Vincent Tabak confessed Joanna Yeates killing in emotional meeting with prison chaplain
A prison chaplain has told how Vincent Tabak confessed to killing Joanna Yeates during an emotional meeting in jail
Peter Brotherton, a voluntary Salvation Army chaplain at Long Lartin prison in Worcestershire said the Dutchman had unburdened himself on February 8 this year.
He said Tabak had requested a meeting, informing him: “I have something to tell you that will shock you.”
Giving evidence at Bristol Crown Court, Mr Brotherton said: “I said ‘you tell me and we will see’, or words to that effect.
“He said ‘I am going to change my plea to guilty’. He said it was to do with the crime he had committed.
“I said, ‘is this concerning the young lady from Bristol?’, he said ‘yes’.”
Mr Brotherton said Tabak was upset and said he was going to find it very difficult to tell his girlfriend, Tanja Morson.
The chaplain told the court he then advised him to contact his legal team and inform them of the decision and offered to pray with him.
While Mr Brotherton accepted he had told Tabak the conversation would be in confidence, he decided to tell his superiors because he did not regard it as a religious confession.
But under cross-examination by William Clegg QC, defending, Mr Brotherton accepted that Tabak had not told him he wanted to change his plea, only that he intended to plead guilty.
Mr Brotherton also told the court that Tabak was depressed and distressed and had been on suicide watch on the prison’s healthcare unit.
He said Tabak had been angry that he had breached his confidence and told him he would not tell him anything else.
So, chaplian decides what is or is not a "religious confession" and grasses on a prisoner. I can see that being useful in prison.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Do men of religion actually have a legal right to not to pass on information provided to them?
Here everyone has a duty of care to report any suspected child abuse. (Which I have done in the past and will do again in the future.)
If someone confessed to a priest that they had engaged in unspeakable acts with a child, does the priest have to keep Schaumburg about the information, or does he have a legal obligation to inform authorities.
Once upon a time, clergy were not mandated reporters and did not have to pass along such information that was received in any context. For the most part that has changed, but I am not sure whether it covers what is heard in the confessional. I suspect it does not, because it is generally recognized in law that priests cannot be forced to reveal what they have been told in confessional even under oath in criminal trials. I do not believe that it has ever been the position of anyone, including victims, that priests/bishops/cardinals/popes should have reported incidents of child abuse that came to their attention solely via confession. Obviously any cases that have come to light must have relied on some disclosure other than confession alone, since there hasn't been any wholesale violation of the seal of the confessional that has ever been reported.
"The dildo of consequence rarely comes lubed." -- Eileen Rose
"Colonialism is not 'winning' - it's an unsustainable model. Like your hairline." -- Candace Linklater
