A culture of deference to “untouchable stars,” an “above the law” attitude among members of management and a climate of fear at the BBC allowed Jimmy Savile, the disgraced British television personality, to carry out sexual assaults on children for decades, according to a leaked draft of an inquiry published on Thursday.
The 500-page draft, which was published by the news website Exaro, said the inquiry had heard from many BBC employees who knew of Mr. Savile’s predatory behavior, called the broadcaster’s investigations “wholly inadequate” and raised the possibility that other pedophiles could still be at the BBC.
Dame Janet Smith, a retired judge who has been leading a three-year independent investigation on behalf of the BBC into the broadcaster’s practices during the years it employed Mr. Savile, from 1964 to 2007, said in the draft that the multiple rapes and sexual assaults committed by him were all “in some way associated with the BBC.”
The draft also said that the atmosphere regarding whistle-blowers at the BBC had worsened since the revelations about Mr. Savile, and that people were now even less likely to come forward.
In a statement, the inquiry said that the document was out of date and that “significant changes” had been made to its contents and conclusions. The final report is expected to be released within six weeks.
Mr. Savile was one of Britain’s most celebrated TV personalities until revelations emerged in 2012, a year after his death, that he had been a sexual predator who had abused hundreds of adults and children.
The draft confirmed 61 cases of sexual assault, including four rapes and one attempted rape, which took place in virtually every one of the BBC premises Mr. Savile worked in. Three of his victims were 9 years old, and two of the rapes involved girls under 16, the draft said.
“Savile would seize the opportunity for sexual contact, even in public places such as corridors, staircases and canteens,” it said.
The draft suggested that a climate of fear at the BBC had dissuaded victims from making complaints against Mr. Savile.
In one example, a 19-year-old woman was almost raped by Mr. Savile in his trailer. After discussing the matter with colleagues, she decided not to file a complaint to the police or to the BBC, fearing that taking action would ruin her career. The draft noted that the BBC’s culture discouraged young women from filing complaints in general, “and about sexual misconduct or harassment in particular.”
“Given the hierarchical structure, the impracticability of complaining to anyone other than a line manager and the weakness of the personnel department, the only option for a victim of inappropriate behavior during the Savile years was to put up with it or leave,” the draft said. “By and large, they chose to stay because, in many respects, the BBC was a wonderful place to work.”
In another case cited by the draft, Mr. Savile was said to have molested a 17-year-old on the set of the show “Top of the Pops” in 1976. When she complained to staff members, “her complaint was brushed aside with the explanation that it was ‘just Jimmy fooling about.’ ”
The draft said that the atmosphere for whistle-blowers at the BBC was “even worse” now than in Savile’s time, because so many more people are freelancers or on short-term contracts, with little or no job security.
Although the BBC has introduced a policy to protect whistle-blowers, the draft said, “it is clear from the evidence that there is still a widespread reluctance to complain about anything, or even for it to be known that one has complained to a third party.”
Employees were “extremely anxious” about remaining anonymous when making comments about the BBC during the inquiry that were even mildly critical, the draft said.
Mark Watts, the editor in chief of Exaro, said that the draft was more than a year old but that the criticisms made against the BBC were still relevant.
“It is the draft from which criticisms were passed to individuals as relevant, and indeed to the BBC as an institution,” he told the BBC’s “Today” program on Thursday. “It is quite important to realize that the BBC as an institution knew about these criticisms, and they are extensive, more than a year ago.”
Will Wyatt, a former BBC director general, said people struggled to see how senior management could have ignored allegations of Mr. Savile’s sexual misconduct.
“I honestly never heard anything,” he told the BBC, also on the “Today” program.
“If you had said, around the time, that pop stars and D.J.s exploited their position, one would not be surprised,” he said. “But the thought that it was happening with young kids is just beyond belief. There’s no argument. People should have known, and he should not have been employed.”
In the draft’s conclusion, Dame Janet cited the potential for similar abuse cases. “I wish to consider whether it is possible that a predatory child abuser could be lurking undiscovered in the BBC even today,” she wrote. “The answer is that I think it is possible.”
Nearly 400 witnesses in connection with Mr. Savile were interviewed in the investigation.
“What happened was a dark chapter in the history of the BBC,” Tony Hall, the director general of the BBC, told the broadcaster. “The responsible thing must be to act on the final report which we have not received.”
He added that it would be “invaluable in helping us understand what happened and to help ensure that we do everything possible to avoid it happening again.”
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Ruby Jessop didn’t want her six children to reach their teenage years as she had, inside the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a polygamous sect.
Which is why a little more than three years ago, when Ruby was 26, she left the church and her remote, rural hometown of Colorado City, Ariz. Fewer than 8,000 people live in Colorado City and neighboring Hildale on the other side of the Utah border. The majority of the residents are FLDS church members who follow strict church teachings, including bans on most forms of entertainment.
Jessop brought her kids to Phoenix where her older sister, Flora Jessop, lives. When they arrived, Ruby Jessop sat them down and explained why they would not be going back.
“I told them, you know, I was forced to marry your dad, I didn’t want you to go through the same thing I went through,” Jessop said. “I didn’t want you to be forced to marry somebody you didn’t love. And I want you to have a choice.”
Jessop said when she was 14, her stepfather, who was the church bishop, forced her to marry her adult stepbrother.
“Something that no 14-year-old girl should ever go through,” Jessop said. “I was raped, multiple times.”
Jessop said the local police, the Colorado City-Hildale Marshal’s Office, did nothing to stop underage marriages like hers. She said the marshals were loyal to FLDS leader Warren Jeffs, who has been accused of arranging underage marriages.
Jeffs was ultimately convicted in 2011 of sexually assaulting girls he took as brides, and is serving a life sentence at a Texas prison.
“Most of the marshal’s office people, they are considered security for the church,” Jessop said. “Anything that goes on in the church they are going to hide it.”
That very allegation — that the town marshals are controlled by the FLDS church — will be examined in a federal civil rights trial that begins Wednesday in Phoenix.
Though the suit does not name the FLDS church as a defendant and does not explicitly take on the issue of church-sanctioned underage marriages, the United States Justice Department is accusing the marshals of allowing the underage marriages to go on.
It is one of the ways the Justice Department intends to paint a picture of Hildale and Colorado City as corrupt town governments that acted as arms of the FLDS church, and discriminated against those who had been expelled from the church or had left the faith.
Attorneys for the towns are expected to argue the problems with the marshals were resolved years ago, and the towns do not discriminate against residents on the basis of religion.
If the jury sides with the federal government, it could result in court-ordered reforms in the towns, and damages for victims of discrimination.
But Ruby Jessop can’t help wondering why the federal government didn’t intervene sooner. Her attitude toward the trial is a mix of emotions.
“It is a little bit too late,” Jessop said. “And I am excited to see what’s going to happen. Maybe something will happen. Maybe something won’t.”
