In 33 states, clergy are exempt from any laws requiring professionals such as teachers, physicians and psychotherapists to report information about alleged child sexual abuse to police or child welfare officials if the church deems the information privileged.
, a church lawyer and Utah Republican lawmaker, had advised the bishop not to report the abuse to civil authorities because of Arizona’s clergy privilege law, according to documents revealed in a lawsuit. That failure to report allowed the church member, the late Paul Adams, to repeatedly rape his two daughters and allegedly abuse one his four sons for many years.
In one high-profile example, two Republican legislators took a stand in 2019, refusing to vote for a budget until lawmakers passed a measure allowing past victims of child sexual abuse to sue churches or youth groups that turned a blind eye to the abuse. Legislative business ground to a halt for weeks amid fierce opposition from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Roman Catholic Church and insurers along with their allies in the Legislature, which finally approved the measure.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops did not immediately return a request for comment about its campaigns against state bills seeking to do away with the clergy-penitent privilege. “When you take away every opportunity for people to get help, they go underground and the abuse continues,” Hill said., have cautioned about reaching such conclusions based on their research.
Efforts to rid state laws of the privilege have been successful in only a handful of states, including North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Texas and West Virginia. Records and interviews with lawmakers in the 33 states that still have the privilege show that intense opposition from powerful religious organizations is more often too much to overcome.
Some supporters believe the privilege is securely rooted in the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of religion. But Cassidy said “there is no firm precedent that says the clergy-penitent privilege is constitutionally required.”He’s proposed a middle path: allow clergy to maintain the secrecy of the confessional but carve out an exception for “dangerous persons” including child sex abusers.
The blowback also got personal: Devout Catholic members of Romero’s own family stopped talking to her. “They thought I was trying to attack the Catholic Church and get rid of confession, one of our sacraments,” Romero said. “That’s how it was presented to them.” Virginia updated its mandatory reporting law in 2006. While the bill started out with clergy among those listed as reporters with the privilege intact, they would be removed from the final bill. The privilege, oddly, was left in. The state went on in 2019 to add ministers, priests, rabbis and other religious officials to the list of mandatory reporters of child abuse, but again protected the clergy-penitent privilege.
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