Things heating up in Australia over new mandatory reporting of confessions law

  • Thread starter Thread starter hmikell7
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Isn’t one person reporting what another person said in judicial systems considered non admissible hearsay, or at most, weak evidence? A prosecution would need more than this evidence to make a solid case, nor would a fair jury convict on a singular non corroborated evidence. If it helps a nation, it does so very weakly.
 
… and therefore it wouldn’t happen? What are you trying to say?
 
I see. Thanks for the clarification. With all the talk about the law and the seal of confession, I assumed that the law applied specifically to the confessional.
 
That is essentially irrelevant to the issue. If a child reports to anyone that they spoke about the abuse in confession, face to face of not, the priest will get dragged into the matter if anyone tells the police the child spoke about it in confession (e.g. the parents). The case in Oregon was not about abuse; however, there has been another case where the child allegedly reported the abuse to the priest in the confessional… I don’t have the citation, but it was in the last several years.
 
While I am not an historian of law, the matter is not based on the 1st Amendment nor of separation of church and state. It is based on privilege. There are several other well known privileges, such as the spousal privilege (the spouse cannot be required or coerced to testify against the other) and attorney/client privilege.
 
I also understand that after the bishop and his lawyers got involved, the tape was turned over to the DA and sealed and the law enforcement said they wouldn’t do it again.
 
Sort of. There are exceptions to attorney client privilege but in our case there are absolutely no exceptions.

The first amendment says Congress shall make no law establishing religion nor prohibit the free exercise thereof. Such a law here would eliminate that free exercise and in my opinion would not survive a constitutional challenge.
 
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