The opponents, including media representatives, point to past reporting projects that relied in part on autopsy reports to hold child-protection officials accountable for failing to protect abused children who died. They also say could complicate efforts to shed light on other issues, such as the opioid epidemic, or fatal shootings of juveniles by police and even potential flaws in police homicide investigations.

Steven Zansberg, a lawyer who has represented The Denver Post and other media outlets in open-records litigation, said the effort to close public access to all autopsy reports for minors is an overreach. He pointed out that Colorado courts already recognize that unique and extraordinary circumstances can justify the withholding of autopsy reports. Coroners can petition a court for an order exempting release of autopsies if they believe it would be against public interest, the courts have ruled.

“To create a new categorical exemption for all autopsy reports of minors is not only unnecessary and overboard, it is a disservice to the public interest,” Zansberg said in an e-mail. He added that the state’s Colorado Open Records Act “provides a strong presumption of access to such reports so that the public can hold its public servants, county coroners and other public officials who review such reports, accountable.”

County coroners are pushing the legislation, which already has passed the state Senate, and is now scheduled for consideration by the House Judiciary committee and then potentially the full House. Sen. Bob Gardner, a Republican of Colorado Springs, introduced the bill.

The coroners say they’re concerned that continuing to allow the public to access autopsy reports of minors will end up violating the privacy of families.

“Anytime when you have a death is bad, but when that death involves a child or a teenager or an infant and particularly when that death involves trauma of some kind, I don’t care whether it’s a drug overdose, a suicide, a homicide, a car accident — all those are very traumatic to families,” Robert Bux, the El Paso county coroner, said in testimony to legislators. “One of the problems is the families feel stigmatized.”

Bux said the coroners also fear that publicly disclosing details of suicides and homicides could result in copycats. Media representatives dispute that contention and say sealing autopsy reports of minors from public view would make it impossible for the public to judge and assess the work of coroners themselves and sometimes that of law enforcement.

The work of the in the 1996 murder of 6-year-old child beauty queen JonBenĂ©t Ramsey in Boulder became controversial and generated criticism in a case in which police and prosecution tactics were questioned, they point out. Extensive legal battles also were waged over the sealing of Columbine High School killer Dylan Klebold’s autopsy report amid questions over whether Eric Harris, Klebold’s accomplice in the 1999 massacre, had fired the shot that killed him. Eventually, Klebold’s parents, Tom and Sue, brought an end to the court battle and allowed the release of the autopsy report, which did little to detract or advance the theory that Harris killed Klebold.

The legislation on the autopsy reports passed the state Senate last week, with dissenting votes only from Sen. Kerry Donovan, D-Vail; Sen. Andy Kerr, D-Lakewood; and Sen. John Kefalas, D-Fort Collins.

The Post and KUSA 9News relied on autopsies to shed light on problems in the state’s child protective system in 2012. The newspaper reviewed the autopsy reports of 72 children who had died from abuse or neglect and whose cases had been known by child protective workers before the deaths.

The series uncovered issues ranging from a lack of cooperation between police and case workers, to disparities in funding and a lack of coordination between county and state officials. It spurred reform, including the creation of a statewide hotline, the hiring of more child protective workers, new training and an increase in funding.

The Post also reviewed autopsy reports when controversy flared over the January 2015 fatal shooting by Denver police of Jessica Hernandez in an alleyway. Those reports shed light on how many shots were fired by police. City officials ended up agreeing to a $1 million settlement to avoid costly litigation from her family over that fatality.

A found that 26 states had statutes that directly addressed disclosure of autopsy reports. Of those states, 15 generally favored disclosure of autopsies with minor restrictions, while 11 had barred disclosure of autopsies, the review found.

Reporters in other states also have used autopsy reports to detail controversial issues of public interest. The Los Angeles Times  in 2012 after reviewing autopsy reports in 3,733 fatalities in opioid overdose deaths. That review showed drugs prescribed by physicians caused or contributed to nearly half of those deaths, dispelling the myth that pharmacy robberies, the black market and teenage pill poppers were behind a surge in overdoses.

