May v. State

Decision Date30 June 2014
Docket NumberNo. S14A0309.,S14A0309.
Citation295 Ga. 388,761 S.E.2d 38
CourtGeorgia Supreme Court
PartiesMAY v. The STATE.

295 Ga. 388
761 S.E.2d 38

MAY
v.
The STATE.

No. S14A0309.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

June 30, 2014.


[761 S.E.2d 39]


Thomas E. Cauthorn, III, Bettina Suzanne Davies, James Wickliffe Cauthorn, Cauthorn Nohr & Owen, Marietta, for appellant.

Barry William Hixson, Chief Assistant Solicitor General, Jessica K. Moss, Solicitor–General, Office of the Solicitor General, Canton, for appellee.


BLACKWELL, Justice.

This case concerns the meaning of OCGA § 19–7–5, which requires school teachers 1 and certain other persons,2 if they have “reasonable cause to believe that a child has been abused,” to make a report of such abuse. OCGA § 19–7–5(c)(1)(H). The statute defines “child abuse” to include “sexual abuse of a child,” 3OCGA § 19–7–5(b)(4)(C), and it defines “sexual abuse” to include nine specified varieties of sexual activity involving a

[761 S.E.2d 40]

child.4OCGA § 19–7–5(b)(10)(A)–(I). The statute makes it a crime for a person required to make such a report to “knowingly and willfully fail[ ] to do so.” OCGA § 19–7–5(h).

According to the record, Kristin Lynn May was employed as a teacher at River Ridge High School, a public secondary school in the Cherokee County School District. In January 2011, May spoke with a former student—P. M., then sixteen years of age—who no longer was enrolled as a student at River Ridge, and who recently had transferred to a school in the Fulton County School District. As they spoke, P.M. disclosed that she previously had a sexual relationship with Robert Leslie Morrow, a paraprofessional at River Ridge. No one appears to dispute that this relationship involved sexual activities that are defined in OCGA § 19–7–5(b)(10) as “sexual abuse.” May, however, did not make any report of the sexual abuse.

When these circumstances later came to the attention of law enforcement, May was charged by accusation with a criminal violation of OCGA § 19–7–5. In pertinent part, the accusation 5 alleged that May:

[I]n Cherokee County, Georgia, in January 2011, did unlawfully then and there commit the offense of FAILURE TO REPORT CHILD ABUSE, by being a school teacher, a mandatory reporter within the meaning and purview of [OCGA § 19–7–5(c)(1) ], and knowingly and willfully failing to report a case of suspected child abuse, to wit, sexual abuse, against a student, [P. M.]....
In response to the accusation, May filed a demurrer and plea in bar, contending that the accusation charged no crime as a matter of law.
When the trial court heard argument on the demurrer and plea in bar, the State and May stipulated to certain facts in addition to those alleged explicitly in the accusation, including that P.M.—by the time she spoke with May in January 2011 and disclosed her sexual relationship with Morrow—no longer was a student at River Ridge. Because P.M. was not then enrolled at River Ridge, May argued, she had no duty under OCGA § 19–7–5(c)(1) to make a report.

The trial court denied the demurrer and plea in bar, reasoning that a school teacher is required to report the abuse of any child, even one with whom the teacher has no relationship at all. According to the trial court, to prove a violation of OCGA § 19–7–5 in this case, the State would only be required to prove:

(1) that [May] was a teacher, (2) that [May] knew or suspected one or more instances of child abuse as defined in OCGA § 19–7–5, (3) that [May] failed to report the abuse, and (4) that the crime occurred in Cherokee County.

In the alternative, the trial court reasoned that, even if a relationship with the child were required, proof that May had taught P.M. in the past would be enough to establish such a relationship. The trial court certified its denial of the demurrer and plea in bar for immediate review, and May filed an application with the Court of Appeals for leave to take an interlocutory appeal.6 The Court of Appeals denied that application in an unreported order, and May then filed a petition for a writ of certiorari in this Court. We granted the petition to consider whether the obligation to report abuse under OCGA § 19–7–5(c)(1) extends to all children or instead is limited to children to whom the reporter has a duty to attend. 7 FOR THE

[761 S.E.2d 41]

reasons that follow, we conclude that the obligation is limited, and school teachers and other reporters only have an obligation to report the abuse of children to whom they attend in connection with the profession, occupation, employment, or volunteer work by which they are identified in subparagraphs (c)(1)(A)-(O) as a mandatory reporter.


