TOPEKA — Kansas ordained clergy would be mandated reporters of child abuse under a bill proposed Monday in the House Judiciary Committee, and proponents hope this will be the year it passes.
House Bill 2352 adds fully ordained ministers to the list of professions required to be mandatory reporters if they suspect a child has been harmed as a result of physical, mental or emotional abuse, as well as abuse, neglect or sexual abuse. Those professions include social workers, doctors, emergency medical personnel and others.
Information received through confidential conversations, such as confessions, between clergy and church members would be an exception. This has been a sticking point in the past, as clergy have written to express how important it is that church members can participate in confession.
Joe Cheray, an abuse survivor, told the committee that her abuser was embedded in the church she grew up attending.
“My abuser was my grandfather, who was the president of the altar guild of our church, a major financial contributor, an usher, and during the summertime, helped with putting together the church picnic,” she said. “He always made sure he had a relationship with whatever priest who was in residence in our church. My abuse started at the age of 10 and ended at the age of 15.”
Cheray, who sat at a table when the session opened on the ground floor of the capitol to hand out information about the mandated reporting bill, hopes the bill will finally pass this year.
“I tried going to our priest a few times during that time, and nothing happened,” she testified. “Why should it? He wasn’t a mandated reporter of abuse in the state of Kansas at the time. Had I known this, I wouldn’t have gone to him, but I didn’t know this. Later, after I got out and was in a foster home, I called him, and he said I should go home and pray that things get better.
In a letter submitted as proponent testimony, Chuck Weber, executive director of the Kansas Catholic Conference, said Kansas Catholic churches already have the reporting requirements in place outlined in the bill.
“The Church’s child protection policies have been highly successful in preventing and responding to misconduct, and thus the church supports the adoption of similar policies that may help prevent misconduct in other organizations statewide,” Weber said.
The Rev. Con Howerton, of Wichita’s Temple Baptist Church, brought his pastoral skills to the hearing as a proponent, citing biblical passages to tell the committee how important children are.
“I would say, without exception, when given a choice: ‘Who do we protect, the perpetrators or the children?’ I don’t think there should be a question,” Howerton said. “We should protect the children. The Bible is pretty clear about where God’s heart is.”
Ellen Johnson, a private citizen, testified virtually about her partner who died recently. He was abused as a boy, she said, starved, neglected and beaten in the head with a baseball bat. The family regularly went to a food pantry at a church in Salina, she said.
“His head swelled up the size of a basketball, and everybody looked the other way,” she said. “Until the day he died, he asked himself why didn’t anyone report this. If this is law, and there’s another little boy like him today — starved, neglected, abused — at that church, nobody’s going to look away. That little boy won’t have to wonder.”
HB 2352 includes new requirements for mandated reporters to receive training in detecting and reporting child abuse, including all professions currently listed as mandated reporters.
The training would be offered through the Kansas Department for Children and Families.
This story previously appeared in the Kansas Reflector.
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