Ruby’s sister Flora Jessop has been trying for years to draw attention to the problems in the FLDS church, which she refers to as a cult. She herself left nearly 30 years ago after she was married at age 16.
Flora Jessop has been frustrated by the lack of support services for those who take the difficult step of leaving the church for a completely foreign lifestyle they are unprepared for.
She also wonders about the Justice Department’s goals with this litigation.
“Is there going to be a fund set up to help the victims, and if so, who gets to decide who is a victim?” Jessop asked.
Some of the Justice Department’s key witnesses were at one point powerful men in town who have since turned on the church. They are expected to help the federal government’s case by testifying about FLDS coordination with town leadership.
But the Jessop sisters say they remember when some witnesses were complicit in the abusive mandates of Warren Jeffs. One key witness was a former bodyguard for Jeffs.
“He is the one who is going to benefit from the proceeds of this trial?” Flora Jessop said. “Where is the justice in this? It is infuriating to me.”
To both women, there won’t be true justice in the towns until more of the individuals responsible for child abuse there are behind bars.
“Every woman who didn’t stand up for her kid should be put in prison. Every father that stood up and told their family it is OK to sexualize young women should be put in prison,” Ruby Jessop said. “Including my mother, my very own mother.”
Flora Jessop believes the best remedy would be more resources to help those who want to leave the church and start a new life. She believes what is needed is a centralized apartment complex in Phoenix or other cities where women and children can come to transition.
“Bring the services to these women and children,” Flora Jessop said. “Do you know what it is like to transport eight children to appointments? Get them tutoring services. Bring them up to date and then put them in school.”
Ruby Jessop said her transition to working and caring for her kids in Phoenix hasn’t been easy, but she said she made the right choice to leave. She has a job at a restaurant and last year was able to get her own place for her kids, who are now between the ages of five and 13.
“I got my beautiful children away from all the abuse,” Jessop said. “All the hurtful things that have been happening up there.”
Now the big question she has: What will change?
Full article here: http://www.fronterasdesk.org/content/10200/sisters-raised-flds-church-question-justice-department-trial
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For more than a year, the State Attorney’s Office has been trying without success to extradite an ultra-Orthodox woman who is wanted in Australia on 74 counts of sexual assault against Jewish girls who were her students in a Melbourne school.
The woman, Malka Leifer, allegedly assaulted the girls while she was principal of the Adass Israel School in Melbourne, Australia, until 2008.
Leifer today lives in Bnei Brak, a largely ultra-Orthodox city in central Israel where she is under house arrest. She fled Australia to Israel, allegedly with the help of school employees, on the night she got wind of the allegations against her in 2008.
The school psychologist told Leifer that she was facing arrest, and on the same day the school staff bought plane tickets for her and her family, according to evidence presented at a civil trial in Australia last year.
Most of Leifer’s alleged victims were 14-15 years old at the time of the assaults.
The Australian extradition request has been heard by Judge Amnon Cohen at the Jerusalem District Court, but thus far there have been no hearings in Leifer’s case due to psychotic episodes she says she suffered before every single appearance in court, Israel Radio reported.
Her lawyers have asked the court to reject the extradition request due to her mental state. Mental health professionals, including the Jerusalem district psychiatrist, have confirmed that Leifer’s panic attacks in court were genuine and said the process of a court hearing puts her under extreme pressure, the report said.
Some of the girls allegedly assaulted by Leifer are willing to testify against her and are awaiting her extradition in Australia. She is accused of sexual assault against minors, conducting penetrative acts of a sexual nature against minors and rape, according to Australian law.
Manny Waks — a recent immigrant to Israel from Australia who has championed for victims of sexual abuse in ultra-Orthodox communities since revealing that he had been molested by Chabad educators as a child — told Israel Radio that one of two sisters who were among Leifer’s victims had died in London, England. He claimed the death was due to the emotional stress caused her by the assaults.
Dr. Yitzhak Kadman, head of the Israel National Council for the Child, said some of the victims contacted the organization he heads in Israel. The “frustration and anger” felt by the victims over the fact that Israeli authorities have been unsuccessful in their efforts bringing Leifer to justice is “intolerable,” he said.
Kadman said his organization has been relaying to the State Attorney’s Office every bit of information he received from the Australian victims.
“I don’t think Israel should become an asylum for sex offenders and this is certainly not the way to receive [Jewish] immigration,” he said.
“We see again and again that this story of sexual assaults against minors in religious institutions is not solely a trademark of the Catholic Church,” Kadman said, adding that several such cases have already been exposed in Jewish educational institutions.
He said that if Leifer’s psychotic episodes were triggered by the pressure of appearing in court, the judge should come to her house and complete the extradition procedure.
But a statement from the court said that, “according to professionals’ medical opinions, a hearing cannot be held in the presence of Malka Leifer, and attempts to hold a hearing in her home are also impossible. No [tranquilizing] pill can help [calm her down] before a court hearing.”
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They could be living anywhere, unchecked, unregistered and under no suspicion.
What’s to stop a priest who’s molested children from living where he chooses, free to mingle in your neighborhood, greet your kids, earn their trust, and yours?
Sometimes, absolutely nothing.
Our statute of limitations permits this freedom, from both supervision and prison, creating an irony 13 years ago that helped expose the church sex abuse scandal, while allowing priests guilty of horrific crimes to walk free.
Lots of priests admitted, in writing during the state’s investigation, that they had sexually molested children, yet these same priests went on with their lives, blending in with society, the public unaware of the danger they posed.
Further, there is no central method of tracking the number of priests charged, investigated or prosecuted since the New Hampshire attorney general’s landmark report was released in March 2003.
When the names of the accused priests were first made public, safeguards were created to curb a scandal that rocked the world, once the Boston Globe Spotlight team cracked the case in 2002.
A movie, Spotlight, came out last year and depicted the pavement-pounding work by the Globe’s four-person team. That led to our series on New Hampshire’s historic role in exposing the rape and molestation of children by men beyond reproach. Thanks to an exhaustive yearlong investigation by the attorney general’s office, New Hampshire took the ball from Massachusetts and ran with it, opening a legal avenue that other states tried to emulate.
The Diocese of Manchester admitted to endangering children by sheltering abusive priests over the course of 40 years. Investigators Jim Rosenberg and Will Delker flexed their office’s muscle and dug into church files, uncovering years of systematic abuse and cover up.
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However, it also led to a stunning revelation that law enforcement has allowed many dangerous criminals to drop off their radar.
It turns out, their photos and addresses are on no sex offender registry. They don’t have to check in with a parole officer, and police aren’t notified if they move.
More than a decade after the scandal broke, finding out where these men are and what they’re up to can be tricky at best.
