(NY) State Keeps Death Files of Abused Children Secret
When Elisa Izquierdo, a 6-year-old, was killed by her mother in 1995, she became a symbol of a dysfunctional bureaucracy, one that allowed a drug addict to retain custody of her daughter despite numerous reports of abuse.
The resulting outcry led to an overhaul of New York City’s child welfare system and the passage in Albany of Elisa’s Law, a measure loosening the secrecy regulations in child-abuse investigations. Among other reforms, the law required a public accounting of the events leading up to the death of any child in New York State who had been reported as abused or neglected.
But for the last five years, the state’s Office of Children and Family Services has been working quietly and persistently to limit access to those case reports, which in most instances are the only record of the circumstances leading up to the deaths.
In 2007, the office tried to have the law changed. When that failed, it made its own rule. According to a policy enacted by the office in September 2008, it will not release the fatality reports mandated by Elisa’s Law if there are siblings or other children in the home and officials decide that revealing the family’s abuse and investigative history is not in their “best interests.”
full: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/29/nyregion/nys-evades-requirement-for-disclosure-on-childrens-deaths.html
That very last sentence in the excerpt is mind boggling. "...revealing the family's abuse and investigative history is not in (children's) 'best interests'"?????? 
So it's better for children to stay with abusive parents than foster care?
(Elisa's Law was signed in 1996 by Gov. George Pataki, a Republican.)