BUFFALO (NY)
UBNow
November 8, 2018
By Charles Anzalone
When UB law professor Christine Pedigo Bartholomew studied “clergy privilege” — the legal rule shielding confidential communications of priests and clergy — she found priests often recast communications to make them fall outside this testimonial protection.
Clerics often wanted to divulge information concerning such sensitive encounters as people confessing to crimes, says Bartholomew. The clergy wanted to do the right thing, she says, and help the courts’ search for justice.
But something happened when it came to accusations of sexual abuse, according to Bartholomew’s extensive, comprehensive review of cases from the early 1800s to 2016 — the first time a legal scholar has reviewed and recorded every opinion on clergy privilege during that time.
Where otherwise forthcoming priests tried to find ways to divulge what they knew to law enforcement officials, they did the opposite — they “pushed for their clergy privilege” — when their fellow priests were targets of sexual abuse accusations, according to research Bartholomew published in October 2017 in the Virginia Law Review.
“It is as if clergy are saying, ‘We want to divulge and to help, except when clergy are accused of sexual misconduct,’” says Bartholomew, associate professor and director of law review. “When it comes to sexual accusations, clergy act to protect themselves.”
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