In 2022 the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) published its final report. IICSA was a seven-year long public inquiry examining how our institutions have responded to abuse. Unsurprisingly, given that churches have been such reliable incubators of abuse, much of the inquiry’s work concerned religious settings, including minority religions alongside the Catholic and Anglican churches. One of the inquiry’s recommendations for change was mandatory reporting of abuse. What do we mean by mandatory reporting? Very simply, a mandatory reporting law imposes a legal obligation on specified persons (“mandated reporters”) to report known and suspected cases of child and vulnerable adult abuse to state agencies like the police or social services. Mandated reporters are generally personnel in institutional settings who work with children and can take steps to protect them: teachers, care workers, youth workers, and, of course, priests and religious ministers. In most versions of mandatory reporting, the obligation to report is underpinned by criminal sanctions for non-reporting: if you don’t report abuse, you can go to jail. Most western countries have some …