Illinois
325 ILCS 5/4 — Illinois Abused and Neglected Child Reporting Act (ANCRA) — Section 4
- Clergy named as mandatory reporter?
- Yes
- Confessional exemption?
- Yes
- Statute
- 325 ILCS 5/4
- Clergy named
- Expressly
- Pending
- —
Illinois's Abused and Neglected Child Reporting Act (ANCRA) names clergy directly. Section 4 of the Act (325 ILCS 5/4) lists 'any member of the clergy' among mandated reporters required to immediately contact DCFS when they have reasonable cause to suspect child abuse or neglect. Public Act 101-564, effective 2020, reorganized and expanded that duty: broadening clergy reporting beyond sexual abuse to include physical abuse and neglect, and imposing mandatory training requirements. Failure to report is a Class A misdemeanor for a first violation and a Class 4 felony for a second or subsequent violation. The carveout is in Section 4(g). That subsection provides that the privileged quality of communication between a mandated reporter and a client does not apply in child-abuse situations, and then, one clause later, states that a member of the clergy may claim the privilege under 735 ILCS 5/8-803. The statute names clergy as reporters and preserves the confessional shield in the same breath. Illinois courts have read the 8-803 privilege narrowly. People v. Campobello (2004) held that the privilege reaches only communications made in the course of the religious body's own disciplinary requirements: specifically, dictates that require a clergy member to receive confessions for the purpose of spiritual counsel or consolation. The Illinois Supreme Court reached the same result on the facts in People v. Peterson (2017): reviewing an otherwise forfeited claim, it rejected the clergy-privilege objection to Pastor Neil Schori's testimony because the record showed no church rules required him to receive the statements in confidence. The practical scope of the carveout shrinks under this reading. But the carveout itself remains, written into every iteration of the statute. The 2023 report from Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul documented 451 Catholic clerics who abused at least 1,997 children across all six Illinois dioceses, compared to 103 cases the dioceses had publicly acknowledged before the investigation. That gap spans 1950 through 2019, including the years since 2002 when clergy have been named mandated reporters, and shows the distance between a statute's text and its institutional reach. Illinois is a state where the law was right early. UCO tracks it because the work of ensuring that law is actually followed is the work that protects children.