You don’t have to be sure, and you don’t have to have proof that the harm or abuse has occurred. You are simply required to report your suspicion.

When you make a report, you may feel torn between your legal responsibility to report and your own concern that reporting may jeopardise your relationship with the child, the child’s family, or the person who is alleged to have hurt the child, particularly if that person is a member of your parish or in a position of authority in your parish. 

Remember, the safety of the child or young person is the most important consideration and must always be paramount. This means you must make a report. If you don’t report, you could be placing the child or young person at further risk of even more serious harm.

In effect, by not notifying, you become a part of the abuse because you are:

• colluding with the alleged abuser by maintaining the secret
• protecting the alleged abuser and not the child or young person
• breaching the law which requires you to report

Mandatory notification overrides professional etiquette, ethics, or conduct.

Notification does not provide grounds for civil action if the report is made in good faith. Reporting in good faith simply means that you hold an honest belief that the child or young person is at risk of being harmed, has been harmed or abused, or that the substance of the notification is based on reasonable grounds. A suspicion in good faith does not mean that you are personally required to believe, beyond doubt, that the harm, abuse, or neglect has occurred.