According to WPTY Memphis:
A Florida teacher accused of molesting young boys is behind bars after police say he confessed while staying at Love in Action in Memphis. 29-year-old Chad Stoffel appeared in a West Palm Beach courtroom on Monday. He’s charged with molesting a 16-year-old student. Police say Stoffel was staying at Love in Action when he confessed. Love in Action is the group that claims to turn gay people straight.
Love In Action survivor Peterson Toscano reports:
From a recent discussion I had with a man who attended Love in Action’s adult program this summer, he confirmed that adults and youth sat in sessions together most of the day. He told me of a man (not from Florida) who admitted that he had had sex with a minor boy before entering the program.
I asked him if adult participants and teens in the program discussed their specific sexual issues or “just feelings” (like John Smid told me back in June). My source told me that they talked about the issues all the time. They had to stand up and give introductions where they shared their struggles in detail.
Concerned parents are entitled to an answer to an important question:
Does Love In Action, which is led by Exodus board vice chairman John Smid, recruit adults at risk for sexual compulsion or more serious disorders — and then grouped these adults with teen-agers in the same counseling sessions?
For what reason? What does LIA do to protect its patients, especially youths, from harassment and abuse?
We’d like to know.
Let’s give credit to the counselor who turned the LIA participant in to the police. At least they didn’t pull a Cardinal and try to hide the molestor.
It will be interesting to see the fallout from this. There are several possible results:
1. It may turn out that the confession was not real and that the participant just got cought up in the moment. This doesn’t seem likely, though.
2. This may discourage parents from taking their kids to Refuge. After all, parents generally want to protect their children from molesters, not deliver them to them.
3. This may discourage adult participants from going to LIA since they may feel that their confessions are not kept confidential. I’m curious how confession came about. In a Catholic confessional, a priest cannot report to civil authorities but can only encourage the parishoner to turn himself in (unless I misunderstand or unless they changed the rules). But this may have been in a group setting and it may not be protected by the confessional rights.
4. This may well be the straw that broke LIA’s back. After being disallowed from accepting clients that are clinically diagnosed and after the statements by the kid brought to Refuge in handcuffs, this may just be too much for them.
Isn’t it surprising how consistently scandal follows those who are insistent on controlling the lives of everyone around them. Maybe it’s because those most likely to point out the sin in their neighbor are hiding greater sins themselves. Or perhaps it’s just that God has a quirky sense of humor.
Timothy:
In most states, priests, teachers, and health care professionals are mandatory reporters of child neglect and abuse. In some states (like Texas), that duty extends to all citizens. Hopefully LIA/R is making the limits of confidentiality VERY clear to all new recruits. It would be unethical for them not to.
“In a Catholic confessional, a priest cannot report to civil authorities but can only encourage the parishoner to turn himself in (unless I misunderstand or unless they changed the rules). But this may have been in a group setting and it may not be protected by the confessional rights”
The Catholic “seal of confidentiality” applies to sacramental confession only. If I bumped into a priest on the street and told him I just robbed the liquor store, the seal of confidentiality would not apply. But if I said that as part of confessing my sins, then the priest would incur automatic excommunication upon telling the police.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_of_the_Confessional
… But this case doesn’t involve the sacrament of confession (or Catholic clergy even). LIA bills itself as a counseling service, so the laws applicable to confidentiality and disclosure would apply.
According to the National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect Information, clergy are not necessarily exempt from mandatory child abuse reporting laws(1). Tennessee does not specifically address clergy in its child abuse reporting law, so it seems clergy would be require to report child abuse.
NNCANCH also states that TN mental health professionals, Social workers, practitioners who rely solely on spiritual means for healing, and all others are mandatory reporters. TN specifically denies psychiatrist-patient and psychologist-patient as privileged communication regarding severe child abuse(2).
(1) https://nccanch.acf.hhs.gov/general/legal/statutes/clergymandated.cfm
(2) https://nccanch.acf.hhs.gov/general/legal/statutes/search/index.cfm
“According to the National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect Information, clergy are not necessarily exempt from mandatory child abuse reporting laws(1).”
True. I was only speaking from the standpoint of the Church’s Canon Law, not state law. State law, of course, does not recognize Canon Law. In some cases, the two are in potential conflict.
But I think the areas of conflict are rather minor, because Canon Law’s provisions of confidentiality applies only to the sacrament of confession, which is a very limited circumstance. And because the “confessee” always has the option of confessing anonymously (for example, behind a screen in a confessional to a priest at another parish), most priests would be unable to inform authorities even if they were willing to break the seal of confidentiality and incur automatic excommunication.
Some priests accused of child molestation (and some of their Bishops) tried to claim protection by the seal of confidentiality. I could be wrong, but I don’t know of any instance where they continued to stick to that claim after it was pointed out that these conversations did not take place during the sacrament of confession.
Anyway, this is something of a sidetrack to this thread. While LIA claims that it is a ministry, in some cases it appears to me they claim to be some sort of counselling service, although I can’t pin down exactly what that means from a professional standpoint. At any rate, I don’t see where confideniality applies here any more than it would in any legitimate health care setting.
As a person who has recently gone through the program at LIA and was present at the time of this event, I want it to be known that LIA makes it very clear that confessions of child molestation and certain other acts must and shall be reported if confessed.