“If any other group of people had committed a mass atrocity of this kind, the statute of limitations would have been done a long time ago,” said Manchester attorney Mark Abramson, who represented three boys in a civil suit in 2002. “It’s awful that some of these people are still walking around without having received any punishment.”
For example, Father Paul Aube’s abusive behavior was documented in the attorney general’s report, with a church cover-up leading to transfers of Aube, from Berlin to Nashua to Rochester to Concord to Manchester.
The attorney general’s report said Aube sexually assaulted a minor at Holy Rosary in Rochester in 1981. Using immunity as an ally, Aube described some of his other sexual attacks against minors, helping the state expose the scandal and leading to audits and better communication between the diocese and the attorney general’s office.
And the punishment for Aube?
He went free. A source I spoke to hopes to find Aube, who’s listed with a Florida address, and warn neighbors about his past.
The source told me he feels a sense of duty. Victims, who call themselves survivors, feel the need to coordinate their own supervisory system. They operate websites and write stories about sex crimes committed by priests.
“Reforming the statute is absolutely the quickest, safest and cheapest and most effective way to protect kids,” David Clohessy, leader of the nation’s largest support group for victims of clergy molestation, said from his home in St. Louis.
“If New Hampshire could have one crime with no statute of limitations, I would say don’t have it on murder, have it on child sex abuse. There just aren’t very many serial murderers, and there are almost no one-time child molesters.”
Clohessy, a survivor himself, is the national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP. He coordinates the formation of state support groups, seeks donations, provides data and writes stories about priests involved in sexually abusing children.
Clohessy was referred to me by David Ouellette of Rochester, New Hampshire’s SNAP director. Ouellette spoke openly for a segment in our series, detailing the abuse he suffered in Dover at age 15.
Only now, more than 35 years later, is Ouellette emerging from a life of irritability, fear and depression. He told his wife shortly after the Globe story broke, and only recently revealed his dark secret to his children, when he believed they were old enough to deal with it.
The movie Spotlight, plus recent therapy, has pushed Ouellette to proceed with something he’s always wanted to do: Create a central facility to house a support group for survivors still trying to cope and adjust to their past. He said he’s found a place in downtown Concord, and, before releasing the site and a schedule, is waiting to hear from SNAP members.
Ouellette, like Clohessy, was critical of the state’s statute of limitations.
“I don’t think it’s fair,” Ouellette told me. “Research has found that most (victims) come out and talk about it in their 40s and 50s. The statute of limitations should not have an end point for this.”
Jim Rosenberg of Concord, who helped lead the attorney general’s investigation in 2002, disagrees. Rosenberg, who now works for a local law firm, said New Hampshire’s statute – allegations can be made within 22 years of a victim’s 18th birthday – is fair.
The state statute of limitations was certainly far narrower before 1987, when victims younger than 18 had six years to come forward once they turned 18.
“The current statute of limitations makes room for victims of childhood sexual assault to come forward as adults,” Rosenberg wrote in an email to me. “I think the current statute responsibly balances the concern that a child victim would not be competent to come forward until well into adulthood with concerns for false claims later brought for the wrong reasons.”
Still, 23 states have no statute of limitations for sexual assault against minors, according to a study by the National Center for Victims of Crime.
Rosenberg pointed out that citizens can turn to the attorney general’s website to read about priests convicted of sexual crimes against minors or who admitted wrongdoing and went unpunished.
“This public disclosure,” Rosenberg wrote, “supplies an enormous amount of information regarding offending priests, actually far more than the registry does.”
Information, though, can still be hard to come by. Deputy Attorney General Ann Rice said her office has received complaints on 157 church-affiliated individuals for sexual abuse-related crimes since 2006, an average of nearly 16 per year.
Thirty-two of those cases were referred to law enforcement, meaning the alleged perpetrators were still alive and the statute of limitations had not expired. But Rice did not know the fate of those people.
The guess here is that zero New Hampshire priests were convicted of raping or molesting minors. We would have heard about it, right? Does that mean nothing is going on, anywhere?
You’d need to call each police department in the state to gather data on how many priests have been charged with sexually abusing minors, and what happened to them.
“We do not do sexual assault investigations or prosecutions,” Rice said, “unless it’s someone who is a public official, and that would fall under public corruptions stuff.”
According to Rice, 54 alleged abusers had died by the time of the complaint, 29 were protected by the statute of limitations and 25 were not investigated due to lack of evidence.
I asked Rice if the system in place to protect children is working.
“I’m not going to tell you whether I feel good or not about it,” Rice said. “I do know that the church is regularly reporting to us any information they have on allegations of sexual abuse. There is ongoing communication between our office and the diocese on these issues.”
Things are better than pre-2002, no doubt. But, Ouellette warned, nothing should be taken for granted.
Complacency, he noted, leads to a repeat of the past.
“I think that the behavior will continue if people don’t keep up on it,” he told me. “So yes, I am worried about that.”
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Mina Karp can’t really remember exactly how old she was when her life changed forever.
She must have been six years old, she told the Magazine, in her first interview with the press. She had been living in Jerusalem’s haredi (ultra- Orthodox) neighborhood of Sanhedria.
Her mother agreed to let her go to synagogue on her own. The young Karp was excited because there was an aufruf in which a bridegroom is called to the Torah for a Shabbat celebration.
During the celebration, a young haredi man, about 15 or 16 years old, motioned to her and asked her if she wanted to help make “goody bags” and get some candy. Of course she did.
“I found myself going after him, and we went quite a ways, and I didn’t understand why we walked so far…. He took me to a dark storage room, and he took off my stockings – because I was haredi – and the ‘touching’ [of his and her genitals] began. That’s when something else in my life began.”
What began were years of confusion, shame, guilt, helplessness, even more incidents of abuse by others, and, until recently… silence. She never told her mother, out of fear that her naive, conservative mother would yell at her or brush it off; nor did she tell anyone in her community. She kept it in, not really understanding the exact psychological gravity of such an event until she became an adult.
“I thought that talking about it would be part of my redemption,” the 28-yearold said of her recent decision to speak out.
Karp eventually married and, together, she and her husband left the haredi fold, but the healing process consumes her daily. Living a new life in Ashkelon, Karp hasn’t followed efforts in the haredi world, and in the religious Jewish world in general, to prevent what she considers “soul murder.”
The last few years have seen an increasing number of efforts – some organized, and some grassroots – to lift the veil of silence over a topic fraught with fear, shame and stigma among both victims and religious community leaders.
Full article: http://oritarfa.net/1769-2/
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My wife and I just went to see a truly excellent film named “Spotlight.” It tells the story of the investigative reporting team for the Boston Globe newspaper by the same name that broke the story regarding the mass cover-up of catholic priests who were caught molesting thousands of children over the course of decades. The local dioceses worked to silence victims and quietly pay them off while at the same time denying that there was a well-known and systemic problem of child abuse being facilitated by the church. The acting was superb and the story was gripping – and admittedly quite disturbing.
