Washington’s child abuse reporting law begins, but priests get legal breather

By Cassy Benefield | FāVS News Reporter

A clergy mandatory reporting law in Washington meant to protect children from child abuse and neglect, according to advocates, goes into effect Sunday (July 27). However, SB 5375 will not go into effect for the Roman Catholic Church or a handful of Orthodox jurisdictions in the state. 

The new law requires all clergy or those in similar professions in Washington to report child abuse and neglect even within the confines of confession. If clergy fail to do so, they will be guilty of a gross misdemeanor punishable by a maximum of 364 days in county jail and a fine up to $5,000. They also may be subject to civil liability.

“Washington is targeting priests by compelling them to break the sacred confidentiality of confession,” said John Bursch, Alliance Defending Freedom’s senior counsel in a press release. He is the co-council for the Orthodox jurisdictions in the state. “That’s rank religious discrimination. We are urging the court to swiftly restore this constitutionally protected freedom of churches and priests in Washington state.”

A step forward for child abuse reporting or religious discrimination?

On July 25 U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Pennell agreed and granted a preliminary injunction to the four Orthodox jurisdictions and one Chattaroy Orthodox priest suing the state in the separate federal lawsuit against SB 5375. That lawsuit is Orthodox Church in America v. Ferguson.

The injunction for the Orthodox Churches in Washington followed on the heels of the one granted to the Roman Catholic Church in the state a week prior (July 18) while its lawsuit — Etienne v. Ferguson — progresses toward its final judgement.

Supporters of the bill, like Marino Hardin, an ex-Jehovah’s Witness in Washington, helped get SB 5375 passed and similar bills like it for the past three legislative cycles. He pushes back on any language that says the bill targets priests or the Catholic Church. 

He was the whistleblower in InvestigateWest’s exposé about how Jehovah’s Witnesses exploited a loophole in mandatory reporting laws. Because their religious leaders weren’t classified as “clergy” requiring them to report abuse — they were simply labeled “supervisors” — and because “clergy” were not listed in Washington law as mandatory reporters at all, the organization was able to conceal instances of abuse.

This legal distinction highlights a contentious interpretation of Washington’s mandatory reporting laws before SB 5375, which had significant implications for how religious organizations handled abuse cases, Hardin said.

The 2023 U.S. Children’s Bureau’s status report records that Washington was one of five states to not list “clergy” or “any person” as mandatory reporters up until SB 5375. 

Within the July 18 injunction’s arguments against the state, both the attorney general’s office (the defendents) and the Catholic Church (the plaintiffs) appear to agree that current statutes require people “in supervisory positions in nonprofit organizations” to report suspected child abuse. 

However, Hardin said this interpretation has never been enforced against clergy in Washington, despite documented cases where Catholic priests and Jehovah’s Witnesses have been accused of abuse or covering up abuse within state boundaries. 

Even when civil lawsuits have successfully demonstrated that religious organizations had knowledge of abuse, no criminal charges have ever been filed under mandatory reporting statutes. The apparent lack of enforcement raised questions about whether religious leaders — and even federal agencies —  understood Washington’s reporting requirements prior to SB 5375, Hardin said.

Washington’s clergy child abuse reporting law could set precedent for other states

U.S. District Court Judge David Estudillo — who granted Washington’s Catholic priests their injunction on July 18 — quoted court precedent that stated in order for Washington’s priests to operate fully under the law, they would have to submit to “a condition they believe to be sinful.”

“‘Literally and figuratively, the plaintiffs are damned if they do and damned if they don’t,’” Estudillo wrote.

The injunction covers all priests in the Roman Catholic Church in Washington, and it only covers the sacrament of confession and no other private clergy-penitent privilege.

“The ruling is very narrow, providing relief only for the confessional. Clergy, including Catholic priests, as mandatory reporters in all other settings remains on the books,” said Jean Hill, Washington State Catholic Conference’s executive director. “This is what we sought during the legislative session: a law that adds clergy to the mandatory reporting requirement with a narrow exception for the confessional.”

