Court upholds law on reporting of child porn viewers

Therapists in California can be required to report patients who have looked at child pornography on the Internet despite the therapists’ claim that their clients are entitled to confidentiality and pose no threat to children, a state appeals court ruled Monday.

Finding no legitimate privacy rights at stake, the Second District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles upheld a 2015 state law that expanded the previous ban on child pornography to include images viewed online. State law for decades had required members of certain professions, including family therapists and clinical counselors, to notify police or child welfare agencies if their patients produced or viewed child porn.

“The privacy interest of patients who communicate that they watch child pornography is outweighed by the state’s interest in identifying and protecting sexually abused children,” Presiding Justice Roger Boren said in the 3-0 ruling.

Although communications between patients and their doctors or therapists are confidential, Boren said, that confidentiality is “not absolute” and must give way to the need to protect crime victims. He said viewing sexual images of children is a crime in California that victimizes children and helps to finance further exploitation.

“Not only is it illegal, the conduct is reprehensible, shameful and abhorred by any decent and normal standards of society,” Boren said. He said patients who share such information with their therapists have no “constitutionally protected privacy interest” and must be reported.

The law was challenged by an alcohol and drug counselor and two marriage and family therapists, whose practices included “sexual addiction.” They said patients who spoke of viewing child pornography images typically had no criminal record or history of sexual abuse of children, had no access to children at home or at work, and were ashamed of their attraction to minors.

Requiring therapists to report on their patients would destroy the patients’ trust and discourage them from speaking candidly or from seeking therapy at all, the therapists’ lawyers argued.

But the court said the law protects children from emotional as well as physical abuse.

“A report to authorities may disrupt the proliferation of child pornography and deter the underlying conduct of viewing children who have already been sexually exploited,” Boren said.

Even if the reporting requirement interferes with therapy, he said, “no fundamental privacy interest guarantees treatment for a sexual disorder that causes a patient to indulge in the criminal conduct of viewing Internet child pornography.”

Lawyers for the therapists could not be reached for comment. They could ask the state Supreme Court to review the ruling.