Some had no restrictions put on them even after multiple allegations had been made. Notice I said "or". And, yes, I realize the case I described is much less dramatic, as I believe I already said when I first described it.
If your friend was responsibe for the care of children, and if you had any kind of position of responsibility, I believe you would be required to report the allegation so that it could be investigated by the proper authorities. If it is determined that there is enough evidence to go to trial, the accused is, of course, innocent until proven guilty. As this person's friend, you are not the proper person to do such an investigation. It is not necessarily suspicious for children who have been abused to come forward much later, if they come forward at all. It can be severely traumatic and create dissociative states, a great deal of shame and misplaced guilt, and it can be deeply repressed.
I could be wrong. I am not a lawyer and have not studied this issue, but I believe it is the law in many states, if not all. Psychologists, teachers, social workers, ministers, and other people with responsibility for children are sometimes called 'mandatory reporters'. Not everyone is a mandatory reporter, but a variety of people with responsibility for the care of children are, I think, required to report their own suspicions and allegations.
As for the practice of reporting every single 'accusation' to the police, I'm not sure. On one hand, if he actually is an abuser, you'll potentially save other kids from abuse. On the other hand, if he's innocent, you risk creating a public spectacle, and potentially ruining his life through condemnation by the public for accusations not yet proven true, not to mention the media who we all know never treat these cases with any sort of level-headiness. Then again, if the accusations were truly serious, why wouldn't the victim, himself, report to the police in the first place? In the same records of the Chicago Archdiocese you told me to look at, there was a case of rumors being spread in a Catholic Private School about a priest there, however, when the principle investigated these accusations, it turns out no one propagating the accusations could give any actual information on them whatsoever. It was nothing more than a rumor, and I don't think you should get the police involved based on something like that.
Comment