When the film ended and my wife and I were exiting the theater, we were greeted by several couples from our community who amid sighs of relief said, “I guess we should be glad that we’re Jewish!” My wife and I looked at each other and replied, “The Hasidic and Haredi communities throughout the US and Israel are plagued with the same problem of pervasive child abuse and they are covering it up in much the same way.” The response we got was one of shock. “But in Judaism we don’t believe in celibacy so how could we be having the same problems as catholics?” I proceeded to explain to them that although Judaism doesn’t believe in celibacy, the Hasidic and Haredi views of sex and sexuality were adopted from catholic asceticism centuries ago. I further explained that the unnatural segregation of the genders ultimately leads to objectifying women and the absolute silence and lack of education about sexual development and healthy sexuality in those communities contributes prominently to the problem. Add to this that Hasidim and Haredim almost universally forbid going to the police to report cases of abuse by their rabbis, and you have something very close to what was experienced in Boston and many other cities across the globe.
As we watched the film we were absolutely stunned at the parallels between the two communities and their issues with pedophilia and deviant sexuality. The studies cited in the film showed that the majority of priests involved in such activities were emotionally stunted, having the mentality of a 12 or 13 year old and an inability to properly function socially. This reminded us of the very many Haredim/Hasidim whom we have encountered and seen who have weird social ticks, an almost inability to process social cues, can be seen picking their noses in an almost obsessive manner in public, don’t regularly bathe, and who exhibit just a general immaturity in most areas of their lives. The way in which the offending priests were constantly shuffled around from parish to parish is reminiscent of elementary school rebbes being caught and transferred to other schools – all while the administrations and “gedolim” are aware of such behavior. The way in which the cardinal went out of his way to defend and protect the offenders for the greater “good” of the catholic church reminded us of the many instances of rabbis and leaders showing up to court to defend the molester because they feel that it is wrong to “take him away from his family.” The similarities were eerie, but not surprising.
I myself have had the unfortunate experience of sitting in a meeting after having blown the whistle on a scandal in the Jewish community thinking that I was going to see justice served and then hearing the words “So, how much will it take to keep you quiet?” come from the lips of the “gadol” sitting to my right. A Satmar man whom I was working for had been making sexual advances toward a non-Jewish employee. This young woman approached me and produced texts and emails from him in which he made such advances. She told me that she had decided to ask me for help because she trusted me. I in turn called the “rabbi” whom I trusted and set up a meeting, only to have my trust betrayed by him covering it up. When I tried to warn others about this sick individual, these same “rabbis” to whom I had spoken told those who came to confirm my story with them that I was a liar and anything that I had said about this Satmar “hasid” was lashon hara and was not to be believed. I have also felt my heart break as a friend related to me that these same “rabbis” covered up the accosting of his young daughter by a known molester who had visited the community from New York. And the list goes on. These things are real and are as pervasive and as sick as you can imagine.
Many times when I speak out passionately against the Haredi and Hasidic communities I am told to “stop being so negative” and to have more of an attitude of “live and let live,” but I am not so sure that this is the right thing to do. There is a mentality within Judaism that has true Torah values in a stranglehold and is desperately trying to suffocate them and replace them with and evil doppelganger known alternately as “Toyrah” and “Yiddishkeit.” These people – whether knowingly or not – have taken a Near Eastern religion and have turned it into a Euro-centric phenomenon. The way they dress, the way they [mis]apply Jewish law, the way they censor and sanitize Jewish texts and Jewish history, their ascetic and ostensibly catholic ideas about sex, and their cult mentality of “Daas Toyrah” – all of it is literally destroying Judaism from the inside out. And if we are honest with our history, the mentality of “live and let live” is how we got here in the first place. If we continue to allow this movement to speak for and represent Judaism, then we are all headed for disaster, has wa-halilah. I don’t mean to be overly dramatic, I am completely serious.
And it is not the issue of child sexual abuse alone that is proof of how out of control the problem is, there are many more. Judaism is a religion of law, and almost every facet of halakhah has been infiltrated by these impostors and has been redefined. Kashruth, Hilkhoth Shabbath, Taharath HaMishpahah, Tefillah, and the list goes on – everything is being re-invented and re-interpreted to levels of absurdity never before sanctioned or tolerated by religious Jews in history. If we want our reasonable, intelligent, compassionate, honest, and morally sound Judaism back, then we need to take it back. We need to stop giving our money and resources to Haredi and Hasidic institutions. We need to stop buying their books and their sefarim. We need to stop sending our sons and daughters to their yeshivoth and seminaries. We need to stop attending their shuls and kollelim. We need to stop paying their salaries through our dues. And most of all, we need to stop kidding ourselves that the problems are relatively minor and that the “gedolim” are the true spokesmen for authentic Torah Judaism. The Haredi/Hasidic system is one that subsists almost entirely on fear and welfare. If the givers stop giving them their allegiance and their money, then the system will ultimately shut down. And if we give our time and resources to those working to heal Judaism and restore it to its authentic expression and values, then truly Torah-based institutions and their rabbinic leadership will flourish.
Many who speak out against the things taking place in Judaism are angry people, and understandably so, but too often they are branded as “trouble-makers” and “naysayers” and cast aside while their words fall on deaf ears. I want to go on record right now and say that I love Judaism and I love Jewish people. I care about the futures of my children and my grandchildren very much. I also am not a fan of conflict. It turns my stomach to have to fight and – like most everyone else – I would rather just leave all of these issues alone. “Live and let live” is the easy option and not rocking the boat has the added advantage of allowing one to pass through the orthodox world undetected. But the problem is that, like all the catholics in Boston who decided to remain silent in the face of blatant corruption and evil within the church learned, such silence only makes things worse.
I’m not angry. I’m not flying the flag of “Dati Leumi” or “Modern Orthodox.” I am not denying that there are truly good Jews in the Haredi and Hasidic camps – there certainly are. I am just trying to say that if we truly love each other as Jews, if we truly love God, and if we truly love the Torah, then “live and let live” is simply not an option.
I would love to be able to speak about these things in more positive terms, but honestly, what we are talking about here is truly negative so how can we speak about it in any other way?
May HaShem help us all to be vocal and do what is right.
KIMIKO DE FREYTAS-TAMURAJAN, Draft of Inquiry Report on Jimmy Savile Cites Flaws in BBC Culture, NY Times
/in Uncategorized /by SOL ReformA culture of deference to “untouchable stars,” an “above the law” attitude among members of management and a climate of fear at the BBC allowed Jimmy Savile, the disgraced British television personality, to carry out sexual assaults on children for decades, according to a leaked draft of an inquiry published on Thursday.
The 500-page draft, which was published by the news website Exaro, said the inquiry had heard from many BBC employees who knew of Mr. Savile’s predatory behavior, called the broadcaster’s investigations “wholly inadequate” and raised the possibility that other pedophiles could still be at the BBC.
