North Carolina
N.C. Gen. Stat. § 7B-301 — North Carolina Juvenile Code — Duty to report abuse, neglect, dependency, or death due to maltreatment
- Clergy named as mandatory reporter?
- No
- Confessional exemption?
- No
- Statute
- N.C. Gen. Stat. § 7B-301
- Clergy named
- All-person
- Pending
- —
North Carolina does not name clergy separately. It doesn't have to. Section 7B-301(a) of the Juvenile Code places the reporting duty on any person or institution who has cause to suspect that a juvenile is abused, neglected, or dependent, or has died as a result of maltreatment. Clergy are inside that duty by the all-person formulation, not by an express enumeration that can be quietly amended. Section 7B-310 closes the privilege question directly. No privilege (clergy-communicant, physician-patient, husband-wife) is grounds for failing to report, even when the knowledge or suspicion is acquired in an official professional capacity. The only exception is for an attorney representing a client in the abuse, neglect, or dependency case itself. That carveout is intentionally narrow. Session Law 2013-52 added a Class 1 misdemeanor penalty to § 7B-301(b) for anyone who knowingly or wantonly fails to report, or prevents another from doing so. North Carolina's § 8-53.2 creates a general clergy-communicant privilege for court proceedings, but § 7B-310 expressly displaces it for reporting purposes. The structural result is among the cleaner statutory designs UCO tracks: an all-person duty, an express privilege override with a single narrow exception, and a criminal penalty for knowing non-compliance. The work is ensuring these provisions are enforced and that no child's account of harm is absorbed inside an institution and never reaches county DSS.