HB350

The NH Office of the Child Advocate has concerns about HB350 requiring that all family division hearings be video and audio recorded and broadcast live, as currently written. This bill would significantly impact the privacy of minors, without any regard to the potential harm to children. Divorce and parenting proceedings can be extremely high conflict and traumatic to all involved, and permitting them to be live broadcast, for any reason, could cause an enormous amount of harm, trauma, and embarrassment, not just to the parties, but to the children. Although "confidential" cases, such as RSA 169-C cases, are carved out, many parents discuss all sorts of confidential and embarrassing matters during RSA 461-A proceedings, including their involvement with confidential abuse and neglect proceedings. This bill begs many questions, including: Broadcast how? To whom? Who has access to recordings? Why would someone request that such a personal proceeding be publicly broadcast - to what end? As a note, all Family Court hearings are already currently audio recorded, and a transcript can be requested by any party; adding video recording would be a substantial cost to the system, for little benefit.

The internet is forever & the children involved in these cases deserve privacy. This is simply to intimidate witnesses who would testify. Especially the kids. This is abuse proposed by abusers. This is just more of abusers trying to use the family law court system to further abuse their victims. We see you.