Laws requiring most professionals dealing with children to report any suspicion of “child abuse” were put in place decades ago — with no studies beforehand to see if they would work. Now that mandatory reporting finally has been studied, the evidence shows that it has backfired.
Mandatory reporting drives families away from seeking help, and overloads the system with false reports, making it harder to find the relatively few children in real danger. Many one-time proponents have had second thoughts.
But instead of heeding that research, in several states, legislators have proposed expanding mandatory reporting into one of the few fields that has typically been viewed as sacrosanct: the clergy. …
