A judge has barred Washington from enforcing a state law that would have required Churches to report child abuse. The judge says the law infringed on freedom of religion

The fact they would protect abusers just to comply with their faith speaks volumes about their priorities. I mean it's no surprise when they already protect the predators within their ranks, so why not do the same with their followers?

Luigi Mangione’s religion requires that he sacrifice health care executives, but I don’t see any judges standing up for him.

Ig sexually abusing kids falls under religious freedoms now. What a shithole country

I mean, so if my religion says I can diddle kids and kill republicans, is that legal now?

It seems that protecting the children only works to weaken privacy and individual rights, not to actually protect children.

The legislation “places them in the position of either complying with the requirements of their faith or violating the law. The consequences for violating the law are serious and, as Plaintiffs assert, the implications of violating the Sacramental Seal are more serious still,” he wrote.

Attorney General Nick Brown’s office emphasized that the ruling only applies to “the Sacrament of Confession” and that, if clergy learn about abuse in any other setting, the injunction does not change that they will be mandated reporters. Brown did not provide any further comment.

Batshit insane first paragraph. The second is at least some small positive. I don't know that this being overturned actually makes any meaningful difference in practice though though- if people can't say they abused a child in confessional they won't. I guess you might catch some people in the transmission, who didn't learn about the change? That would be a positive. But I think long term people just wouldn't confess to sexual abuses in the confessional anymore

So they just need to classify Epstein as a religious leader?

The freedom of religion to do what?

Religion, ALL religion, is a fucking cancer, the blight of humanity.

Standing up for religious freedom...to keep child abuse secret.

Perverse judgement from a perverted judge in yet another case of using perverted make believe superstitions as some perverse magical shield to protect perverts from facing justice.

https://apnews.com/article/sex-abuse-catholic-church-mormon-5d78129a2fe666159a22ce71323f6da3

Multiple religious organizations established abuse hotlines, which publicly appears to be an effort to address the higher than average child SA criminals within their clergy/employees.

But they are actually getting used to establish a loophole so if they report it to clergy using the hotline they want to use religious protected speech (like confession), or if they report it to a lawyer they want it to be attorney client privilege speech. Then they always have a clergy or lawyer answer the hotline and never report the crime to anyone outside their organization ignoring local laws.

A bit of a clickbait title (but only a bit) - the WA law moved to make priests required reporters, professions who are legally required by law to report child abuse. The injunction sought to exempt catholic priests from being required to report child abuse which was reported to them under the 'seal of the confessional' (the special super secret group chat that only exists between you, your priest and god) and after this injunction they are still required reporters in all other instances.

This is... at least a consistent ruling? For example religious leaders can't be held as accomplices if they don't report crimes that were told to them in a ritual setting (oversimplification) or be held liable if they don't forewarn about someone planning suicide or some other crime and then said person goes thru with it. Predictably canon law is rife with examples of breaking the seal of the confession to prevent a suicide, of course, but lets just ignore that.

The rationalization for this is twofold: First freedom of religion from civil regulation. Second and more credibly that it would be allowing unfair weight into criminal proceedings because of the perceived sanctity of the confession and the upstanding character of priests (lol). The argument goes that testimony brought of things revealed in confession is by it's nature hersay, but hersay that would be presented as being devout reporting of an unimpeachable confession, and that could unduly sway juries and in general get really messy so the law just doesn't want to deal with it.

I strongly disagree with this ruling, the catholics get enough special treatment what with not being prosecuted for raping all those children, that's just the background to the arguments being made about it.

My religion says I can shoot politicians in the fucking face.

And no, I don't have to pay taxes on that.

The freedom of religion to continue enabling child rapists.

Perhaps all religion should die along with the cunts in charge.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I wonder how old that judge's last sexual partner victim was

Wow! But if I “overheard” part of this “confession” as a “mandated reporter” BY FED LAW (confessionals are NOT SOUND PROOF), I can go to jail if I do not report what I overheard and the government found out I knew… straight to court!

Yet, these fucks get a hall pass to keep fucking with kids “because of religion”, religion doesn’t give you the freedom to fuck with kids but the Catholics would know the most about fucking with kids wouldn’t they?!?! Appalling! Our nation is fucked!

I mean, am I surprised when our “president” is a know pedophile who talked about his own daughter sexually and was besties with Epstein!? WHERE IS THE CLIENT LIST!? We know Drumpf was probs the invite NUMBER 1 and FUNDED it! 🤦🏽‍♀️🤷🏽‍♀️

It's weird how one group of people has such a warped idea of what "freedom" means.

There was a really great article about the difference between Northern liberty vs. the Southern notion of "liberty". The Southern is mostly about the "liberty" to rule over others.

Over the years, there were numerous lawsuits about the use of certain drugs in a religious context, and they were always shot down in the courts. THIS is where they choose to bend ?

