An often thorny subject: sex-based penitent/clergy communications

It is a case, notes one news outlet, that “highlights the struggle of courts to interpret a convoluted web of clergy reporting laws” that exist across the United States.

And it underscores this topical concern: the ability of church authorities in some instances to shield sexual abusers of children from liability through invocation of a privilege afforded communications between penitents and clergy members.

As pointed out in the above-cited news source, 32 of the 45 American states where church authorities are required by state law to report child abuse carve out some type of exception in cases where an individual — even a predator of children — is seeking spiritual forgiveness or advice.

That is what elders in one Jehovah’s Witness congregation relied upon when they refused to come forward to secular authorities with information from an adult churchgoer that she had repeatedly had sex with a minor.

A judge denied a motion to dismiss, however, not being convinced that the admission to the elders was a so-called “sacrificial confession.” The woman was ultimately convicted on charges of rape and child endangerment.

The subject of immunity related to some religious communicationscan indeed be — and often is — a slippery slope in American jurisprudence. The parent company of the Jehovah’s Witnesses — known in shorthand form as the Watchtower — was recently ruled to be in violation of court orders in two California lawsuits, for example, because of its refusal to disclose the names of known sex offenders among its congregation.