:43:00, one hour and forty three minutes)

California does not license day camps and only affords arm’s length oversight for overnight camps known as resident camps. An estimated 2-3 million children attend state camps each year without health and safety protections that mitigate harm.

“This is an important win, but we must remain realistic, primarily because we have a mountain of work to do,” said Meow Meow Foundation President Doug Forbes. “Essentially all county health lobby groups opposed this bill. They literally admitted at the hearing or in opposition letters that they do not want to take on the extra work to keep kids safe at camps, when we all know camps are child care operations with far greater risk. It’s absolutely shocking.”

Forbes testified before the Committee on April 5. He related how his own daughter Roxie would likely be alive today were it not for the state’s colossal oversight gaps and the refusals of county health departments to oversee camps, which collectively leads to countless preventable deaths, injuries and sexual abuse every year. Forbes said he wanted to stress the word “countless,” because not a single state agency knows the number of camps or campers, let alone the fact that not a single camp has to report harm to any of those state agencies.

Camp activities with with a greater risk of harm include gun ranges where children as young as eight shoot live rounds from .22 caliber rifles, high ropes courses where children balance upwards of 5-10 storeys high, sheer rock wall climbing, hatchet throwing, motorized vehicle operation, archery and a variety of aquatics programming.

California is one of only 12 states that does not require any licensing or certification to operate these activities or oversight to inspect them.

The state also does not require background checks or camp-wide mandated reporter training/execution to protect against child molestation, a widely unknown epidemic at camps nationwide. Meow Meow Foundation has commenced its own review of such molestation and anticipates at least 50,000 cases over previous decades, especially since the Boy Scouts of America revelations became public. “I actually believe the numbers are going to be far greater, and it will set of a firestorm the likes of which we have not seen since both the BOy scouts and Catholic church child sexual abuse scandals,” Forbes said.

He will return to Sacramento for his testimony before the Assembly Public Safety Committee on April 26. If members vote in support, the bill will move to Assembly Appropriations and then on to the Senate for at least a few more hearings.