Even more evidence that it is far safer to leave your kids with a drag queen (or king) than the clergy.

This tracks with the US electing a pedophile.

By that logic, I can live sacrifice MAGATs to a idol of Teddy Roosevelt and be in the clear. This law is fucking stupid.

Looks like this is about confessionals, meaning it's about privilege.

That being said, sexual abuse of a child is usually an exception to privilege for all professionals.

The actual situation is a lot more nuanced than the headline makes it out to be. The main issue at hand here is the Catholic seal of confession, which has an extremely long history in US law (and in the law in many other countries) as being protected under freedom of religion. Essentially, Catholics are supposed to confess their sins to a priest and be given instructions on how those sins can be forgiven. This practice is extremely old, and crucially, the priest isn't allowed to tell anyone what they were told in confession unless the confessor wants them to. This is for obvious reasons- nobody would confess anything to the priest otherwise. They take this very seriously- Catholic priests essentially believe that breaking the seal of confession is a one way ticket straight to Hell for themselves (actual situation is more complex but that's the short version) and most won't do it even if the law says they have to.

Anyway, the law in question essentially requires priests to break the seal of confession in child sex abuse cases. That seems rational given how many other people are mandated reporters, but because of the long history in US law of respecting the seal of confession and how central this practice is to Catholic doctrine, it's understandable that there is a legal fight about it and why a judge put a pause on it. Regardless of what you may personally believe on this matter, US law depends on precedent and I find it unlikely that even a normal supreme Court that isn't controlled entirely by far right activist judges would let this one stand, if this even made it to the supreme court. The precedent is just very much against it.

Estudillo ruled that requiring disclosure of information priests hear in the confessional infringes on their First Amendment right to practice religion and will force them to violate their sacred vows or face punishment by the state.

The church’s recorded propensity for rampant pedophilia legally demonstrates that they hold noting sacred other than pedophilia and other forms of abuse, making the judge’s ruling (among many other things) invalid. Ignore that idiot, Washington.

Freedom absolutism is great!

You can't take away my freedom to rape kids!

Hooray! Abusers get to relieve themselves of the harm they’ve caused while protecting their ability to do it again. What a great country I live in.

FUCK!

The mods in this community are so dumb. Gee, let's protect the child rapists, can't even think about making a comment that implies violence or it gets removed. Don't worry about context, you hear that everyone! Violence is bad ya'll no matter the context, even if someone tries to rape you!

Edit: For the record, when you come to remove this. I was raped as a child, so I have strong feelings about this for good reason. You have personal experience with rape, and you get to have an opinion on it. If you haven't and you think my response is over the top, then you can go fuck yourself. My entire life was ruined bcz of some asshole who wanted to diddle a fucking little kid.

We're just thinking of the kids! Jeez!! Is that so hard to understand?? 😑

Let's get this straight.

Psychiatrist are required to break doctor patient confidentiality if patient is a threat, right and report it.

Lawyers must report crimes to law enforcement, breaking confidentiality too.

But priests are 'sprcial' in the magic, secret telling closets?

Cruelty is the point. Innit.

I'm not a legal professional (merely an ill-informed amateur), and especially not an American one, but it seems to me like the judge's order makes a pretty convincing argument that the injunction is legally warranted.

Maybe we might consider that federal law might be the problem before we rush to accuse the judge personally of being a nonce?

republicans have proven time and time again that they love children....in absolute most inappropriate way.

We wont be free of groomers until we lock up every single pastor, priest, and every other Christian clergy in this country.

If you require priests to report what they hear in confession the only thing you accomplish is people stop going to confession. Furthermore, turning yourself in is generally part of your penance anyway.

Okay. I definitely get where everyone is coming from here. We all want to protect kids. I'm not sure this ruling is in the wrong though.

Here's why. We demonize pedophilia to the point that people would kill someone that is attracted to children. I'm making a specific point here to NOT include child molesters. That's a separate but very related issue. If we took the time to address the mental health issues that caused them to be attracted to children in the first place (eg, molested as children themselves, some other issue that therapy could address, etc), maybe we could stop them from going so far with their problem and actually save kids before they were abused.

Since they really don't have anyone to talk to ever, maybe a priest could curb their behavior and act as a counselor to stop further abuse of children. If left unaddressed, maybe the molester would continue with many more victims, and the priest could stop them at 1. But if they no longer felt they could talk to a priest, then they continue.

Basically, as a country we should be doing MUCH better to stop pedophiles from dealing with their issues alone and help prevent them from actually molesting children. Failing that (since we are failing that), why are we trying to take away the next level of therapy for them? It makes no sense to continue to push them into a lonely corner and expect them to do differently. If the priests' silence allows them to keep the molester from touching more kids, that's a much better outcome overall.