Dame Janet Smith, a retired judge who has been leading a three-year independent investigation on behalf of the BBC into the broadcaster’s practices during the years it employed Mr. Savile, from 1964 to 2007, said in the draft that the multiple rapes and sexual assaults committed by him were all “in some way associated with the BBC.”
The draft also said that the atmosphere regarding whistle-blowers at the BBC had worsened since the revelations about Mr. Savile, and that people were now even less likely to come forward.
In a statement, the inquiry said that the document was out of date and that “significant changes” had been made to its contents and conclusions. The final report is expected to be released within six weeks.
Mr. Savile was one of Britain’s most celebrated TV personalities until revelations emerged in 2012, a year after his death, that he had been a sexual predator who had abused hundreds of adults and children.
The draft confirmed 61 cases of sexual assault, including four rapes and one attempted rape, which took place in virtually every one of the BBC premises Mr. Savile worked in. Three of his victims were 9 years old, and two of the rapes involved girls under 16, the draft said.
“Savile would seize the opportunity for sexual contact, even in public places such as corridors, staircases and canteens,” it said.
The draft suggested that a climate of fear at the BBC had dissuaded victims from making complaints against Mr. Savile.
In one example, a 19-year-old woman was almost raped by Mr. Savile in his trailer. After discussing the matter with colleagues, she decided not to file a complaint to the police or to the BBC, fearing that taking action would ruin her career. The draft noted that the BBC’s culture discouraged young women from filing complaints in general, “and about sexual misconduct or harassment in particular.”
“Given the hierarchical structure, the impracticability of complaining to anyone other than a line manager and the weakness of the personnel department, the only option for a victim of inappropriate behavior during the Savile years was to put up with it or leave,” the draft said. “By and large, they chose to stay because, in many respects, the BBC was a wonderful place to work.”
In another case cited by the draft, Mr. Savile was said to have molested a 17-year-old on the set of the show “Top of the Pops” in 1976. When she complained to staff members, “her complaint was brushed aside with the explanation that it was ‘just Jimmy fooling about.’ ”
The draft said that the atmosphere for whistle-blowers at the BBC was “even worse” now than in Savile’s time, because so many more people are freelancers or on short-term contracts, with little or no job security.
Although the BBC has introduced a policy to protect whistle-blowers, the draft said, “it is clear from the evidence that there is still a widespread reluctance to complain about anything, or even for it to be known that one has complained to a third party.”
Employees were “extremely anxious” about remaining anonymous when making comments about the BBC during the inquiry that were even mildly critical, the draft said.
Mark Watts, the editor in chief of Exaro, said that the draft was more than a year old but that the criticisms made against the BBC were still relevant.
“It is the draft from which criticisms were passed to individuals as relevant, and indeed to the BBC as an institution,” he told the BBC’s “Today” program on Thursday. “It is quite important to realize that the BBC as an institution knew about these criticisms, and they are extensive, more than a year ago.”
Will Wyatt, a former BBC director general, said people struggled to see how senior management could have ignored allegations of Mr. Savile’s sexual misconduct.
“I honestly never heard anything,” he told the BBC, also on the “Today” program.
“If you had said, around the time, that pop stars and D.J.s exploited their position, one would not be surprised,” he said. “But the thought that it was happening with young kids is just beyond belief. There’s no argument. People should have known, and he should not have been employed.”
In the draft’s conclusion, Dame Janet cited the potential for similar abuse cases. “I wish to consider whether it is possible that a predatory child abuser could be lurking undiscovered in the BBC even today,” she wrote. “The answer is that I think it is possible.”
Nearly 400 witnesses in connection with Mr. Savile were interviewed in the investigation.
“What happened was a dark chapter in the history of the BBC,” Tony Hall, the director general of the BBC, told the broadcaster. “The responsible thing must be to act on the final report which we have not received.”
He added that it would be “invaluable in helping us understand what happened and to help ensure that we do everything possible to avoid it happening again.”
Draft of Inquiry Report on Jimmy Savile Cites Flaws in BBC Culture – The New York Times
Jude Joffe-Block, Sisters Raised In FLDS Church Question Justice Department Trial, Fronteras
/in Uncategorized /by SOL ReformRuby Jessop didn’t want her six children to reach their teenage years as she had, inside the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a polygamous sect.
Which is why a little more than three years ago, when Ruby was 26, she left the church and her remote, rural hometown of Colorado City, Ariz. Fewer than 8,000 people live in Colorado City and neighboring Hildale on the other side of the Utah border. The majority of the residents are FLDS church members who follow strict church teachings, including bans on most forms of entertainment.
Jessop brought her kids to Phoenix where her older sister, Flora Jessop, lives. When they arrived, Ruby Jessop sat them down and explained why they would not be going back.
“I told them, you know, I was forced to marry your dad, I didn’t want you to go through the same thing I went through,” Jessop said. “I didn’t want you to be forced to marry somebody you didn’t love. And I want you to have a choice.”
Jessop said when she was 14, her stepfather, who was the church bishop, forced her to marry her adult stepbrother.
“Something that no 14-year-old girl should ever go through,” Jessop said. “I was raped, multiple times.”
Jessop said the local police, the Colorado City-Hildale Marshal’s Office, did nothing to stop underage marriages like hers. She said the marshals were loyal to FLDS leader Warren Jeffs, who has been accused of arranging underage marriages.
Jeffs was ultimately convicted in 2011 of sexually assaulting girls he took as brides, and is serving a life sentence at a Texas prison.
“Most of the marshal’s office people, they are considered security for the church,” Jessop said. “Anything that goes on in the church they are going to hide it.”
That very allegation — that the town marshals are controlled by the FLDS church — will be examined in a federal civil rights trial that begins Wednesday in Phoenix.
Though the suit does not name the FLDS church as a defendant and does not explicitly take on the issue of church-sanctioned underage marriages, the United States Justice Department is accusing the marshals of allowing the underage marriages to go on.
It is one of the ways the Justice Department intends to paint a picture of Hildale and Colorado City as corrupt town governments that acted as arms of the FLDS church, and discriminated against those who had been expelled from the church or had left the faith.
Attorneys for the towns are expected to argue the problems with the marshals were resolved years ago, and the towns do not discriminate against residents on the basis of religion.
If the jury sides with the federal government, it could result in court-ordered reforms in the towns, and damages for victims of discrimination.
But Ruby Jessop can’t help wondering why the federal government didn’t intervene sooner. Her attitude toward the trial is a mix of emotions.
“It is a little bit too late,” Jessop said. “And I am excited to see what’s going to happen. Maybe something will happen. Maybe something won’t.”
Ruby’s sister Flora Jessop has been trying for years to draw attention to the problems in the FLDS church, which she refers to as a cult. She herself left nearly 30 years ago after she was married at age 16.