Advocates of the legislation stress that exemptions have been carved out to allow the state’s child fatality review team to access autopsies of minors. Law enforcement officials and prosecutors also would continue to be able to review those autopsies as well as defendants and their lawyers if the bill is signed into law. The parents of children also would be able to access the autopsies by filing a written request they have signed under penalty of perjury.

Still, the exemptions do little to allay the fears of open-records advocates and reporters.

“The Denver Post showed five years ago that those reports are extremely useful in covering issues of abused children,” said Jeffrey Roberts, the executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition.

“They are trying to protect the privacy of families,” said Roberts, a former reporter for the newspaper. “I get that in certain circumstances, but what about the child who was abused and is dead? Who speaks for that child? How is the public going to know what happened if you can’t see the records?”

In July, the creation of the Child Safety Net Impact Team following the death of Javion Johnson, whose family had been the subject of . The team was tasked with reviewing everything from technology to staff training and community engagement for protecting children.

“This unfortunate reality is that all of us, from the city safety net to our response as a community, could have done more to protect baby Javion,” Hancock said at media event Wednesday.

The impact team — similar to the one the mayor created in response to a series of gang shootings this spring — is made up of representatives from Denver’s schools, parks, the district attorney’s office, human services and multiple other agencies.

Don Mares, executive director of the Denver Department of Human Services, said the team worked “fast and furious” to create eight recommendations.

“With better coordination we believe we can help improve the safety of our kids,” Mares said.

The recommendations included creating mandatory training for all city employees who interact with children and families as part of their regular duties. Beginning immediately, those city employees will be trained on how to spot and report suspected child abuse and neglect.

Three Denver child protection workers will be assigned to work in select Denver public schools. Those caseworkers likely will rotate through multiple schools.

Denver Health Medical Center will begin reviewing reports of abuse and neglect with child protection workers to help determine whether an investigation should be launched. The hospital also is working with human services to develop a nurse home wellness program that will provide prenatal care and wellness checks to families that do not meet the criteria for a formal investigation.

To create long-term improvements, a series of community meetings will be held to discuss ways the city can better support parents, children and other residents.

Hancock and Mares said these recommendations are the first of many.

Javion’s mother and her boyfriend, Candice Lampley and DeLonta Crank, each have been charged with first-degree murder, child abuse resulting in death and child abuse resulting in serious bodily injury.

The 239-page report was released and presented to the Legislative Audit Committee on Wednesday, more than 17 months after the of launching the performance audit. During the tense, five-hour hearing, the state auditor’s office listed dozens of deficiencies it found in various areas of the child welfare system — stretching from when the department first receives an allegation of abuse to how the department reviews the deaths of children who died after entering the system. Among the findings:

• When reviewing reports of child abuse, caseworkers screened out some calls based on criteria that did not exist in state rules or failed to investigate in cases where circumstances required it — such as a 4-year-old with visible bruises, according to the audit.

• Incorrect information was included in 21 of 40 risk assessments the auditor’s office reviewed, including an instance in which a caseworker closed a case without interviewing everyone who had information about the family. In the months that followed, child protection workers received a new allegation that a child was sexually assaulted by someone living in the home, the audit found.

• According to the audit, the Department of Human Services struggles to ensure county departments follow state rules in handling cases, and in 2013 instructed 15 counties on how to circumvent a state rule limiting the amount of emergency funds for families at $400. Before the conclusion of the audit, the department sought more guidance from the Colorado attorney general’s office on its ability to enforce state rules at the county level.

But the common thread stringing the findings together was a lack of state oversight on the 64 county departments. The shortage of guidance provided to county departments creates inefficient standards in the way child protection workers assess and handle cases of child abuse and neglect, the audit found.

Executive Director Reggie Bicha, who arrived at the hearing armed with stacks of handouts and poster-sized charts, sharply rebuffed several findings and analysis in the audit. Forcing “one size fits all” rules on county departments can hinder caseworkers’ ability to meet the individual needs of families throughout the state, he said.

