Earlier this month, Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson signed a bill into law that now requires clergy to be mandatory reporters of child abuse or neglect. Under SB 5375, clergy in Washington must report suspected abuse or neglect to authorities even if they learn of it during so-called penitential communications, such as confessions. The bill was first introduced in 2023 after reporting by InvestigateWest described how a lack of a mandatory reporting requirement for clergy in Washington may have played a role in helping Jehovah’s Witnesses in the state hide allegations of child sexual abuse.
As reported earlier by InvestigateWest, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it is opening an investigation into SB 5375, which it claims appears to violate the free exercise of religion under the First Amendment. Joining us to discuss the new law is the bill’s sponsor, Democratic Washington state Sen. Noel Frame, who represents Seattle in the state’s 36th Legislative District.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Earlier this month, Washington Governor Bob Ferguson signed a bill into law that adds clergy to the list of mandatory reporters of child abuse or neglect. Under the new law, clergy in Washington must report suspected abuse to authorities, even if they learn about it during so-called “penitential communications,” such as confession. Three days after the governor signed the bill, the Trump administration’s Department of Justice announced it was opening an investigation. It says the new law violates the free exercise of religion under the First Amendment.
Noel Frame joins us to talk about this. She is a Democratic state senator from Seattle who co-sponsored the bill. Welcome to Think out loud.
Sen. Noel Frame: Thank you for having me.
Miller: What prompted you to introduce this bill?
Frame: Well, three years ago, InvestigateWest did investigative reporting on the cover-up of child abuse and neglect by the Jehovah’s Witness community in Washington state. And that’s what brought to my attention that clergy were not already mandated reporters. My former state representative reached out to me, who had sponsored legislation trying to make clergy mandated reporters some 20 years ago. She reached out to me because she knows I am, myself, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and she recommended I take the mantle. And three years later we have a bill.
Miller: You’ve been open about the fact that you’re a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, which occurred, as you’ve noted, from the ages of 5 to 10 and was perpetrated by a family member. Who did you eventually turn to?
Frame: In my case, I was being abused by a teenage cousin. And sadly, so many of my friends as children were also being abused. I, at the recommendation of a friend, turned to a teacher – my 5th grade teacher, Mrs. McAuliffe, who, herself, was a mandated reporter as a teacher. Once I told her, the abuse stopped because the school told my parents, they found out what happened and it stopped.
Miller: What do you think would have happened if you had confided in your teacher, but she hadn’t alerted authorities?
Frame: Well, if she hadn’t alerted authorities … I believe that she would have because Mrs. McAuliffe is a good person.
Miller: Right, she did, as you noted. But in a sense, the reason I’m asking is because that’s sort of the scenario that is put forward by this bill. If it had been instead of a teacher, say, a member of the clergy who didn’t have the duty to report. But in your case, I’m just wondering what that would have meant for you.
Frame: What it would have meant for me and what it would mean for kids that are reporting to clergy, prior to the passage of this law, is those kids would continue to be abused and neglected. We have many stories from victims and survivors who have come forward to help with this bill, who have shared that they told people within their faith community that they were being abused, that something happened to them and they didn’t get the help that they needed. And that’s why so many of them have come forward to champion this legislation, because we believe that the protection of children is of the utmost importance.
What this bill does, it’s about mandated reporting, it’s about known or suspected abuse and neglect of children in real time. So yeah, if people are not reporting these instances of abuse and neglect, children are to continue to get hurt.
Miller: I understand that you actually recently got in touch with your old teacher, Mrs. McAuliffe. What was that conversation like?
Frame: It was amazing. I talked to her last night. I grew up in Clark County, so OPB is one of my home, childhood radio stations, and Mrs. McAuliffe saw the story on KGW and was delighted. And just to reconnect with her, frankly we talked much more about our children and what I had done since being in her 5th grade classroom. And it was just wonderful to catch up. And funny enough, one of her children is one of my constituents up here in Seattle, so it’s a small world.
Miller: What exactly will be required of clergy in Washington now after the governor signed your bill into law?
Frame: So under our current mandated reporting law that the members of the clergy will become a part of, they have 48 hours to report suspected or known abuse or neglect of a child. They can call law enforcement or they can call that into our Department of Children, Youth and Families. People often hear of CPS or Child Protective Services. They have to call that in within 48 hours, so that our state agency or law enforcement can go check on that child and ensure that they are safe, while they seek to substantiate whether or not abuse or neglect is happening.
Miller: I want to turn to some of the pushback that has come forward in recent weeks. The Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Seattle, Paul Etienne, put out a statement after the governor signed the bill into law.
He wrote this: “The Catholic Church agrees with the goal of protecting children and preventing child abuse. The archdiocese of Seattle remains committed to reporting child sexual abuse, working with victims survivors toward healing, and protecting all minors and vulnerable people. Our policies already require priests to be mandatory reporters, but not if this information is obtained during confession.”
He added this: “Catholic clergy may not violate the seal of confession or they will be excommunicated from the church. All Catholics must know and be assured that their confessions remain sacred, secure, confidential and protected by the law of the church.”
What’s your response?
Frame: Well, first of all, saying that they “already require priests to be mandatory reporters” is a use of the language of the statute that they are not mandatory reporters. They may voluntarily report, but they are not following the law that exists, because they are not a part of it until my bill goes into effect.
Miller: In other words, you’re saying they’re using the language of state law, but it’s a non-state legal apparatus that they are discussing. They’re talking about regulations within, in this case, a church, as opposed to state law.
