Originally posted by Seitse
And when mandatory reporting is not in place?
There are certain issues involved.
The first is the so called penitent privilege whereby a minister of religion, whether its a confessor of the catholic church or an elder of Jehovah witnesses agrees that anything that is revealed to them is treated with the utmost confidentiality. This may place a priest or a minister of religion in a moral dilemma for he has guaranteed confidentiality and yet has a serious issue on his hands. In some States mandatory reporting supersedes that of penitent privilege but not in all.
The policy was as I understand it to leave reporting of matters of child abuse (where the law of the land did not contain a mandate for mandatory reporting) to the families involved. This was done I suspect to preserve the confessor penitent confidentiality and because it was felt that a minister of religion is not qualified to deal with criminality, therefore those who were involved were instructed to inform authorities.
A third issue is that of corroborative evidence, (still extant in Scots law) whereby two sources of evidence are needed before a matter could be considered. This I suspect is done to deter accusation by a single witness on a personal vendetta. It has been vigorously attacked for example by rape victims because there may have been a crime but no other witnesses and is under review by the judiciary in my own country. A second source need not be a person but could be DNA profiling. So in the past there may have been a reluctance to report abuse due to lack of corroborative evidence.
The situation as it stands now as I understand it is that all cases of abuse, alleged or otherwise, whether corroborated or not are to be reported to secular authorities.
These were the issues that I put on the table for reasonable rational debate and which FMF contorted into his vile and slanderous accusation of defending child abuse and I thank you for the opportunity to present them here.