“Child welfare has similarities similar to the practice of law and practice of medicine,” Bicha said. “The profession also has multiple ways to determine a child’s safety.”

In response to three of the cases cited in the audit, Bicha provided the committee with mitigating details not provided in the report.

The audit included 47 recommendations, including changes to training materials, reporting requirements and steps to ensure county departments follow state rules.

The Department of Human Services disagreed with one-third of the recommendations.

Many of the recommendations are in line with new programs, updated rules and new training sessions that already have been put into place or are in the process of being implemented, including a set to launch in January, Bicha said.

Most of the cases the auditor’s office reviewed were from late 2012 or early 2013, and the concerns they identified also were identified by the department, Bicha said. Several recommendations, Bicha said, were redundant of practices already in place.

“We don’t need another line in a chart,” Bicha said. “We need another line in the budget.”

Bicha was cautious not to criticize the auditor’s office but said he was surprised they did not work with child welfare experts who could have helped review the documents and write recommendations.

“We run two state hospitals at the department,” Bicha said. “They would never assign an auditor to go and read a medical record and argue they gave a wrong diagnosis.”

The audit was requested by 24 lawmakers in early 2013 after a . It found that more than 70 of the 175 children in Colorado who died of abuse and neglect from 2007 to 2011 had families or caregivers who were known to child protection workers.

The audit also reviewed program, which allows caseworkers to help at-risk families before there is proof or a legal finding of abuse or neglect. Through the program, which launched in 2010, families can receive support without child welfare services opening a formal investigation.

Ten differential response assessments were reviewed by the auditor’s office. In three of those cases, a traditional investigation may have been more appropriate, according to the audit. One of the three cases involved the parents of two children who had previously failed to cooperate with caseworkers and there were allegations of methamphetamine use in the home.

Since 1990, the state auditor’s office has released four audits of child welfare services. None had a scope this broad.

Jordan Steffen: 303-954-1794, jsteffen@denverpost.com or twitter.com/jsteffendp

volunteers — at 13 tutoring locations, from Aurora to Fort Carson — pass on the love of reading and the skills for reading using specially developed Peak Reader curriculum.

It’s a simple, self-directed curriculum that unfolds over 24 hour-long sessions in 12 weeks, said the center’s executive director, Gina Solazzi.

During that time, 95 percent of the elementary schoolchildren, who were assessed at reading below grade level, achieve significant improvement, the Colorado Springs-based center reports.

It costs families nothing to enroll. Almost 800 children a year are served by the center, a past recipient of Denver Post Charities Season to Share funding.

Melissa Viramontes, 8, was reading about rattlesnakes with her tutor, Odile Vincent, at the Martin Luther King Library in Aurora in early December.

She doesn’t like rattlesnakes, she said, but she does like reading.

“I love it. She helps me out with any words I have trouble with,” Melissa said of her tutor.

Vincent teaches first grade, but then comes here to volunteer with this literacy program.

“First of all, I love Melissa,” Vincent said. “And I feel like I make a difference.”

For Dennis Gardner, who is stationed at Buckley Air Force Base, working with Jonathan Guillen, 11, is a satisfying way of giving back because, he said, he sees tangible results each week.

“I can read better now than I did in September,” Jonathan said.

The program accepts volunteer tutors ages 14 and older. They attend a training session in the Peak Reader curriculum, which includes stories, word games, vocabulary and phonics lessons.

The center began in 1991 as a Junior League project, Solazzi said.

“It was started by a teacher 22 years ago who said, ‘I wish I had more time to sit with these kids one-on-one,’ ” Solazzi said. “We think the magic is in the one-on-one.”

The center evolved from Junior League project to its own nonprofit organization in 1993.

“Children open up to their tutors,” said Rebekah Gans, the center’s development director. “A bond is formed. And that confidence is there.”

Center officials say the importance of literacy is reflected in statistics such as the following: 14 percent of U.S. adults can’t read at eighth-grade level and have trouble understanding a newspaper or filling out a job application; the U.S. ranks fifth in adult literacy skills compared with other industrialized nations; and two out of three fourth-graders in the U.S. read below their grade level.

