LOUISIANA
The Advocate
[state supreme court ruling]
HEIDI R. KINCHEN
hkinchen@theadvocate.com
A legal battle over whether a Louisiana priest should have reported a teenager’s claims of sexual abuse by a parishioner is pitting state laws meant to protect children against the age-old secrecy surrounding religious confessions.
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, but that the priest, the Rev. Jeff Bayhi of Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic Church in Clinton, told her to “sweep it under the floor and get rid of it.”
Rebecca Mayeux — whom recent court rulings in the sealed case did not name but who identified herself as the alleged victim in a TV interview with WBRZ — has sued Bayhi and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge, arguing that the priest neglected his duty under state law to report the alleged abuse to the authorities.
The Baton Rouge Diocese has said Bayhi responded appropriately because the information came to him through confession, a sacrament that includes a seal of confidentiality no priest can break.
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