PRIESTS who say they will defy legislation forcing them to report child abuse made during confession have an “galling sense of entitlement”, Member for Mildura Ali Cupper told Victorian Parliament while supporting the Children Legislation Amendment Bill.
The Bill will add people in religious ministries to the list of mandated reporters to child protection and lifts the confessional seal where it concerns suspected abuse.
The government had expanded the definition of mandated reporter to include police, teachers, medical practitioners, nurses, school counsellors and early childhood and youth justice workers, however under current laws, priests and spiritual leaders in religious ministries remained exempt.
“The fact that some priests have said they would openly defy their legal obligations simply confirms the need for these laws — to address that galling sense of entitlement,” Ms Cupper told parliament.
“Their defiance shows that despite all the progress of most of the population, there is a section of society that still has not got the memo that they are living in a modern democracy where children are our most precious resource and it is in all of our interests to prioritise them.”
Ms Cupper said while she could appreciate the concern over the seal of confession being broken by mandatory reporting of child abuse, the rights of children came first.
“In a secular democratic state, children are sacred,” she said.
“At the core of our democracy is the understanding that the law is applied equally and this legislation ensures that those within religious institutions are subject to the same mandatory reporting obligations as teachers, police officers or doctors.
“Soon youth justice and early childhood workers will fall under mandatory reporting obligations in addition to psychologists and school counsellors.”
Ms Cupper referred to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which showed 58.6 per cent of the survivors who discussed the type of institution they were abused in said it was a religious one.
“The proportion of those abused within religious institutions is simply too high to ignore and too high to exempt from mandatory reporting,” she said.
“This emphasises the deep need for all who interact with children in Victoria to be subject to the same reporting obligations, irrespective of their job or position.”
Ms Cupper said faith played an important role in the Mildura electorate but could not come at the cost of exposing child abuse and ensuring protections for children.
“The culture I want to see in our state is one that is so strong and so ingrained and so automatic that mandatory reporting laws become superfluous, but we are not there yet,” she said.
The Bill passed the Legislative Assembly and will now progress to the Legislative Council.
