OLYMPIA (WA)
Fāvs News [Pullman WA]
April 25, 2025
By Cassy Benefield
Washington Governor may reinstate clergy as mandatory child abuse reporters — no exemptions
SB 5375 revives a long-abandoned policy and stirs emotional debate over confessional secrecy v. justice for survivors.
On Tuesday, Senate Bill 5375 — which mandates clergy to report child abuse and neglect — landed on Gov. Bob Ferguson’s desk. Since it arrived less than five days before the legislative session closed, he has 20 days, instead of the usual five, to sign it.
Child survivors of sexual abuse in Washington, whose religious leaders failed to report their abuse to authorities, are eagerly waiting Ferguson’s signature. Once that happens, clergy will be put back on Washington’s list of mandatory reporters. From 1969 to 1974/75 “clergyman” was included in the list of mandatory reporters in state law along with nurses, pharmacists, school employees and others. In 1975, according to a public policy report, it was removed.
The most debated aspect of the bill is that it would require clergy to report abuse even when disclosed during normally privileged communications such as religious confessions. The last attempt to get such a bill through came from Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, D-Seattle, in 2005, but it too had a clergy-penitent communications exemption and failed to pass the Senate. That exemption meant if any child abuse admission was obtained during a private and personal conversation between a clergy member and at least one other person or it was heard during a confession, the clergy would not be mandated to report it.
While the current bill remains unsigned by the governor, individuals and organizations continue to lobby Ferguson to oppose or support the bill because he still has the power to veto all or part of it. While FāVS wasn’t told the exact number of calls the governor’s office received on this bill since April 22, his communications team reports receiving 62 messages, mostly from individuals.
The Washington State Catholic Conference (WSCC) — the advocacy arm of the Catholic church — has not been one of the organizations lobbying the governor above by leaving messages. However, they had a significant role in opposing the bill before passing the legislature.
Jean Hill, WSCC’s executive director, said adding clergy to the mandatory reporting list was not the problem. It was not having an exemption in place for clergy-penitent communication that the conference can’t agree with. The seal of confession is considered holy to Catholics and to break this sacrament violates their freedom to practice their religion, she said.
“We do support including clergy as mandatory reporters. I want to be very clear on that. We understand that our state is currently in the extreme position of being one of five states that do not include clergy in reporting statutes,” she said to the House Early Learning & Human Services committee on March 14. “What we ask is that the state not swing to the other extreme and join the six states that provide no exemption from reporting for confidential communication.”
Bishop Frank Schuster, who serves the Archdiocese of Seattle as an auxiliary and regional bishop, testified against the bill when it was in the Senate’s Human Services Committee on Jan. 28. He said confession is a liturgical rite, an act of worship, a prayer, and that he and other priests have no power to change that sacrament.
“Even [a] pope would say he doesn’t have the power because it’s a sacrament that comes from Christ,” he said. “It’s impossible for a priest to comply with this bill.”
Canon Law forbids priests from breaking the seal of confession. If he does, he will be excommunicated. However, this seal does not stop priests from promoting justice and safety, Schuster said. It can be the place the priest encourages the offender to turn themselves in as restitution for their crime. The confessional can also be the starting point where youth who are abused can be directed to a mandatory reporter.
“We believe in the spirit of this bill,” he said. Schuster asked for the “honor” of working with lawmakers to narrowly define the privilege so they don’t violate their consciences and maintain their Constitutional right to freedom of religion.
Sen. Noel Frame, D-Seattle, responded to Schuster with sharp pushback after he spoke and said this conversation was not a fun one for her.
“It’s retraumatizing, and I almost didn’t offer the bill this year because I need to have some boundaries,” Frame said.
She also gave nod to her own experience of sexual abuse.
“It is traumatizing to have colleagues who I love and trust and have respect for and the legislature tell me to my face that religious freedom is more important than protecting children,” she said.
Frame tried to pass similar bills in 2023 (had no exemption for private clergy-penitent conversations) and 2024 (which included a narrowly-defined private clergy-penitent privilege that tried to cover only the Catholic confessional), both of which died in one of the chambers.
Last year’s bill had a chance of passing or so Marino Hardin thought. He was the impetus of Frame’s attention to the need for this bill in the first place. He was the whistleblower who caught InvestigateWest’s ear for their October 2022 exposé on the child sexual abuse cover-ups within the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Washington.
It was this news story Frame read and got her started working on this bill three legislative sessions in a row. As a survivor of abuse herself, her abuse stopped when she told a teacher — a mandated reporter. She wanted religious institutions to be able to give children that kind of safety and to not use loopholes in the law to cover-up abuse.
Hardin grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness in Spokane and witnessed multiple cases of child abuse being ignored and the community secrecy that came with it.
“I realized how commonplace it was for the Jehovah’s Witnesses to institutionally handle child abuses internally … and [to] discourage anyone from telling the outside world so as not to ‘drag Jehovah’s name through the mud,’” he said.
As a young person, Hardin remembers shunning survivors of sexual assault but not knowing why. Finding out why later also impacted his desire to now stand up for them.
