individual,

" To withhold knowledge of a crime purely out of superstition is also criminal."

Superstition has nowt to do with it, the law says that it would,

"... require anyone with knowledge of child sexual abuse, including priests in the hearing of confessions, to report the crime to police"

This includes atheist counsellors.

Any ideas on how evidence could be collected?

Dear Is Mise,

You are right about the hierarchy.

"Senior counsel assisting the commission Gail Furness SC said the inquiry had heard successive bishops effectively heard priest Gerald Francis Ridsdale admit his offending – outside the confessional – in the 1960s, 70s and 80s and did nothing to stop him."

So it is hard to believe they are going to fess up after hearing a confession.

“It’s not yet public, but we have heard from at least one priest who confessed to his confessor, and in that way reconciled his offending behaviour, which continued with his belief in God,” justice Peter McClellan told the commission in Ballarat on Friday.

I don't mind putting the wind up the lot of them. Their duty of care for children was and likely is still sorely lacking.

Utterly shameful. Worse still people like runner are constantly attempting to absolve them of their behaviour.

SteeleRedux, you are a despicable individual in you claims runner approves of paedophiles.

Dear Josephus,

Don't be a dolt.

My words were “Worse still people like runner are constantly attempting to absolve them of their behaviour”.

George Pell is a convicted paedophile and runner is showing support for him on this very thread for God's sake. Wake up.

I don't think runner approves of grabbing women by the pussy but he certainly supports the right of his president to do so without censure from those with so called Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Go find something more useful to do than coming on here and churlishly misstating the bleeding obvious.

When a mild mannered and polite poster like Josephus describes someone as a "despicable individual", it's time to take notice.

One aspect of this law that has so far gone unnoticed is that a malicious person may enter the Confessional, tell the priest that he is a paedophile and confess some imaginary sins.
The priest does not report him and so is guilty of a crime.

Meanwhile, the malicious person tells the police what he has done and on investigation is found to not be a paedophile and not to have committed any crimes, this would still leave the priest/whatever guilty of not reporting the matter.

Of course, the offender could lie and say that he didn't hear the malevolent one's confession.

Anyone yet come up with an idea of how to collect evidence?