Why child abuse goes unreported

Although every state has laws requiring child sexual abuse to be reported, few cases involving members of the clergy are ever turned over to police by church officials – and fewer still result in anyone going to jail.

Partly this is because most of the laws are aimed at compelling professional groups such as teachers, doctors, and social workers to turn over information on molestation. They do not require church officials specifically to report such suspicions.

Yet even in the states that do, religious authorities rarely end up passing on suspicions to law enforcement. The reasons vary, from a desire by churches to handle such cases internally, to ignorance about mandatory-reporting laws, to a culture of forgiveness.

While some dioceses have been more forthcoming in the wake of the nationwide scandal over priest misconduct, experts say the long tradition of reluctance to report errant behavior raises questions about whether mandatory-reporting laws – considered a key way to prevent abuse – will ever have much impact. "Even if such a law were enacted, I don't know if anyone would react," says Brett Drake, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis. "You have this longstanding tradition of confidentiality with clients ... that is centuries old."

Currently, Massachusetts and 17 other states have mandatory-reporting laws that do not specifically require clergy to report sexual abuse of children. Another 19 mandate that church officials, as well as everyone else, pass on information, with the exception of incidents that come up in "clergy-penitent" conversations, such as confession.

In six more states "all persons" must report, but the clergy's status is unclear. Seven states always require churches to relay information, even what's heard in the confessional booth (or between Christian Science practitioner and patient).

In general, experts say the mandatory reporting laws work fairly well when it comes to most professionals, such as doctors and social-service workers. In 1999, 2.9 million referrals for child abuse were filed nationwide, according to the US Department of Health & Human Services. Of those, 826,000 cases involved "substantiated" victims of maltreatment. Sexual abuse made up 11 percent of that group – or some 93,000 victims.

Churches, however, have been much more hesitant in coming forward. Tennessee, for example, is one of the states that requires all people to report incidents of child abuse. Despite the provisions, Torry Johnson, the district attorney of Davidson County, which includes Nashville, says he can't remember getting a single case in which church officials reported the abuse.

While that could be because few clergy members have heard about such incidents, or committed any acts, Mr. Johnson sees other complications. "There's just an enormous amount of nonreporting among the public generally," he says. "A lot of the nonreporting is inadvertent or due to a lack of knowledge. Sometimes they don't remember they're supposed to report."

Clearly, one problem, critics say, is the lack of "teeth" in many laws. North Carolina, like many of the states with tough reporting statutes, classifies failure to report child abuse as a misdemeanor, punishable by a maximum of one year in jail. That doesn't give prosecutors much incentive to take on a church.

"The law we have is a feel-good piece of legislation," says Lillian Salcines, a district attorney for Brunswick County, N.C. "It says 'you should do the right thing and report.' But the reality of the law is that it carries minimal consequences, is rarely used, and judges are hesitant to convict." She says only two cases of nonreporting of abuse have been prosecuted since the law was adopted.

Experts see other problems with the laws as well. They "tend to be somewhat vague," says Douglas Besharov, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington who helped write some of the statutes. "Then, you get vague training on top of that. In many states, people are told to report if they have a 'gut feeling' a child is being abused. The problem is that many have a gut feeling with nothing behind it."

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