Flora Jessop has been frustrated by the lack of support services for those who take the difficult step of leaving the church for a completely foreign lifestyle they are unprepared for.
She also wonders about the Justice Department’s goals with this litigation.
“Is there going to be a fund set up to help the victims, and if so, who gets to decide who is a victim?” Jessop asked.
Some of the Justice Department’s key witnesses were at one point powerful men in town who have since turned on the church. They are expected to help the federal government’s case by testifying about FLDS coordination with town leadership.
But the Jessop sisters say they remember when some witnesses were complicit in the abusive mandates of Warren Jeffs. One key witness was a former bodyguard for Jeffs.
“He is the one who is going to benefit from the proceeds of this trial?” Flora Jessop said. “Where is the justice in this? It is infuriating to me.”
To both women, there won’t be true justice in the towns until more of the individuals responsible for child abuse there are behind bars.
“Every woman who didn’t stand up for her kid should be put in prison. Every father that stood up and told their family it is OK to sexualize young women should be put in prison,” Ruby Jessop said. “Including my mother, my very own mother.”
Flora Jessop believes the best remedy would be more resources to help those who want to leave the church and start a new life. She believes what is needed is a centralized apartment complex in Phoenix or other cities where women and children can come to transition.
“Bring the services to these women and children,” Flora Jessop said. “Do you know what it is like to transport eight children to appointments? Get them tutoring services. Bring them up to date and then put them in school.”
Ruby Jessop said her transition to working and caring for her kids in Phoenix hasn’t been easy, but she said she made the right choice to leave. She has a job at a restaurant and last year was able to get her own place for her kids, who are now between the ages of five and 13.
“I got my beautiful children away from all the abuse,” Jessop said. “All the hurtful things that have been happening up there.”
Now the big question she has: What will change?
Full article here: http://www.fronterasdesk.org/content/10200/sisters-raised-flds-church-question-justice-department-trial
Times of Israel Staff, State unable to extradite Australian educator wanted for sex abuse, Times of Israel
/in Uncategorized /by SOL ReformFor more than a year, the State Attorney’s Office has been trying without success to extradite an ultra-Orthodox woman who is wanted in Australia on 74 counts of sexual assault against Jewish girls who were her students in a Melbourne school.
The woman, Malka Leifer, allegedly assaulted the girls while she was principal of the Adass Israel School in Melbourne, Australia, until 2008.
Leifer today lives in Bnei Brak, a largely ultra-Orthodox city in central Israel where she is under house arrest. She fled Australia to Israel, allegedly with the help of school employees, on the night she got wind of the allegations against her in 2008.
The school psychologist told Leifer that she was facing arrest, and on the same day the school staff bought plane tickets for her and her family, according to evidence presented at a civil trial in Australia last year.
Most of Leifer’s alleged victims were 14-15 years old at the time of the assaults.
The Australian extradition request has been heard by Judge Amnon Cohen at the Jerusalem District Court, but thus far there have been no hearings in Leifer’s case due to psychotic episodes she says she suffered before every single appearance in court, Israel Radio reported.
Her lawyers have asked the court to reject the extradition request due to her mental state. Mental health professionals, including the Jerusalem district psychiatrist, have confirmed that Leifer’s panic attacks in court were genuine and said the process of a court hearing puts her under extreme pressure, the report said.
Some of the girls allegedly assaulted by Leifer are willing to testify against her and are awaiting her extradition in Australia. She is accused of sexual assault against minors, conducting penetrative acts of a sexual nature against minors and rape, according to Australian law.
Manny Waks — a recent immigrant to Israel from Australia who has championed for victims of sexual abuse in ultra-Orthodox communities since revealing that he had been molested by Chabad educators as a child — told Israel Radio that one of two sisters who were among Leifer’s victims had died in London, England. He claimed the death was due to the emotional stress caused her by the assaults.
Dr. Yitzhak Kadman, head of the Israel National Council for the Child, said some of the victims contacted the organization he heads in Israel. The “frustration and anger” felt by the victims over the fact that Israeli authorities have been unsuccessful in their efforts bringing Leifer to justice is “intolerable,” he said.
Kadman said his organization has been relaying to the State Attorney’s Office every bit of information he received from the Australian victims.
“I don’t think Israel should become an asylum for sex offenders and this is certainly not the way to receive [Jewish] immigration,” he said.
“We see again and again that this story of sexual assaults against minors in religious institutions is not solely a trademark of the Catholic Church,” Kadman said, adding that several such cases have already been exposed in Jewish educational institutions.
He said that if Leifer’s psychotic episodes were triggered by the pressure of appearing in court, the judge should come to her house and complete the extradition procedure.
But a statement from the court said that, “according to professionals’ medical opinions, a hearing cannot be held in the presence of Malka Leifer, and attempts to hold a hearing in her home are also impossible. No [tranquilizing] pill can help [calm her down] before a court hearing.”
State unable to extradite Australian educator wanted for sex abuse _ The Times of Israel
Ray Duckler, A survivor, still haunted by church abuse, hopes to provide an outlet for others, Concord Monitor
/in New Hampshire /by SOL ReformThey could be living anywhere, unchecked, unregistered and under no suspicion.
What’s to stop a priest who’s molested children from living where he chooses, free to mingle in your neighborhood, greet your kids, earn their trust, and yours?
Sometimes, absolutely nothing.
Our statute of limitations permits this freedom, from both supervision and prison, creating an irony 13 years ago that helped expose the church sex abuse scandal, while allowing priests guilty of horrific crimes to walk free.
Lots of priests admitted, in writing during the state’s investigation, that they had sexually molested children, yet these same priests went on with their lives, blending in with society, the public unaware of the danger they posed.
Further, there is no central method of tracking the number of priests charged, investigated or prosecuted since the New Hampshire attorney general’s landmark report was released in March 2003.
When the names of the accused priests were first made public, safeguards were created to curb a scandal that rocked the world, once the Boston Globe Spotlight team cracked the case in 2002.
A movie, Spotlight, came out last year and depicted the pavement-pounding work by the Globe’s four-person team. That led to our series on New Hampshire’s historic role in exposing the rape and molestation of children by men beyond reproach. Thanks to an exhaustive yearlong investigation by the attorney general’s office, New Hampshire took the ball from Massachusetts and ran with it, opening a legal avenue that other states tried to emulate.
The Diocese of Manchester admitted to endangering children by sheltering abusive priests over the course of 40 years. Investigators Jim Rosenberg and Will Delker flexed their office’s muscle and dug into church files, uncovering years of systematic abuse and cover up.
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However, it also led to a stunning revelation that law enforcement has allowed many dangerous criminals to drop off their radar.
It turns out, their photos and addresses are on no sex offender registry. They don’t have to check in with a parole officer, and police aren’t notified if they move.
