The Catholic Church has issued a warning to its clergy in Washington state: Any priest who complies with a new law requiring the reporting of child abuse confessions to authorities will be excommunicated.
https://www.newsweek.com/catholic-church-excommunicate-priests-following-new-us-state-law-2069039
Therapists are required to break confidentiality if they suspect child abuse. The church thinks it is above secular law and only answers to God, not to mention the protection it offers to its own child abusers. It’s complete nonsense and a good example of why religious tolerance has limits.
This is completely accurate, and yet so many responses are pretending it’s not.
Mandated reporters have to report child abuse. Full goddamn stop. No, it doesn’t matter if it’s in the past, why the fuck would that change anything?
These people really think that it’s okay not to report pedophilia? Why? Because the pedophile confessed to inarguably one of the worst crimes imaginable, and promised not to do it anymore?
You think a therapist wouldn’t report that because their patient said they won’t do it anymore? Did they pinky swear?
So that paedophiles don’t stay away from confession, so that priests can tell them that god wants them to go to the police as penance. Noone is helped when paedophiles instead keep their mouths shut.
Over here in Germany, therapists may break confidentiality over planned or grave crimes, but are not required to. It’s always a balancing act and from what I’ve heard in the US you can get arrested for telling your therapist that you took drugs which is insane.
Mandatory reporting doesn’t solve problems and while doing that causes a ton of others. There’s a gazillion things you can do to address things, making snitching mandatory is about the least useful and most damaging.
This is not true. A therapist would be required to break confidentially if they became aware that their Client is going to harm themselves or others, or if they are mandated by law.
What someone already did in the past generally isn’t reported.
I find zero sources that agree with your claim.
I find several sources that indicate that therapists in all US states are required to break confidentiality when child abuse has occurred.
https://psychcentral.com/health/what-do-therapists-have-to-report
https://www.remnantcounselorcollective.com/resources/86536/the-ultimate-guide-to-mandated-reporting-laws-in-all-50-us-states-child-adult-abuse-neglect
https://www.stopitnow.org/ohc-content/when-must-a-therapist-file-a-report
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-therapists-report-confidentiality_l_5d2cf063e4b0bca603641a62
https://www.mentalyc.com/blog/exceptions-to-confidentiality-in-counseling
So either you’re talking about another country’s laws (in which case I’d like to know which country), or you’re just incorrect.
I’m in Colombia, where psychologists are required to report “human rights violations, mistreatment or cruel, inhuman or degrading conditions of confinement of which any person is a victim and of which they become aware in the exercise of their profession.”
Shit like this is why it is explicitly written that Baha’is must follow the law of the land before the laws of god.
That’s not quite accurate. Therapists are required to break confidentiality if they believe there is an ongoing risk to others, not because someone tells them of child abuse they committed in the past. In that sense, a confessional would probably be the same - you don’t confess to things that haven’t happened yet. You’re more likely to express ongoing risk in therapy than in confession.
If the confessor indicated that they were going to continue doing things, that’s when a confession should become reportable, if we’re want the law to be secular and equitable.
What’s your source for this? I find nothing that says therapists don’t have to report cases of child abuse.
I just responded to someone else with a long list of sources that indicate that therapists across the US are required to report child abuse.
Technically everything you’ve done is in the past, unless you’re doing it at this very second in time. So by that rationale, a priest could say, well, they’re confessing, it’s in the past, they’re repentant–not an ongoing risk–therefore I don’t have to report. But that’s obviously bullshit.
Remember that episode of South Park where the Catholic priest saw child rape and exploration as a kind of perks of the job. Whelp they hit the nail right on the head 10 years ago with that one and it’s still relevant to this day.