HB 1211 and SB 5375 Concerning the duty of clergy to report child abuse and neglect. In the Senate committee hearing, reference was made to an ongoing Attorney General investigation of abuse in all three of our dioceses. There is no such investigation.

The Attorney General issued a subpoena to the Archdiocese of Seattle seeking to show that charitable funds were misused to address abuse cases. That effort was dismissed by a court of law. As a reminder, all three Washington state dioceses have enacted policies requiring all church personnel to report reasonable suspicions of abuse to law enforcement.  We are not opposed to declaring clergy mandatory reporters. We are opposed, however, to the state stepping into the sanctity of the Sacrament of Confession. Doing so will not make kids safer, but may have the opposite effect by discouraging people from confessing to abuse, thereby prolonging the abuse.