Link doesn’t work.
Takes me to a Wikipedia “article does not exist” page
Weird, just tried it and it works fine, sent the link to an office colleague and it opens fine for them.
just wiki “Priest-penitent privilege” that should do it.
Is that the reason RICO has never been tried against this crime/series of crimes?
RICO is the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1961 et seq.
The law has both a civil and criminal aspect.
The criminal aspect has never been invoked against the Catholic Church, and the civil aspect, while tried, has never been successful. In general, it’s been a difficult sell to tell a jury that the Catholic Church was engaged in a conspiracy to molest children.
To answer your question: no. In none of the RICO civil cases has the issue of the priest-penitent privilege been at issue.
Yes. I don’t know what laws might apply in other countries.
There would have to be a balance between the Free Exercise Clause and a criminal act, this TX case may help explain it in a little more detail.
http://www.supreme.courts.state.tx.us/historical/2008/jun/050916.pdf
Although there has been much talk in forums like this about what the law does, or should, require a priest to do if another priest (or layman) confesses child sex abuse to him, I’m not sure if there have been many (or any?) actual cases where it has been shown that an abuser is known to have confessed his abuse to an identified priest, who did nothing.
This reminded of a NPR Storyin this American life aired a couple of years back. In this story, a Catholic priest, Patrick Wall who goes around “fixing” church after church facing “sexual misconduct” finally gives up and joins the lawyers suing the church.
One of my takeaways from the story was that one needs to know Canon law (Catholic law) to even ask the right questions for the Clergy to respond or furnish information.
I wish there were more good people like him who help the victims of such crimes.