The effects of low literacy cost the country more than $225 billion a year in lower productivity on the job, in loss of tax revenues and in crime.

More than 60 percent of state and federal correctional facilities inmates can barely read and write. And 85 percent of juvenile offenders have reading problems, the center says.

Electa Draper: 303-954-1276, edraper@denverpost.com or twitter.com/electadraper

Children’s literacy center

Headquarters Address: 2928 Straus Lane, Suite 100, Colorado Springs, CO 80907

In operation since: 1991

Number served last year: 800

Staff: Four

Yearly Budget: $409,000

Percentage of funds given to clients and services: 97

Her older brother didn’t talk either, and called his sister “uh-ah.” Sometimes, he was filled with such rage he would screech and scream and flip over furniture and tear the curtains off the walls.

They were not potty-trained. They stuffed any food they saw into their mouths. They did not sleep for longer than 20 minutes at a time, all night long. At first.

That was five years ago, when the brother and sister rescued from a filthy Denver apartment came to live with the couple who would adopt them. It was one of the worst cases of neglect Denver had seen. And in a case that outraged Colorado, history repeated itself this fall — four young boys were rescued from the same apartment, filled with maggots, flies and feces, and from the same parents.

Now 7 and 9, the children taken away from that apartment in 2006 are polite and friendly and rosy-cheeked from the brisk plains wind that sweeps across farm fields surrounding their family’s mini ranch. They collect eggs from the henhouse, snuggle with barn cats, outdo each other on the swings and help feed alpacas.

The boy and girl go to a charter school out in the country, and after years of therapy, they are nearly at grade level. She loves Barbies and catching kitties and riding her bike along the dirt driveway. Her brother dresses in bolo ties and cowboy boots, and usually has a wrench or two in the back pocket of his jeans, so he can fix stuff.

They are normal kids — it “just took them longer to get normal,” said their dad, Jeff Hillman.

The kids called them mom and dad the first day they met them in 2008. For months, the parents reminded the boy and girl before they went to sleep that they are theirs “for always,” that no one can take them away.

The kids need to hear it, because it happened to them before.

It was 2006 when strangers called Denver police to say little kids, in only diapers, were playing in busy 18th Avenue east of downtown. Their parents weren’t home, and the apartment was so filthy authorities could smell it from outside.

The three children, never taught to speak or use the bathroom, lived in foster homes as child-protection workers fought a years-long court battle that ended in Lorinda Bailey and Wayne Sperling losing parental rights in 2008.

The oldest, a girl, was adopted by the Colorado foster family that had taken care of her for two years. The Hillmans adopted the younger two, who were 2 and 4 and had spent two years in foster homes — the second one so neglectful that the children were regressing and had to leave “urgently,” the Hillmans recalled.

The children had been raised almost like animals, without adults to take care of them or even put them to bed at night. The oldest sister, who wasn’t quite 5 when authorities took them from their parents, was their protector.

In 2003, the Hillmans’ biological son was born two months early, weighing only 3 pounds. The pregnancy was so rough, they knew they wouldn’t try it again. They wanted to adopt.

When they learned the story of the children rescued from 18th Avenue, the Hillmans were rattled to their core. Their decision was made the first second they saw the boy and girl step out of a caseworker’s car that pulled up to their home in the south Denver suburbs.

“I couldn’t even hardly say it. I said, ‘Those are our kids,’ ” Meagan recalled, tears in her eyes. Within a week, the children moved in with their new family.

The first six months were the most challenging.

The Hillmans got little to no sleep because the children were terrified of nighttime. They weren’t used to a bedtime routine; a police report from a visit to the Denver apartment mentions little kids, all in diapers, wandering around at midnight.

The Hillmans’ new son was, at 4 years old, like a newborn, only stronger and more destructive. “He was just terrified, I think,” Meagan said. “He would jump around the room and throw furniture.”

“I was thinking, ‘Why did we do this and do I need to fear for our safety?’ ” she said. “We were tried. All I can say is we had started with a good foundation and a good marriage, and we are pretty patient people.”

