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| Peter Sutcliffe, aka the Yorkshire Ripper - would you keep his secret? |
A few years ago I went to a talk in which a social worker was describing a research project she had conducted in New Zealand which led to the book she was promoting. I cannot remember much about the book but I do recall her saying that it was important to guarantee total confidentiality to people you were talking to if you wanted them to speak freely and honestly. If they thought there was any possibility that you would betray their confidences by betraying them to the police they would immediately clam up.
When it came time for questions I raised my hand intending to ask her what she would have done if she had conducted her research in Yorkshire instead of New Zealand, had come across Peter Sutcliffe and realised he was the notorious Yorkshire Ripper before the police did. (Their investigation was notoriously incompetent.) There was not enough time for my admittedly awkward question in the end so I never got an answer, but it did set me thinking about the limits of confidentiality. Not only social workers with a book to write but priests also have to face this quandary. They are bound by the vows of their calling not to reveal what they hear in the privacy of the confessional box but have faced pressure to give up paedophiles who confess their sins to them but not to the police.
There are three purely practical reasons why this idea is a non-starter. Firstly: if word got out that confessing to a priest led you to being grilled by a police officer, people would stop confessing without necessarily ending their criminal activity. Second: confessional evidence would probably not be admissible in court on the basis that, if a priest disobeys his vows, how can you trust what he says under oath? Third: never underestimate the power of martyrdom: if priests have a choice between breaking the seal of the confession (ie their vow of confidentiality) and going to prison themselves, the vast majority will embrace the earthly punishment and would be supported by a Catholic hierarchy rocked by its own child abuse problems and desperate for the opportunity to prove that the representatives of God on earth would sacrifice themselves for the faith. We would probably end up sending priests rather than paedophiles to prison, which rather defeats the point.
But there is another reason why priests should not be obliged to give up those who confess their sins. Do we really want to live in a society in which everyone is obliged to report those who break the law to the authorities? For, if child molesters have to be betrayed, surely drug-takers and tax-dodgers must be too. The law does not distinguish between different types of crime when it comes to reporting illegal acts so, before long, we would be living in the kind of society which was utterly rejected by the inhabitants of East Germany, Russia and all the other countries which later threw off the yoke of the secret police. We might think that some crimes are not worth reporting but those who enforce the law do not grant us this luxury.
Landlords who rent out properties would have to act as unpaid and unofficial immigration officials by checking that their prospective tenants had the right to live here; doctors would have to inform the hospital authorities if they thought that their patients might not be entitled to free treatment on the NHS; and we would all have to give up friends who had slipped into a drug use, which might be spiralling out of control.
What would you do if a friend telephoned you and admitted that he was addicted to cocaine or heroin, that he owed money to his dealer, his wife had left him and he was about to lose his job? His life was going down the tube and he appeals to you for help. Do you say you will help him get on a programme and see what you can do to help him keep his family and job and free himself of his addiction – or do you hang up and call the cops to say that Joe Bloggs has just admitted to you that he has taken illegal substances?
Decent people would, of course, help their friend recover their life, even though it would technically mean that they were failing to report a crime (taking illegal drugs) to the authorities and would thus entail aiding a criminal. This is what priests are doing when they do not give up the child-molester by reporting him. That is not to say they ignore the wrong he (usually) does. “Go away and sin no more,” are the last words a priest says to someone who has confessed. They are distinguishing between a sin – that which is against God’s law – and a crime – which is against the law of the land. The two often but not always overlap.
The difference between child molestation and drug-taking, of course, is that there are identifiable victims who need protection in the first case but not the second, even though the fallout from drug use can be devastating for the families of addicts. It is not easy for a priest to allow a paedophile to continue his criminal – and sinful – activities without anything more than an exhortation to stop sinning. But it is necessary. One of the reasons Catholic priests are not allowed to marry is that they have to hear these confessions but cannot give up the secrets they contain – to their wives or anyone else. Just as that social worker had to keep the secrets of those who talked to her in order to write her book, so the priest has to stay silent when he (definitely in the case of Catholics, possibly if they are Protestant) is hearing what terrible things have been done by those who come to them trusting that they can confess and that what they reveal will be heard in confidence.
Edwin Lerner
My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com