He also worked with Frame to help craft the bills’ language. With the 2024 bill, or the compromise bill — a nickname used to explain the work they did with the Catholic Church in Washington — Hardin remembers negotiating with the church to carve out a very narrowly defined clergy-penitent privilege that would basically cover the confessional in order to get the bill passed.
“Then in 2024 a bunch of Catholic victims came forward. This was kind of a surprise to me,” Hardin said.
Many of the victims who testified had been abused in a confessional or their abuse was covered up in confessional. This second bill would have narrowly protected those communications as privileged and the abuse would continue, survivors said.
Hardin was content in knowing the privilege loophole the Jehovah’s Witnesses used to cover-up abuse would be settled by the compromise bill because they don’t use confessionals.
But he heard Mary Dispenza share her story. She said she had been raped by a priest when she was 7, and this compromise bill would not help solve the Catholic problem of abuse.
As a member of the Catholic Accountability Project (CAP), Dispenza came with other members to not only share their abuse stories, but to urge that there be no clergy-penitent privilege. In addition, CAP had insider knowledge of then Attorney General Ferguson opening up an investigation against the Archdiocese in Seattle about allegedly using charity funds to cover-up clergy sexual abuse. CAP also used the bill’s open comment time to ask him to make his investigation public.
Those testimonies and the knowledge of Ferguson’s investigation into the Catholic church precipitated the bill’s death. Hardin was discouraged, but looking back, he can see the good.
“I was frustrated when they pulled the bill in the second year, but now I’m grateful. I think the best outcome was achieved,” he said referring to SB 5375, which doesn’t include clergy-penitent privilege.
Before the bill arrived on the governor’s desk, Frame said it was difficult even for her to support her second bill that included the narrow clergy-penitent privilege after learning that all three Catholic dioceses in Washington were under investigation, even though these allegations couldn’t be verified at the time.
“Quite frankly it made it hard for me at a personal level to stomach any argument about religious freedoms being more important than preventing the abuse, including the sexual abuse of children,” Frame said in the Senate Human Services hearing on Jan. 28 when she introduced her final bill to the committee.
So, this year Frame went back to the original 2023 version, adding clergy as mandatory reporters and not exempting private clergy-penitent conversations, whether they be in a Kingdom Hall, a Catholic confessional, a mosque or any other place where a private talk could be construed as a clergy-penitential conversation.
Dispenza gave her testimony for SB 5375, Frame’s third bill, during the Senate Human Service Hearing on Jan. 28. She told them that the same priest who hurt her as a child “went on four more decades to rape little girls. The privilege to not report did not help me or other victims.”
“I will be 85, and I do not understand why any religion would want the freedom to keep child abuse secret,” she said. “My elder wisdom says that priest privilege does not protect children. It protects predators.”
To Dispenza’s joy, this is the bill that passed the legislature and is now on the governor’s desk.
“I’m over the moon with joy that 5375 passed. Confession failed me as the crime of abuse toward me was never reported thus protecting the priest abuser and denying me needed resources, protection and support,” she said.
The Catholic archdiocese and leading bishops in Washington state have not offered a reaction to SB 5375 moving onto the governor’s desk. Hill, with WSCC, said they will likely make a pastoral statement to Catholics after the governor signs the bill into law.
“The WSCC has no further comment on the legislation at this point,” Hill said.
On the Catholic Diocese of Spokane’s website, the last statement about this bill by Bishop Thomas A. Daly came out Feb. 3 and was written to the “faithful of eastern Washington.” He calls the seal of confession a sacramental celebration and that SB 5375 seeks to force priests to either report or violate the law if child abuse is revealed within a confession.
“I want to assure you that your shepherds, bishop and priests, are committed to keeping the seal of confession — even to the point of going to jail. The Sacrament of Penance is sacred and will remain that way in the Diocese of Spokane,” Daly said in the statement.
While Daly’s statement likely comforted many, supporters to move the bill forward also included practicing Catholics in addition to rabbis, Christian pastors, a leader from the Sikh community, a policeman, a Catholic priest, atheists and agnostics.
Hardin credits this broad, yet small, interfaith coalition — largely organized by Sharon Huling, one of CAP’s team members — as a big reason the bill passed this year in addition to the survivors sharing their stories and lawmakers like Frame.
“I felt like a small group of people with very little resources was able to make a difference and get a law passed in face of a lot of money being poured into it on the opposition,” he said, noting the first two bills lacked such support. “So, to me, this is very hopeful. I feel very good about it.”
Huling, for her part, stayed mostly behind the scenes coordinating people across the country to write Washington’s legislators, getting survivor stories told, bringing speakers together to advocate for the bill and more.
Huling considered the governor‘s option to use his full or partial veto power that could only be overturned if two-thirds of the members of both houses overruled his decision. When asked by FāVS if she is confident Ferguson will sign the bill, she said, “To quote the governor, I believe that he will ‘do the right thing.’”
He has until May 15 to make a decision. If he chooses not to sign the bill by the end of the 20 days, the bill automatically becomes law.