New Jersey
N.J.S.A. 9:6-8.10 — New Jersey mandatory-reporting statute
- Clergy named as mandatory reporter?
- No
- Confessional exemption?
- Yes
- Statute
- N.J.S.A. 9:6-8.10
- Clergy named
- All-person
- Pending
- —
New Jersey's reporting statute reads as one of the broadest in the country: any person with reasonable cause to believe a child has been abused must report to the Division of Child Protection and Permanency, immediately, by telephone or otherwise. Failure to report is a disorderly persons offense; knowing failure to report sexual abuse is a fourth-degree crime. Clergy are covered the same way every other adult is, by being a person. The statute itself says nothing about the cleric-penitent privilege. It neither preserves the privilege as an exception nor overrides it for reporting purposes. That silence is the whole story. In 2010, the New Jersey Supreme Court read the cleric-penitent privilege at N.J.S.A. 2A:84A-23 (N.J.R.E. 511) to apply in a child sexual abuse prosecution, barring a pastor's testimony about a defendant's disclosure, and the 2019 amendment to the reporting statute did not override that reading. Putting express clergy-reporting language into the statute is the structural reform UCO is pushing for in New Jersey.