I have a question about the pastor. I know they have the same shield a lawyer or doctor would have, about confidentiality. They are required in many cases to keep confidentialities they don't want to keep and are uncomfortable with keeping.
But I don't think this extends to ongoing child abuse. Aren't pastors mandatory reporters? Why did the pastor only council the young man to go to the police? Why not report it himself?
If the young man had confessed to murder, I think the pastor would be shielded by his confidentiality law. But "ongoing" child abuse - is ANYONE shielded from reporting that?
Religious Officials
Some states reporting laws explicitly
include clergy among the people who are
mandated to report child abuse or neglect.
In other states clergy are explicitly
exempted from the duty to report, at
least to the extent that the information
they have derives from pastoral
communications.13 North Carolinas
statute has no provision relating
specifically to religious officials and the
duty to report; therefore, they apparently
are included in the mandate that any
person with cause to suspect child abuse,
neglect, or dependency make a report to
the department of social services.14 A
religious official, like everyone else, has a
duty to report child abuse, neglect, or
dependency regardless of that officials
relationship to the child.Whether
mistreatment of a child by a religious
official is abuse or neglect that must be
reported to the social services department
depends on whether that official is the
childs parent, guardian, custodian, or
caretaker. (The definition of caretaker
is discussed in Chapter 4.)
North Carolina law relating to the
competence of witnesses to testify in
court has long recognized a clergy
communicant privilege.15 Unlike most
other statutory privileges, the clergy
communicant privilege does not include
either an exception for child abuse and
neglect cases or authority for the court to
compel disclosure upon finding that
disclosure is necessary to a proper
administration of justice.16 Before July 1,
1999, the Juvenile Code explicitly overrode
certain specified privilegesfor example,
husbandwife and doctorpatientbut
not the clergycommunicant privilege.
Since July 1, 1999, however, the Juvenile
Code has provided unequivocally that no
privilege, except the narrow attorney
client privilege, is grounds for failing to
report suspected abuse, neglect, or
dependency or for excluding evidence in a
case involving the abuse, neglect, or
dependency of a child.17
Confidential communications between
a person and his or her rabbi, minister,
priest, or other religious confidant might
be viewed as part of that individuals
exercise of his or her religious freedom. A
legal challenge to the application of the
reporting law to clergy made on that basis
would require a court to balance the
individuals interest in exercising that right
against the states objectives in requiring
clergy to report.18
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...SRz4CA-A6v13iPOTe68C4aw&bvm=bv.66699033,d.b2k