LANCASTER (PA)
Lancaster Online
October 9, 2026
By Dan Nephin and Ashley Stalnecker
Upon concluding two separate investigations into whether educators failed to report suspected child abuse as required by law Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams urged school district employees to “act with a child protective mentality.”
Adams announced Friday that former Manheim Central High School social studies teacher and assistant football coach Jared Shearer, 35, was charged with failing to properly report alleged student hazing when notified in April.
But in a case involving the Manheim Township School District, Adams said while the district failed to report an April 2024 incident involving a high school lacrosse player who allegedly exposed himself to a teammate while another teammate held him down, the district was following the advice of its solicitor at the time.
“The district’s reasonable reliance on their attorney’s advice would negate the mental state required under the law for failure to report” crime to be prosecuted, she said, noting the solicitor said school should move forward with an investigation.
And, she said, the district did contact local police to ask about who should investigate the allegation. The incident took place in Ohio and the victim’s family did not want to pursue criminal charges, she said.
While both cases had different outcomes, the confusion on whether to file a report with ChildLine, a 24/7 hotline run by the state health department, stems from the same section of the Child Protective Services Law: child-on-child abuse.
State law has different rules for reporting child abuse when both the perpetrator and victim are minors, limiting reporting to when the perpetrator has committed one or more of crimes outlined in the mandatory reporting statute, including rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, sexual assault, aggravated indecent assault, indecent assault or indecent exposure.
The restrictions on what child-on-child interactions constitute child abuse and necessitate a report to ChildLine are meant to weed out over-reporting and investigating when student fights can be quite common within schools.
Yet, as Adams has pointed out previously, there are gray areas — particularly around whether the creation and dissemination of artificially generated pornography warrants a report.
Lawmakers in both houses of the General Assembly have penned bills that would require mandatory reporters to alert ChildLine of the dissemination of artificially generated sexual abuse material, but the bills have yet to pass.
Adams also called on the state Legislature to expand laws to classify hazing as a reportable form of child abuse, saying it “causes real harm to its victims.”
Adams encouraged educators to err on the side of notifying ChildLine, calling the police or both.
“Mandatory reporters should always remember that the purpose of the Child Protective Services Law is to promote a system that prefers over investigation of unfounded reports to the underreporting of child abuse,” Adams said.
In the coming weeks, Adams said her office plans to reach out to schools to offer them more information on what is expected of mandated reporters.
Cathleen Palm, founder of The Center of Children’s Justice — an independent nonprofit dedicated to protecting Pennsylvania’s children — called attention to a lack of action even when suspected child abuse is reported.
“It’s troubling that we all understand that there are real consequences to when and if things get reported but also what happens when reports are made and nothing is done in response to those reports,” Palm said in an email Friday. “So many mandated reporters have little confidence in the existing system AND many have been trained to think of child abuse as something an adult does to a child so they do not genuinely understand what exactly to do when situations involve only minors.”
Palm said lawmakers have attempted to add not only the creation and dissemination of artificial generated sexual abuse material to mandated reporter law but hazing as well. But the legislation doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, she said.
“Across all policymakers in Harrisburg, there is a void of any urgency to keep kids safe,” Palm said. “Loopholes are understood, yet not fixed. Meanwhile we are all swimming in so many press releases about bills that everyone knows are really stalled and no new protections are in place for kids.”