More than a decade after the scandal broke, finding out where these men are and what they’re up to can be tricky at best.
“If any other group of people had committed a mass atrocity of this kind, the statute of limitations would have been done a long time ago,” said Manchester attorney Mark Abramson, who represented three boys in a civil suit in 2002. “It’s awful that some of these people are still walking around without having received any punishment.”
For example, Father Paul Aube’s abusive behavior was documented in the attorney general’s report, with a church cover-up leading to transfers of Aube, from Berlin to Nashua to Rochester to Concord to Manchester.
The attorney general’s report said Aube sexually assaulted a minor at Holy Rosary in Rochester in 1981. Using immunity as an ally, Aube described some of his other sexual attacks against minors, helping the state expose the scandal and leading to audits and better communication between the diocese and the attorney general’s office.
And the punishment for Aube?
He went free. A source I spoke to hopes to find Aube, who’s listed with a Florida address, and warn neighbors about his past.
The source told me he feels a sense of duty. Victims, who call themselves survivors, feel the need to coordinate their own supervisory system. They operate websites and write stories about sex crimes committed by priests.
“Reforming the statute is absolutely the quickest, safest and cheapest and most effective way to protect kids,” David Clohessy, leader of the nation’s largest support group for victims of clergy molestation, said from his home in St. Louis.
“If New Hampshire could have one crime with no statute of limitations, I would say don’t have it on murder, have it on child sex abuse. There just aren’t very many serial murderers, and there are almost no one-time child molesters.”
Clohessy, a survivor himself, is the national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP. He coordinates the formation of state support groups, seeks donations, provides data and writes stories about priests involved in sexually abusing children.
Clohessy was referred to me by David Ouellette of Rochester, New Hampshire’s SNAP director. Ouellette spoke openly for a segment in our series, detailing the abuse he suffered in Dover at age 15.
Only now, more than 35 years later, is Ouellette emerging from a life of irritability, fear and depression. He told his wife shortly after the Globe story broke, and only recently revealed his dark secret to his children, when he believed they were old enough to deal with it.
The movie Spotlight, plus recent therapy, has pushed Ouellette to proceed with something he’s always wanted to do: Create a central facility to house a support group for survivors still trying to cope and adjust to their past. He said he’s found a place in downtown Concord, and, before releasing the site and a schedule, is waiting to hear from SNAP members.
Ouellette, like Clohessy, was critical of the state’s statute of limitations.
“I don’t think it’s fair,” Ouellette told me. “Research has found that most (victims) come out and talk about it in their 40s and 50s. The statute of limitations should not have an end point for this.”
Jim Rosenberg of Concord, who helped lead the attorney general’s investigation in 2002, disagrees. Rosenberg, who now works for a local law firm, said New Hampshire’s statute – allegations can be made within 22 years of a victim’s 18th birthday – is fair.
The state statute of limitations was certainly far narrower before 1987, when victims younger than 18 had six years to come forward once they turned 18.
“The current statute of limitations makes room for victims of childhood sexual assault to come forward as adults,” Rosenberg wrote in an email to me. “I think the current statute responsibly balances the concern that a child victim would not be competent to come forward until well into adulthood with concerns for false claims later brought for the wrong reasons.”
Still, 23 states have no statute of limitations for sexual assault against minors, according to a study by the National Center for Victims of Crime.
Rosenberg pointed out that citizens can turn to the attorney general’s website to read about priests convicted of sexual crimes against minors or who admitted wrongdoing and went unpunished.
“This public disclosure,” Rosenberg wrote, “supplies an enormous amount of information regarding offending priests, actually far more than the registry does.”
Information, though, can still be hard to come by. Deputy Attorney General Ann Rice said her office has received complaints on 157 church-affiliated individuals for sexual abuse-related crimes since 2006, an average of nearly 16 per year.
Thirty-two of those cases were referred to law enforcement, meaning the alleged perpetrators were still alive and the statute of limitations had not expired. But Rice did not know the fate of those people.
The guess here is that zero New Hampshire priests were convicted of raping or molesting minors. We would have heard about it, right? Does that mean nothing is going on, anywhere?
You’d need to call each police department in the state to gather data on how many priests have been charged with sexually abusing minors, and what happened to them.
“We do not do sexual assault investigations or prosecutions,” Rice said, “unless it’s someone who is a public official, and that would fall under public corruptions stuff.”
According to Rice, 54 alleged abusers had died by the time of the complaint, 29 were protected by the statute of limitations and 25 were not investigated due to lack of evidence.
I asked Rice if the system in place to protect children is working.
“I’m not going to tell you whether I feel good or not about it,” Rice said. “I do know that the church is regularly reporting to us any information they have on allegations of sexual abuse. There is ongoing communication between our office and the diocese on these issues.”
Things are better than pre-2002, no doubt. But, Ouellette warned, nothing should be taken for granted.
Complacency, he noted, leads to a repeat of the past.
“I think that the behavior will continue if people don’t keep up on it,” he told me. “So yes, I am worried about that.”
A survivor, still haunted by church abuse, hopes to provide an outlet for others _ Concord Monitor
Orit Arfa, THE SILENCE BREAKERS
/in Uncategorized /by SOL ReformMina Karp can’t really remember exactly how old she was when her life changed forever.
She must have been six years old, she told the Magazine, in her first interview with the press. She had been living in Jerusalem’s haredi (ultra- Orthodox) neighborhood of Sanhedria.
Her mother agreed to let her go to synagogue on her own. The young Karp was excited because there was an aufruf in which a bridegroom is called to the Torah for a Shabbat celebration.
During the celebration, a young haredi man, about 15 or 16 years old, motioned to her and asked her if she wanted to help make “goody bags” and get some candy. Of course she did.
“I found myself going after him, and we went quite a ways, and I didn’t understand why we walked so far…. He took me to a dark storage room, and he took off my stockings – because I was haredi – and the ‘touching’ [of his and her genitals] began. That’s when something else in my life began.”
What began were years of confusion, shame, guilt, helplessness, even more incidents of abuse by others, and, until recently… silence. She never told her mother, out of fear that her naive, conservative mother would yell at her or brush it off; nor did she tell anyone in her community. She kept it in, not really understanding the exact psychological gravity of such an event until she became an adult.
“I thought that talking about it would be part of my redemption,” the 28-yearold said of her recent decision to speak out.
Karp eventually married and, together, she and her husband left the haredi fold, but the healing process consumes her daily. Living a new life in Ashkelon, Karp hasn’t followed efforts in the haredi world, and in the religious Jewish world in general, to prevent what she considers “soul murder.”
The last few years have seen an increasing number of efforts – some organized, and some grassroots – to lift the veil of silence over a topic fraught with fear, shame and stigma among both victims and religious community leaders.
