{"id":5112,"date":"2011-11-23T13:54:55","date_gmt":"2011-11-23T18:54:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=5112"},"modified":"2011-11-28T11:12:21","modified_gmt":"2011-11-28T16:12:21","slug":"mitt-romney-domestic-violence-and-clergy-reporting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2011\/11\/23\/mitt-romney-domestic-violence-and-clergy-reporting\/","title":{"rendered":"Mitt Romney, domestic violence and clergy reporting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here at the In Box we’ve wrestled a lot with the idea that organizations need to call the police immediately — no gray zones — when child sexual abuse is suspected.<\/p>\n

This has been a major challenge for a lot of organizations, ranging from the Roman Catholic church, to the Boy Scouts, to the Penn State athletic program.<\/p>\n

Rather than blow the whistle, they try to deal with these challenges internally, leading to allegations of cover-up and incredibly painful internal turmoil.<\/p>\n

State laws are evolving rapidly, making it more and more clear legally that mandatory reporting is not only morally right, but legally necessary and that keeping silent is criminal.<\/p>\n

All of this was fresh in my mind as I read the Washington Post’s exploration of Mitt Romney’s role as a prominent leader<\/a> within the Mormon church through 2002.<\/p>\n

Here’s the part that caught my eye:<\/p>\n

According to a named source in the piece, one of Romney’s congregants approached him late in his tenure with news that she had “learned of harrowing stories [of domestic violence] from the women in the congregation.”<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018You ought to alert your bishops,\u2019” [Helen Claire Sievers] recalled, adding that Romney responded, \u201c \u2018Oh, there isn\u2019t abuse in our stake, except in a couple of wards.\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n

But once Romney came to recognize the problem, he reacted.<\/p>\n

Taylor, who attended a meeting as the president of the local women\u2019s relief society, said that Romney upbraided his bishops, telling them, \u201c \u2018Okay, this is going on in your ward, in your congregation, you need to address this.\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n

She said Romney pressured Salt Lake to come out with a church-wide domestic abuse program for the bishops. \u201cAnd they did that,\u201d she said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s noteworthy, perhaps even laudable.<\/p>\n

But it’s also fair to ask whether — once alerted to specific cases of domestic violence within his congregation — Romney notified police about this kind of criminal behavior.<\/p>\n

Massachusetts law is a bit squidgy on whether clergy are legally required to report criminal behavior of this kind, but there is also a larger moral and ethical question raised here.<\/p>\n

But by 2000, when Romney was in this position, the clergy’s handling of sexual assault and domestic violence was already a major issue in Massachusetts, thanks to the Roman Catholic child abuse scandal.<\/p>\n

The former Massachusetts governor refused to be interviewed for the Post article.\u00a0 My hope is that this will be a question that he will be asked on the campaign trail.<\/p>\n

What specifically did he know about domestic violence in his church?\u00a0 Did he report it to authorities?\u00a0 If not, why not?\u00a0 And what does he think about the reform of laws requiring that clergy report domestic violence to police?<\/p>\n

As always, your thoughts welcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here at the In Box we’ve wrestled a lot with the idea that organizations need […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5112"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5112"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5113,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5112\/revisions\/5113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}