Churches Laud Law Requiring Clergy to Report Child Abuse

A new state law requiring clergy to report child abuse--except when they learn about it through confidential confessions--is being welcomed by organized religion as an overdue obligation that also strikes a blow at church cover-ups of sexual molestation by pastors.

The law, in effect since Jan. 1, adds priests, ministers, rabbis and other clergy to a long list of professionals--from teachers and doctors to animal control officers--who were already required to report to a child protective agency their knowledge or reasonable suspicion of child abuse.

“We have a moral obligation with or without this law,” said Rabbi Aaron Kriegel, co-founder of the San Fernando Valley Interfaith Clergy Council. Officials of the Southern California Board of Rabbis “absolutely applauded it” at a recent meeting, he said.

Some concern remains about how to distinguish between confessions, which are legally confidential, and other conversations with congregants.

“That’s still going to have to be sorted out,” said Scott Anderson, executive director of the mainline California Council of Churches, which supported the legislation.

Catholic Church representatives in Sacramento also supported the bill (AB3354) after Assemblywoman Valerie Brown (D-Kenwood), the principal author, accepted their suggestion on expanding protected confidential communications.

“We were in a tough spot,” said Msgr. E. James Petersen, executive director of the California Catholic Conference. “If we opposed the bill, it would look like the same old story of the church trying to cover up,” he said.

He referred to a rash of heavily publicized incidents in recent years involving Catholic priests and young boys, in which it was revealed that church higher-ups simply transferred the priests with no fanfare, and kept quiet about the incidents.

Indeed, former Republican Assemblywoman Paula Boland, who lives in Northridge, said this week that she was a co-author of the bill because of such problems in her own Catholic church.

“I was dismayed when I heard about clergy sexually abusing children, and the church, instead of dealing with it, took [the priests] out of that situation and moved them to another church,” Boland said.

“Unfortunately, the church mishandled this for so many years.”

California Catholic leaders saw the amended bill as “an opportunity for healing,” Petersen said. “The day I went over to the Legislature to testify at a committee hearing, some of the victims who were there went out of their way to tell me how much they appreciated my being there.”

A seminary president who helped write the bill said he was motivated by the opportunity to educate clergy in California about their obligations to protect children.

“We’re moving away from the ol’ boy network in the church where issues of sexual harassment and child molestation were often covered up,” said the Rev. Robert Edgar, president of the Claremont School of Theology.

More than a year ago, Edgar was named by his United Methodist Church to preside over trial-like proceedings in Southern California against a fellow minister who allegedly molested several children many years ago.

One of those who brought complaints to the Methodists was Melissa Knight-Fine, who was a prime organizer behind the bill and coordinator of the Sacramento-based Legislative Coalition to Prevent Child Abuse.

“We have found that clergy often don’t know that abuse is a pattern of behavior,” Knight-Fine said. “It is not stopped by praying with the perpetrator.”

Another supporter of the legislation, Debra Warwick-Sabino of the Center for Pastoral Counseling in Sacramento, added: “Offenders rarely get appropriate treatment on their own, even when they feel genuine remorse.”

Although publicized cases of clergy molesting minors propelled the bill through the state Legislature, backers said the new law fills two important gaps in handling the problem:

--Clergy are in a good position to hear about child abuse in family settings, which experts say is where the great majority of physical harm and molestation occurs.

--Clergy previously could be sued for reporting suspected child abuse, whereas the new law provides them with a legal shield against such suits.

The new law, signed in September by Gov. Pete Wilson, made California the 28th state to require clergy to report suspected child abuse, according to Brown.

Consequently, most 1st Amendment questions of religious liberty are believed to be resolved. “I don’t think this is an issue,” said Harry Schwartzbart, president of the San Fernando Valley chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

But because the definition of “penitential communications”--the legal language for confessional situations--varies from one religion to another, the California Council of Churches has explained the law in letters to denominational executives and said that workshops will be offered in the spring.

“There are going to be some tough scenarios,” said Father Petersen, the Catholic representative in Sacramento. “If someone comes into a church and blurts it out, that’s not confession, for instance.

“But if it comes up in confession, which we now call the rite of reconciliation, then the priest has to use his powers of persuasion to get him to seek help and tell someone else his problem,” Petersen said.

Rabbi Kriegel noted that members of any religion have the need at times to confide in spiritual leaders.

“But any rabbi who recognizes that there might be a confession of abuse has an obligation to tell that penitent person before the confession that [the rabbi] is obliged to report abusive behavior,” said Kriegel, the rabbi of Temple Ner Maarav in Encino.

“I have done it and my colleagues have done it outside of a confession,” the rabbi said.