What is priest’s duty to report abuse?

Bayou Buzz
January 21, 2015

http://www.bayoubuzz.com/louisiana-news/baton-rouge-news/item/815840-what-is-priests-duty-to-report-abuse

A Baton Rouge trial judge will be allowed to determine whether a teenager’s communications with her Catholic priest about alleged sexual abuse by an older parishioner were actually confessions or if the priest had a duty to report the allegations.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined Tuesday to intervene in the case, which has pitted state laws meant to protect children against the age-old secrecy surrounding religious confessions.

State District Judge Mike Caldwell, who sits on the 19th Judicial District Court, has said the priest would not be legally compelled to break the seal of confession by testifying about what the young woman told him.

The Diocese of Baton Rouge, however, has argued that if the girl testified about the confessions, the priest would have to either accept her version of events or break the seal and face automatic excommunication.

The case involves a woman who claims that in 2008, when she was 14, she told her pastor she was sexually abused by a now-deceased church parishioner.