Homeschoolers Hammer Connecticut with FOIA Requests, Expose Pattern of State Corruption from Sandy Hook to Waterbury
May 11, 2025
Connecticut’s homeschool community is once again making national headlines as leading groups, represented by attorney Deborah Stevenson, have filed a new Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with state agencies demanding specific information about the tragic case in Waterbury of the young man held captive for years. This action is in response to a long-standing pattern: whenever a high-profile tragedy exposes failures by state agencies responsible for child welfare, blame is assigned anywhere but where it belongs – and homeschoolers take the brunt of the blame game and are forced to seek transparency through FOIA requests-only to repeatedly be met with resistance and stonewalling.
In the aftermath of the 2012 Sandy Hook tragedy, Connecticut homeschoolers, alongside the national advocacy group AbleChild, filed FOIA requests for shooter Adam Lanza’s school and Department of Children and Families (DCF) records. Despite Connecticut statutes allowing for the release of such records in the public interest, every agency refused to provide even a single document at the time of the incident and continues to withhold those documents today.