Taking them anywhere was a challenge those first few months because the children had no boundaries, no awareness about what could hurt them. Given the chance, they would get lost or walk out in traffic. And people would stare because they talked in gibberish and grunts.

If there were bowls of nuts or candy set out at a friend’s house, the kids devoured them all. The Hillmans avoided buffets and leaving food visible at home for years, until the children learned to stop eating when they were full.

In foster care, their son had communicated by pointing at picture cards showing a plate of food, a bathroom or the outside. He hated the cards, the Hillmans said, so they didn’t use them. Instead, he wanted the long, and often frustrating, face-to-face conversations in which his parents would say repeatedly, “Try again. We don’t understand.” He wore pull-ups until he was nearly 7.

Things got harder before they got easier.

“They were testing us to see if we would keep them,” Meagan said.

The children were “good soldiers” when they were at preschool or when the family had visitors. When the Hillmans told relatives and friends what went on at night, they didn’t fully believe them. They accused them of having too many rules.

Then the Hillmans left the children with friends for two hours so they could attend Meagan’s holiday work party, but only the dinner because they were too nervous to stay longer. Their son had one of his violent blowups, and then their friends understood what the family was going through. “It was almost a relief,” Meagan said.

The Hillmans’ oldest son, who was 5 when his new brother and sister moved in, handled it all with patience that amazed his parents. Each night, they checked in with him. Only once did he say he wished his brother and sister would go away. “And then right away he said, ‘But they could come back,’ ” Meagan remembered.

Soon after the adoption was final, in 2009, the Hillmans moved to a farmhouse outside of Lamar, a few acres filled with animals and an old silo along a dirt road.

“This is the best medicine for these kids,” said their grandpa, Michael Ellsberry. “There is nothing around here to hurt them.”

The country was a kind of therapy for the kids. But there was also therapeutic preschool, mental-health therapy to work on the boy’s anger, physical therapy for coordination, occupational therapy to catch up on fine-motor skills that weren’t developed during the toddler stage, and speech therapy to make up for years of delays.

The Hillmans had the children genetically tested to see whether there was any biological reason for their lack of speech. None was found.

Now, their son speaks clearly, and their daughter, despite recently giving her two front teeth to the tooth fairy, is fairly easy to understand. The Hillmans believe the girl was slow to speak even though she was rescued as an infant because she spent years mimicking her brother.

The kids have surpassed every expectation the Hillmans set. Still, the effects of their first few years, especially for their adopted son, could last a lifetime.

At 9, he still throws kicking-and- screaming fits typical of a younger child. His mother is no longer concerned about the family’s safety, but she worries his blowups will continue into adulthood, affecting his work and relationships.

The boy is constantly on a high state of alert. He investigates every new place, every new person. The sound of a car driving by at 2 a.m. can wake him. “I heard a noise,” he will say, and then stay up until morning.

The adoptive mother of the kids’ oldest sister called the Hillmans when it all happened again. Four more children — ages 2, 4, 5 and 6, all boys — were taken from the same apartment by Denver Human Services authorities. They couldn’t talk. They weren’t potty-trained.

“It was horrible. I didn’t know it would affect me like it did, really,” Meagan said. “It just kind of stops you in your tracks. How in the heck does that happen?”

Meagan had often wondered about those parents, whether they had more kids, whether caseworkers were checking on them. No one had for years, it seems. Neighbors reported that they had called police and child welfare, concerned about the boys they saw hanging out the window. Human services officials won’t comment about their involvement with the family, citing confidentiality laws.

The Hillmans opened up about their children because they are angry at child-welfare authorities for allowing four more kids to live the same way. “The focus should be kids, not the policies, not the organization, not the job — the kids are the job,” Jeff said.

More than that, they want people to know it’s worth taking a chance on the four boys, who were removed from the apartment Sept. 30.

“Whoever takes these boys on is going to have a very long road, but it’s so worth it,” Meagan said. “They are my kids’ brothers. It would be nice if my kids would know them someday.”

The Hillmans’ children see their older sister, now a sixth-grader, once a year. The families are among the few who know how hard it is to get a neglected child to trust. “They have to learn to rely on you and learn to let you love them,” Meagan said.

