Sexual abuse in the Orthodox community
Last month the Brooklyn D.A.'s office opened a hotline for alleged victims of Orthodox Jewish sexual abuse; already, the office has 19 active cases , ABC News reports in an in-depth piece on sexual abuse in the Orthodox community.
ABC News has spoken to Orthodox Jews who claim they were victims of abusers in New York, Baltimore and Illinois, who shared stories of alleged molestation followed by what they described as hostility from community leaders when they sought help...
Though [New York State Assemblyman Dov] Hikind and some rabbis have recently been willing to take on the issue, alleged victims say there is still tremendous pressure to keep quiet. Several said community leaders were skeptical of their claims, and said they were told that they and their relatives would never be able to find someone to marry them and that they would become outcasts in their tight-knit communities.
One prominent rabbi, speaking on the condition of anomynity, questioned whether abuse allegations were true.
"If there's a family fight, a dispute in the family, it could start with verbal abuse. What happens next? You know and I know, it becomes 'he raped me,' or whatever," the rabbi said. "If you're telling me there are allegations of abuse, I don't know what 'allegations' really means."
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Matt
05/05/09 03:59 PM
Whether it’s the bishops or the rabbis, why do religious authorities always try to silence the victims of sexual abuse in their communities? Isn’t G-d watching?
Maybe---shock of shocks!---being ultra-religious doesn’t make people any more moral.
In any event, there may well be a special place in hell for abusers of children, but it’s nowhere nearly as horrible as the place in hell reserved for their enablers. And I mean all of their enablers---the religious authorities who shuffle them from job to job, those who spare them from justice and attack and viciously discredit their victims instead, and those who just try to close their eyes and ears to it all and pretend it’s all a mirage, concocted by “bad Jews” who want to bring shame on the community.
At least the abusers themselves are mentally sick; those who shelter and protect child-abusers and turn away the helpless, victimized children are pure evil. We’ll never be without sick people who wish to molest children. The only thing we can do is stop their free-willed enablers and hold them accountable. To jail with them, I say.
Even to this day, just try talking amongst the fervently orthodox about what Shlomo Carlebach did to all those little children. How many people conspired to protect that sicko from justice, and have even elevated him to a kind of a saint? How many people attacked the little girls he tortured rather than confront him with what he did? What kind of morality is that?