Hardin argues that not allowing the clergy-penitent privilege in cases of child abuse and neglect even during the sacrament of confession for Catholic and Orthodox priests, was necessary because of how other faiths use that language to cover child abuse. This was not due to legislators treating “religious activity less favorably than comparable secular activity” as Estudillo concluded in the injunction, Hardin said.

“The choice to pierce the confessional privilege was made, explicitly, because we presented evidence that the Jehovah’s Witnesses frequently abuse confessional privilege, claiming that all of their internal investigations of child abuse fall under it, because their doctrine mandates secret investigations of all sins of members that are not to be shared with other members,” Hardin said. He added that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has done the same thing.

The July 25 injunction for the Orthodox jurisdictions suing the state in a separate federal lawsuit contains broader language.

The Orthodox injunction grants their priests to keep their privilege — even if child abuse or neglect arise in the discussion — not only within the sacrament of confession but also within “other sacred confidences.”

The Orthodox request came out of a Stipulated Motion in which the plaintiffs and the defendants in the case agreed to the terms of the preliminary injunction, which accounted for the speed of the judge’s decision. 

Friday’s injunction covers four out of about 25 current Orthodox church jurisdictions in the U.S. and a Washington priest. They are: 

• Orthodox Church in America
• Antiochian Orthodox Church Christian Archdiocese of North America
• Romania Orthodox Metropolia of the Americas
• Western American Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia
• The Rev. Timothy Wilkinson, an Orthodox Church in America priest at St. Luke Orthodox Christian Church in Chattaroy

Following the Orthodox Church’s decision to join the Roman Catholic Church and the U.S. Department of Justice in challenging Washington’s Senate Bill 5375 as unconstitutional, a group of advocates for sexual violence survivors within Orthodox communities has rallied to support the legislation. 

These advocates sent a letter to Gov. Bob Ferguson, Attorney General Nick Brown and Sen. Noel Frame on June 25. In it, they expressed their backing of SB 5375 and offered their assistance in defending the law against constitutional challenges.

Among the letter’s signatories is a recent survivor of sexual violence who has conducted extensive research into abuse patterns within Orthodox churches, including incidents that occurred during the sacrament of confession. 

Hermina Nedelescu was 43 at the time of her alleged sexual assault by a Greek Orthodox priest in his 70s. She had been helping him during COVID in her capacity as a neuroscientist with a doctorate in biomedical sciences.

While her alleged assault didn’t technically happen within confession, she said she was groomed and manipulated within the confessional before the assault.

“[My] confession was manipulated and abused by the Greek Orthodox clergy to (1) discuss his personal problems, (2) extract personal details from me under the guise of ‘needing enough information to provide counseling’ and teaching, and (3) after I filed a police report he twisted what I had shared with him during ‘confession’ into his own version to harm my reputation,” Nedelescu said in an email to FāVS News.

While her official legal complaint against the priest is not yet in the public domain, her testimony about her alleged abuse and her request for a temporary restraining order against him is.

“I am better now, but there were some moments that were life threatening as a consequence of the sexual trauma,” she said.

Today, she uses her expertise to study the maladaptive behavior behind abusers and gathers data to learn about them.

Her findings align with broader research showing that most victims of clergy abuse are adult women, while the majority of child victims are boys — a pattern that advocates like her argue represent a significant public health crisis requiring immediate legislative intervention.

Nedelescu not only thinks of it in terms of a public health problem, but a human rights violation.

“There’s no consent,” she said. “It’s violence that has been sexualized.”

She also believes it’s a false equivalence to compare the role of a priest or a person in a clergy position to a secular one, an argument she gave supporting a California Senate Public Safety bill on consent.

“When it comes to clergy, these abusers have an added advantage, because for people of faith, clergy represent God’s messenger on Earth,” she said. “For them, there’s an automatic trust. The power differential between clergy and a congregant is immense and larger than any other human to human relation.”

Because of this, the abused often don’t know they are sexually abused or raped.

“I think there are churches hiding behind the First Amendment,” Nedelescu said.