And when they do, she said, “they give way more than they take.”

Jennifer Brown: 303-954-1593, jenbrown@denverpost.com or

Lasha was missing from the 2800 block of Lafayette Street, according to a . She was found uninjured

Kieran Nicholson: 303-954-1822, knicholson@denverpost.com or twitter.com/kierannicholson

In the years before the boys were rescued and their parents charged with abuse last month, the two-story building just east of downtown racked up eight complaints to Denver’s neighborhood inspection and environmental health divisions. The boys were visited by police and a child protection caseworker at least once, yet none of those visits or inspections led to an earlier rescue of the four young children.

“There are cracks in the ceiling, it looks like pee is leaking from the ceiling,” says one complaint from a new tenant in 2006. “There are maggots, there are many things wrong with the apartment.”

Since 2006, police have been called about the apartment building 32 times — welfare checks, burglary in progress, domestic violence and a suicidal person. One of the 2007 police calls was from child welfare officials who saw the children’s mother in court earlier in the day and feared she planned to birth a baby at home in the bathtub. She told officers over the phone she was “not ready to deliver.”

A 2009 call to animal control resulted in the removal of three feral cats lurking around the building.

The owners of the building, Homayoun and Sandra Ghaffari, did not respond to numerous attempts by The Denver Post to contact them since the four boys were taken from the apartment Sept. 30. The children — ages 2, 4, 5 and 6 — were not potty trained and made infant-like noises to communicate, according to a police report. The studio apartment they lived in was littered with cat feces and mold, and filled with flies.

The Ghaffaris live in a tan brick house in the University Park neighborhood with a circular drive, flagstone patio and mums in the flower beds. They own three other rental properties in Denver, none in the dilapidated condition of the apartment on 18th Avenue.

The building reeks of urine and cigarette smoke, even from the porch. Blankets cover some of the windows from the inside, and pieces of furniture sit along the sidewalk facing 18th Avenue, where cars cruise past.

Most of the complaints about the building in the past several years concerned its exterior. The yard was strewn with trash. Weeds were overgrown.

Each time, according to city records, the owner responded and took care of the issue before receiving a fine.

The boys’ parents, 66-year-old Wayne Sperling and 35-year-old Lorinda Bailey, were the building managers, according to other residents. Bailey collected rent checks from each of the five tenants and also delivered their mail.

Besides police and city inspectors, Denver Fire Department officials were in the common area of the apartment building every year to check fire code requirements.

The most recent inspection a year ago resulted in no fire code violations. A Denver Post visit to the apartment last week found a fire alarm dangling from the ceiling in a run-down, fetid inner hallway.

The Ghaffaris bought the property in 1992 for $69,000, according to Denver County property records.

Sperling and Bailey have lived there at least since 2006, when police responded to calls that three children wearing only diapers were playing in 18th Avenue. Those three kids — older siblings of the four rescued last month — were removed by child welfare officials in 2006.

Bailey was pregnant with her next child during court proceedings that resulted in the termination of her parental rights of the three older children.

Denver County Human Services officials, citing privacy laws, have refused to discuss the case. It is unclear why authorities were not keeping a closer watch on the family, especially since the parents already had lost rights to three children and neighbors reported calling child protective services at least twice in recent months.

A doctor’s phone call led authorities to the boys’ apartment last month after their mother brought the 2-year-old to the hospital with a cut on his forehead. The children were found unwashed, malnourished and nonverbal when examined by doctors.

The boys’ parents, both out on bond, are charged with four counts each of felony child abuse. Neither returned calls seeking comment or answered the door at the apartment.

Two neighbors said they had called child protective services last summer after seeing the boys hanging out a window. A nearby law firm called police in April 2012, which resulted in a home visit from a police officer and a caseworker.

Several workers in offices next door to the apartment building said they had never seen the children and were not aware they lived there until they were rescued.

Jennifer Brown: 303-954-1593, jenbrown@denverpost.com or

Vickie Makings contributed to this report.