Frame: Yes. I highlight that because it’s been a source of confusion as I’ve talked to people who believed that clergy were already mandated reporters and that the only change that we were making was this point about penitential communication – which of course it is not. Religious leaders are not, until this law is in effect later this year in July, they are not mandated reporters. So that is my first point.
My second point is, we, the state of Washington, have a secular legislative purpose that is to protect children from abuse and neglect. And if faith communities choose through their rules not to protect children from abuse and neglect, we, the state, are choosing not to be complicit in that choice by their rules.
And frankly, one of the things that I would say, particularly for the Catholic faith – and I will say I actually became Catholic as a young adult by choice, I’m no longer a practicing Catholic, my grandmothers were Catholic, I’m somewhat familiar – but folks who are more familiar than I am reminded me that canon law has changed many times over the years in the Catholic faith. And there is nothing to say that they cannot change their rules to allow the reporting of, again, real-time abuse and neglect of children. That is within their power to change. And I think they should so they don’t put their uh religious leaders in the position that they’re articulating. But we, the state, are going to insist on our position that the protection of children from abuse and neglect is of the utmost importance and should be reported.
Miller: The Archbishop, who I mentioned earlier, and the Trump administration have made another specific critique. The DOJ wrote that “the state of Washington’s new law singles out members of the clergy as the only supervisors who may not rely on applicable legal privileges, including religious confessions, as a defense to mandatory reporting.” What’s your response, that you are singling out clergy here, as opposed to other groups who have legal privileges that let them not have to report?
Frame: Well, what I would say is it’s not true, first and foremost, and I would expect more of the Department of Justice to actually read and understand the law before making such a claim. I understand in the plain reading of the bill, it is hard to not read it that way. As is true for many parts of the state statute in Washington, and I imagine in Oregon as well, you have cross references to different parts of the state statute that make it a little confusing to follow sometimes. But the reality is, there are plenty of other professions that have certain privacy protections similar to clergy, but that there are exceptions to that when it comes to the abuse and neglect of children. A great example of that are doctors, who have health privacy issues that they have to follow, except in the case of abuse and neglect of children. So they are not being singled out, and we believe that we will be upheld.
Miller: I should note that for what it’s worth, Oregon is one of a large number of states in which clergy are mandatory reporters, but there is a carveout, and they do not have to report information that comes during or from confession. That is the case in Oregon and many other states.
Last month, you voted for a bill that passed overwhelmingly and is also law that went, in some ways, in the opposite direction to what we’ve been talking about. It says that lawyers who work in higher education, say, for a college or university, do not have to report potential abuse if the information about that abuse came as a part of their representation of a client.
I’m curious how you think about these two different professional issues – codifying an exclusion for these particular lawyers, at the same time that you’re removing an exclusion for clergy?
Frame: Yeah, it’s a great question and it was an interesting one for our committee. I’m the vice chair of the Human Services Committee and that bill came to us from the House shortly after we sent the clergy bill over. And I worked with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, actually, to really navigate that particular issue. It’s an interesting case where you have one human being who is encompassing two very different roles. We crafted that language in a way to allow a person to both uphold attorney-client privilege in the cases where they were acting as a lawyer, and to uphold their mandatory reporting responsibilities when they were acting as an employee at a higher education institution. [We] included some really specific language to be clear about that.
It was something that we worked with our legal counsel on both sides of the aisle to craft, which is why you saw such overwhelming support. We worked together and felt like we found the right approach there, because it was such a unique situation with one person embodying two very different roles at the same time.
Miller: Finally, I want to turn to the way this might actually work in practice. Because in a statement last week, the Bishop of Spokane, Thomas Daly, wrote this: “Shepherds, bishops and priests are committed to keeping the seal of confession, even to the point of going to jail.”
To that point, the maximum punishment for a mandatory reporter who does not report suspected abuse, which now includes clergy or will in a few months, is 364 days in jail. So what the bishop is talking about there is, there is a possibility of a serious penalty that he says shepherds, bishops and priests will subject themselves to, that they will not break this seal.
But I’m wondering how likely it is that this gross misdemeanor, this crime, would be identified? It seems like a real challenge to know that another person is holding a secret.
Frame: I would argue that the moment that a parent, guardian or loved one of a child finds out that their child is being abused, and that an adult knew about it and had a legal obligation to report, and they chose not to … like in the instance where a child said, “I told my minister,” “I told my rabbi,” “I told my priest” and “they didn’t do anything about it.” I think that is the way that this will be enforced. And that whole time, it will be that that child was being abused or neglected in an ongoing way while that religious leader “held that secret.”
So I think that that’s how it’s going to be discovered. And unfortunately, it means that children will have to suffer longer if religious leaders choose not to comply with the law.
Miller: What have you heard from survivors since this bill passed and was signed into law?
Frame: I’ve worked with an incredible network of survivors, both from the Jehovah’s Witness community and the Catholic community in support of this legislation. They are overjoyed. We worked consistently together over the last three years. They believe very strongly that this will protect children in the way that sadly many of them were not protected.
Mary Dispenza, a woman who’s worked on this legislation, has shared that she was raped at the age of 7, she became a nun, she reported that to a priest when she was 18. Nothing came from that and that priest unfortunately, she reports, went on to abuse many more children. And Mary herself did not come to terms with that until she was 50. She’s now much older than 50 and is leaning so hard into telling her story, because she believes the story must be told to protect children from abuse and neglect.
I share that opinion with Mary, and I’m so grateful for her and so many other victims coming forward and telling their stories. We are grateful that this is now in place, or will be, come July.
Miller: Senator Frame, thanks very much.
Frame: Thank you for having me.
Miller: Noel Frame is a Democratic state senator from Seattle, the 36th Senate District in Washington.
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