Child Abuse Reporting

Key point 4-08. Every state has a child abuse reporting law that requires persons designated as mandatory reporters to report known or reasonably suspected incidents of child abuse. Ministers are mandatory reporters in many states. Some states exempt ministers from reporting child abuse if they learned of the abuse in the course of a conversation protected by the clergy-penitent privilege. Ministers may face criminal and civil liability for failing to report child abuse.

A Texas court ruled that a pastor was legally required to report to civil authorities the confession of a counselee that he had molested his three children, and rejected the counselee's claim that the confession should not have been used in court since it was protected by the clergy-penitent privilege.

A young girl called a Methodist church and disclosed that she and her brother and sister were being sexually molested ...