Our inquiry into the scope of the obligation under OCGA § 19–7–5(c)(1) begins, of course, with the words of that provision. Paragraph (c)(1) says that mandatory reporters “having reasonable cause to believe that a child has been abused shall report or cause reports of that abuse to be made as provided in this Code section.” If we stopped there, it would be easy enough to conclude—just as the trial court in this case did—that the obligation of a mandatory reporter extends to any child of whom the reporter learns of abuse. After all, looking only to the words of paragraph (c)(1), the statutory reference to “a child” would seem to refer to any child at all, even a child not connected in any way with the reporter. But it would be a mistake to end our analysis without first considering the full context of those words.

As we have explained before, “[w]hen we consider the meaning of a statute, we must presume that the General Assembly meant what it said and said what it meant.” Deal v. Coleman, 294 Ga. 170, 172(1)(a), 751 S.E.2d 337 (2013) (citation and punctuation omitted). To this end, “we must read the statutory text in its most natural and reasonable way, as an ordinary speaker of the English language would.” Id. (citations and punctuation omitted). In our search for the meaning of a particular statutory provision, we look not only to the words of that provision, but we consider its legal context as well. See Smith v. Ellis, 291 Ga. 566, 573(3)(a), 731 S.E.2d 731 (2012) (“In construing statutes, however, we do not read words in isolation, but rather in context.”). See also Brown v. State, 290 Ga. 865, 868(2)(b), 725 S.E.2d 320 (2012) (“[W]ords often gain meaning from context....”). After all, “[c]ontext is a primary determinant of meaning.” Scalia & Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts 167 (West 2012). For context, we may look to other provisions of the same statute, see Hendry v. Hendry, 292 Ga. 1, 3(1), 734 S.E.2d 46 (2012), the structure and history of the whole statute, see Deal, 294 Ga. at 184(2)(b), 751 S.E.2d 337, and the other law—constitutional, statutory, and common law alike—that forms the legal background of the statutory provision in question. See Peachtree–Cain Co. v. McBee, 254 Ga. 91, 93(1), 327 S.E.2d 188 (1985).

With these principles in mind, we turn now to the context of OCGA § 19–7–5(c)(1), and we start with the other provisions and structure of the statute. Although paragraph (c)(1) identifies the persons required to make a report, other provisions of the statute direct the manner in which a report must be made. In general, a reporter must report directly “to a child welfare agency providing protective services ... or, in the absence of such agency, to an appropriate police authority or district attorney.” OCGA § 19–7–5(e). There is, however, a different reporting procedure for reporters in an institutional facility, and in paragraph (c)(2), which provides for this alternative procedure, we find a significant clue about the extent of the obligation under paragraph (c)(1) to make a report:

If a person is required to report child abuse pursuant to this subsection because that person attends to a child pursuant to such person's duties as an employee or volunteer at a hospital, school, social agency, or similar facility, that person shall notify the person in charge of the facility, or the designated delegate thereof, and the person so notified shall report or cause a report to be made in accordance with this Code section. An employee or volunteer who makes a report to the person designated pursuant to this paragraph shall be deemed to have fully complied with this subsection.

OCGA § 19–7–5(c)(2) (emphasis supplied). Paragraph (c)(2) speaks of an employee or

[761 S.E.2d 42]

volunteer of an institutional facility having an obligation to make a report about the abuse of a child because she attends to that child at the facility. If paragraph (c)(2) means exactly what it says—that attending to a child is the circumstance that causes the obligation to arise—then the obligation necessarily must be limited to children to whom a mandatory reporter attends.8 We think that paragraph (c)(2) is most reasonably understood to presuppose just such a limitation.


To be sure, we must consider whether the statutory reference to a causal link between attending to a child and the obligation to make a report reasonably might be read in another way, one that does not presuppose that the obligation is limited in all cases to children to whom the reporter attends. According to OCGA § 19–7–5(c)(1), the obligation arises only when a mandatory reporter “ha[s] reasonable cause to believe that a child has been abused,” and attending to a child is perhaps the most common way in which a mandatory reporter might come to have cause for such a belief. If paragraph (c)(2) is meant only to reflect this rather obvious fact, then its first sentence plausibly could be read as follows:

If a person is required to report child abuse pursuant to this subsection because that person [came to have reasonable cause to believe that a child has been abused as a result of] attend[ing] to a child pursuant to such person's duties as an employee of or volunteer at a hospital, school, social agency, or similar facility, that person shall notify the person in charge of the facility, or the designated delegate thereof, and the person so notified shall report or cause a report to...

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