High Court Says Churches, Not Judges, Define a "Confession" When It Comes to Reporting Child Abuse

An Arizona Mirror report, published 30 July 2026, on the Arizona Supreme Court's ruling that day in Doe v. Corporation of the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The court held it is the church's own doctrine, not a judge's independent assessment, that defines what counts as a confession exempt from Arizona's mandatory child-abuse reporting law. The suit originated in Cochise County in 2020, brought by the children of a member who, in a 2011 confession, told his bishop he had abused his five-year-old daughter; the Cochise County Superior Court dismissed the reporting claim against the church and its local officials in 2023, a dismissal the Supreme Court unanimously affirmed.