That Washington State law on clergy as mandatory reporters is not anti-Catholic – it’s anti-CHILD

● The Trump Administration launches a ludicrous "investigation" of a bad law.

● The real harm of this law: Impoverished parents in Washington State now have one less place to turn without risking being turned in to the family police because their poverty was confused with  “neglect.” 

Laws requiring clergy to report the slightest suspicion of child abuse or neglect are common – unfortunately. Laws requiring priests to report the slightest suspicion of abuse or neglect even when they hear about it in confession are less common but at least seven states have had them for some time – unfortunately. 

But two things have made the latest such law, in Washington State, the subject of national attention: 1. Local media hype, led by a local reporter who’s been, pardon the expression, crusading for it for years, writing stories that shut out any meaningful dissent. (Now he has something he can put on the “What did the stories accomplish?” line on awards entries forms.) And 2. the Trump Administration, which, presumably, saw the publicity and a chance to pander to its conservative base.  

So the Trump Justice Department is launching an “investigation,” calling the new law “anti-Catholic.” That’s likely to come as news to groups such as the Catholic Accountability Project and Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests which, mistakenly in my view, but sincerely, supported the new law. In case you didn’t know this Trump Justice Department: Chances are, most of the members of these groups are Catholics. 

No, the new law isn’t anti-Catholic. But it sure is anti-child. It’s one more example of a feel-good press-release-worthy law that ignores a huge pile of research and is almost certain to backfire. 

For starters, any law that expands mandatory reporting in any way is anti-child, because mandatory reporting backfires. It 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.  That’s why so many one-time proponents of mandatory reporting have had second thoughts. 

But instead of heeding the research and replacing mandatory reporting with permissive reporting, in which professionals are free to exercise their professional judgment, Washington State lawmakers opted to careen full-speed backwards. 

The reason expanding mandatory reporting to clergy has support in some quarters is obvious: What comes to mind when you hear the words clergy and child abuse?  Priests raping altar boys – and bishops covering up the crimes. When Gov. Mike Ferguson (who, by the way is a Catholic) responded to the investigation he said “We look forward to protecting Washington kids from sexual abuse in the face of this 'investigation' from the Trump Administration." 

But the new law expanding mandatory reporting will do nothing to protect kids from sexual abuse. Pedophile priests either will stop confessing or go to a church where their voices won’t be recognized. 

It also can harm survivors, who sometimes first disclose their abuse in confession. Consider what a survivor group said in Australia, where pedophilia scandals have led to similar campaigns to end the exemption for the confessional: 

“The Seal offers victims a safe, secure and watertight place where they can be listened to without cost, where they can remain anonymous, and can decide what they’re ready, and not ready, to share – and all of this in complete confidence,” spokesman James Parker said. 

“The Confessional Seal as it presently stands literally saves lives and offers every abuse victim the chance to begin to heal.” 

But that’s only the beginning of the harm. Neither Ferguson nor anyone else supporting this law seems to have given a moment’s thought to the fact that in Washington State 93% of cases in which a child is placed in foster care don’t involve even an allegation of sexual abuse. In nearly nine times more cases the allegation is “neglect” which often means poverty – and clergy now have to report those, too. 

Now consider some hypotheticals about who is far more likely to be reported than a pedophile priest: 

● A mother is terrified.  She’s being beaten by her husband.  But when she threatened to go to the police he said: “Go ahead, call the cops! They’ll just call child protective services and they’ll take away the kids.”  She turns to her priest/minister/rabbi/imam and says: “Please help me to escape.  Where can I turn to protect myself and my children?” 

The clergyman replies: “I’m so sorry.  I’m now a mandated reporter and you may have allowed your child to “witness domestic violence” if he saw or heard you being beaten. So I have to call child protective services. 

● A single mother enters the confessional:  “Forgive me, father, for I have sinned,” she says. She says she’s guilt-ridden for having left her child home alone when she went to work and her regular childcare arrangement fell through.  She didn’t know what else to do. Her boss said he’d fire her if she didn’t show up; then she wouldn’t be able to afford the rent and the family would be evicted.  

After the priest prescribes the appropriate acts of contrition, the mother asks a question:  Might the priest know someone in the congregation who could volunteer to provide childcare if this ever happened again?  “As a matter of fact, I do,” the priest replies.  “But it’s too late to do only that.  You see, I am now a mandated reporter of child abuse.  What you did can be considered ‘lack of supervision.’  So I have to report you to child protective services” 

As it stands now, clergy are among the only helpers to whom impoverished families can turn with less fear that they will be turned in to a family police agency (a more accurate term than “child welfare” agency).  Once the word gets around that even the confessional isn’t safe, you can bet that parents like those in these hypotheticals won’t come forward and ask for help.  Children at risk from pedophile clergy won’t get any safer – and children whose families' “crime” is poverty will be cut off from a potential source of support. 

Of course, it’s not a crime for lawmakers to rush into enacting bad policy that doesn’t have a prayer of stopping child abuse. But it sure seems like a sin.