Idaho’s laws help hide child abuse. These two steps could bring more cases to justice | Opinion
The Associated Press issued a heartbreaking report Monday.
Chelsea Goodrich, a woman who grew up in Mountain Home, said her father sexually abused her for years. Shortly after he made a confession to his bishop with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the contents of which remain secret, he was excommunicated. But because his bishop would not testify against him, justice was derailed.
“Without (the bishop’s) testimony, prosecutors dropped the charges, telling (Chelsea’s mother) that her impending divorce and the years that had passed since Chelsea’s alleged abuse might prejudice jurors,” the AP reported.
Adding insult to injury, the church’s Risk Management Division offered Goodrich first a $90,000 then a $300,000 payment in exchange for signing an agreement that, among other things, required destroying recordings of her discussions with church officials about the abuse.
Sadly, this is not the first time something like this has happened here. The early-2000s revelations of pervasive abuse at a Boy Scout camp in eastern Idaho is only one prominent example.
Goodrich’s case involved members of the LDS Church, the largest by membership in Idaho, but that church is hardly alone. Dozens of religious and secular organizations have had substantially similar scandals for decades now, many following a familiar pattern: adults who fail to protect children they know are being harmed, and instead work to stop the abuse from being publicly exposed to protect their institutions from disgrace.
Concerned Idahoans should focus in particular on the failures of our state’s public policy, since that’s something we have some control over. And while child abuse occurs in both religious and nonreligious organizations, Idaho’s laws (like those in many states) specifically help to cover up abuse within religious contexts.
Everyone in Idaho — teachers, doctors, daycare workers, coroners and any “other person” — is a mandatory reporter. That means any person who has reason to believe a child is being abused but doesn’t report it is guilty of a misdemeanor.
There is one and only one exception — for a “duly ordained minister of religion.” They and they alone are exempted from the legal obligation that applies to every single other person in the state.
Other states, including very conservative ones, have better laws. Take, for example, Oklahoma. There, ministers have the same child abuse reporting requirements as every other person. The same is true in Texas.
And Idaho’s legal system goes further to ensure that religious confessions of child abuse generally cannot become evidence. The Idaho Rules of Evidence establish a religious privilege preventing a minister from testifying to the contents of a confession. It’s important to note that this privilege is possessed by the person on trial, not by the religious official. So even if a minister wants to testify that a person confessed to abusing a child, the court may prevent them from doing so.
Idaho could change this easily by adopting statutes along the lines of Texas: “In a proceeding regarding the abuse or neglect of a child, evidence may not be excluded on the ground of privileged communication except in the case of communications between an attorney and client.” So ministers have to testify if they’ve heard a confession of child abuse, just as any other person would.
But not in Idaho. So it’s worth pausing for a moment to think about what is happening, right now, because of this loophole.
A previous report from the AP revealed a case in which a man sexually abused his 5-year-old daughter in Arizona, then confessed. But the abuse was not reported. He abused his children in horrifying ways for years before he was finally arrested for posting videos of the abuse that were discovered by law enforcement in New Zealand.
Abuse, confession, absolution; rinse and repeat. All in secret. All without real accountability. It is likely that something similar is happening somewhere in Idaho right now because of the legal veil of secrecy we have erected.
Lawmakers have the opportunity to take substantial steps to change this legal framework when the Legislature reconvenes in January by adopting Texas-style legislation.
Many have spent plenty of time calling librarians and teachers “groomers” — a grotesque trivialization of actual abuse. They should take steps to stop the real thing.
What’s more important: protecting the confessional or protecting children?