BUFFALO (NY)
University at Buffalo News
By Charles Anzalone
November 8, 2018
When University at Buffalo 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.
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