Full article: http://oritarfa.net/1769-2/
Live and Let Live?, Forward Thinking Orthodoxy
/in Uncategorized /by SOL ReformMy wife and I just went to see a truly excellent film named “Spotlight.” It tells the story of the investigative reporting team for the Boston Globe newspaper by the same name that broke the story regarding the mass cover-up of catholic priests who were caught molesting thousands of children over the course of decades. The local dioceses worked to silence victims and quietly pay them off while at the same time denying that there was a well-known and systemic problem of child abuse being facilitated by the church. The acting was superb and the story was gripping – and admittedly quite disturbing.
When the film ended and my wife and I were exiting the theater, we were greeted by several couples from our community who amid sighs of relief said, “I guess we should be glad that we’re Jewish!” My wife and I looked at each other and replied, “The Hasidic and Haredi communities throughout the US and Israel are plagued with the same problem of pervasive child abuse and they are covering it up in much the same way.” The response we got was one of shock. “But in Judaism we don’t believe in celibacy so how could we be having the same problems as catholics?” I proceeded to explain to them that although Judaism doesn’t believe in celibacy, the Hasidic and Haredi views of sex and sexuality were adopted from catholic asceticism centuries ago. I further explained that the unnatural segregation of the genders ultimately leads to objectifying women and the absolute silence and lack of education about sexual development and healthy sexuality in those communities contributes prominently to the problem. Add to this that Hasidim and Haredim almost universally forbid going to the police to report cases of abuse by their rabbis, and you have something very close to what was experienced in Boston and many other cities across the globe.
As we watched the film we were absolutely stunned at the parallels between the two communities and their issues with pedophilia and deviant sexuality. The studies cited in the film showed that the majority of priests involved in such activities were emotionally stunted, having the mentality of a 12 or 13 year old and an inability to properly function socially. This reminded us of the very many Haredim/Hasidim whom we have encountered and seen who have weird social ticks, an almost inability to process social cues, can be seen picking their noses in an almost obsessive manner in public, don’t regularly bathe, and who exhibit just a general immaturity in most areas of their lives. The way in which the offending priests were constantly shuffled around from parish to parish is reminiscent of elementary school rebbes being caught and transferred to other schools – all while the administrations and “gedolim” are aware of such behavior. The way in which the cardinal went out of his way to defend and protect the offenders for the greater “good” of the catholic church reminded us of the many instances of rabbis and leaders showing up to court to defend the molester because they feel that it is wrong to “take him away from his family.” The similarities were eerie, but not surprising.
I myself have had the unfortunate experience of sitting in a meeting after having blown the whistle on a scandal in the Jewish community thinking that I was going to see justice served and then hearing the words “So, how much will it take to keep you quiet?” come from the lips of the “gadol” sitting to my right. A Satmar man whom I was working for had been making sexual advances toward a non-Jewish employee. This young woman approached me and produced texts and emails from him in which he made such advances. She told me that she had decided to ask me for help because she trusted me. I in turn called the “rabbi” whom I trusted and set up a meeting, only to have my trust betrayed by him covering it up. When I tried to warn others about this sick individual, these same “rabbis” to whom I had spoken told those who came to confirm my story with them that I was a liar and anything that I had said about this Satmar “hasid” was lashon hara and was not to be believed. I have also felt my heart break as a friend related to me that these same “rabbis” covered up the accosting of his young daughter by a known molester who had visited the community from New York. And the list goes on. These things are real and are as pervasive and as sick as you can imagine.
Many times when I speak out passionately against the Haredi and Hasidic communities I am told to “stop being so negative” and to have more of an attitude of “live and let live,” but I am not so sure that this is the right thing to do. There is a mentality within Judaism that has true Torah values in a stranglehold and is desperately trying to suffocate them and replace them with and evil doppelganger known alternately as “Toyrah” and “Yiddishkeit.” These people – whether knowingly or not – have taken a Near Eastern religion and have turned it into a Euro-centric phenomenon. The way they dress, the way they [mis]apply Jewish law, the way they censor and sanitize Jewish texts and Jewish history, their ascetic and ostensibly catholic ideas about sex, and their cult mentality of “Daas Toyrah” – all of it is literally destroying Judaism from the inside out. And if we are honest with our history, the mentality of “live and let live” is how we got here in the first place. If we continue to allow this movement to speak for and represent Judaism, then we are all headed for disaster, has wa-halilah. I don’t mean to be overly dramatic, I am completely serious.
And it is not the issue of child sexual abuse alone that is proof of how out of control the problem is, there are many more. Judaism is a religion of law, and almost every facet of halakhah has been infiltrated by these impostors and has been redefined. Kashruth, Hilkhoth Shabbath, Taharath HaMishpahah, Tefillah, and the list goes on – everything is being re-invented and re-interpreted to levels of absurdity never before sanctioned or tolerated by religious Jews in history. If we want our reasonable, intelligent, compassionate, honest, and morally sound Judaism back, then we need to take it back. We need to stop giving our money and resources to Haredi and Hasidic institutions. We need to stop buying their books and their sefarim. We need to stop sending our sons and daughters to their yeshivoth and seminaries. We need to stop attending their shuls and kollelim. We need to stop paying their salaries through our dues. And most of all, we need to stop kidding ourselves that the problems are relatively minor and that the “gedolim” are the true spokesmen for authentic Torah Judaism. The Haredi/Hasidic system is one that subsists almost entirely on fear and welfare. If the givers stop giving them their allegiance and their money, then the system will ultimately shut down. And if we give our time and resources to those working to heal Judaism and restore it to its authentic expression and values, then truly Torah-based institutions and their rabbinic leadership will flourish.
Many who speak out against the things taking place in Judaism are angry people, and understandably so, but too often they are branded as “trouble-makers” and “naysayers” and cast aside while their words fall on deaf ears. I want to go on record right now and say that I love Judaism and I love Jewish people. I care about the futures of my children and my grandchildren very much. I also am not a fan of conflict. It turns my stomach to have to fight and – like most everyone else – I would rather just leave all of these issues alone. “Live and let live” is the easy option and not rocking the boat has the added advantage of allowing one to pass through the orthodox world undetected. But the problem is that, like all the catholics in Boston who decided to remain silent in the face of blatant corruption and evil within the church learned, such silence only makes things worse.
I’m not angry. I’m not flying the flag of “Dati Leumi” or “Modern Orthodox.” I am not denying that there are truly good Jews in the Haredi and Hasidic camps – there certainly are. I am just trying to say that if we truly love each other as Jews, if we truly love God, and if we truly love the Torah, then “live and let live” is simply not an option.
I would love to be able to speak about these things in more positive terms, but honestly, what we are talking about here is truly negative so how can we speak about it in any other way?
May HaShem help us all to be vocal and do what is right.
Shavua tov,
YB
Read more:
https://forthodoxy.wordpress.com/2016/01/03/live-and-let-live/