By Washington state law, viewing, creating, sharing, or selling child pornography is considered child abuse, and if a healthcare provider finds out about this, we are obligated to report it to Child Protective Services. A patient came in and told his behavioral health therapist that he liked to look at child pornography. So we made the mandatory report.
I now come to find out, due to the angry patient calling me, that CPS has changed their process. It used to be that CPS did a mandatory notification to law enforcement about people creating, sharing, or selling child pornography. They now do a mandatory notification about viewing it as well. The patient found out about this when a detective showed up on his doorstep. The patient was unhappy that we violated his privacy and I had to double-check on how the police found out about this.
The moral of the story is even if you want mental health help with child pornography, be careful who you mention it to. Your healthcare provider may be obligated to notify some sort of authorities about it, be they Child Protective Services and/or the local cops.
