The Awareness Center in the News
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Table of
Contents:
Articles Mentioning The Awareness
Center
Timeline
2002
- Schools Try To Prep For Sexual Abuse - Baltimore Jewish Times (12/06/2002)
2003
- Rabbi's Odyssey Reflects Struggle on Sexual Abuse - Washington Post (02/02/2003)
- Legislators reject bill requiring priests to break seal of Confession - Catholic Standard (03/06/2003)
- Jewish Community Grapples With Sex Abuse - Newsday (05/23/2003)
- Rabbi's visit canceled amid abuse allegations - Des Moines Register (11/14/2003)
- Ragsdale: More faith communities struggle with alleged child sexual abuse - Des Moines Register (11/14/2003)
2004
- Orthodox Feminists Debate Future - Baltimore Jewish Times (02/13/2004)
- Web Site Tracks Sexual Abusers - New York Jewish Week (03/24/2004)
- First Carlebach conference to grapple with issue of abuse head on; opposition to street naming - New York Jewish Week (09/08/2004)
2005
- Trust and Teshuvah - Goldberg Memorial (03/05)
- Disabuse Community of Intolerance - Washington Jewish Week (11/17/2005)
2006
- Rabbi Challenges Right to Anonymity on Internet - Forward (07/14/2006)
- Defrocked rabbi's Jerusalem lecture cancelled after threats - Haaretz (07/17/2006)
- Rabbi considers appeal Kaye sentenced for sex crime charges - Washington Jewish News (12/06/2006)
2007
- Awareness Center a clearinghouse of concern — and controversy - JTA (01/10/2007)
- City bar mitzvah teacher charged with sex offenses - Incidents involving two boys allegedly occurred more then a dacade ago Baltimore Sun - (12/18/2007)
2008
- Pedophile suspect extradited from Israel charged in NY - Jerusalem Post - (01/09/2008)
- She founded resource for sex abuse victims - Owings Mills Times - (01/09/2008)
- Advocates upset over rabbi's plea deal - Baltimore Examiner - (03/12/2008)
- NY Lawmaker Becomes Confidant on Child Sex Abuse - Associated Press - (11/23/2008)
- Child abuse survivors advocate for legal reform - Frederick News Post - (11/28/2008)
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Radio Talk Shows
2006
-
A
Jewish Perspective on Child Sexual Abuse Darkness to
Light - Ethicalife
(08/09/2006)
Online Video
2008
- Sexual Abuse in the Jewish Community: Panel Discussion After 'Narrow Bridge' Film - Baltimore, MD (01/02/2008)
- The Child Victim's Act: One Year Later
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Letters to the Editor (of Various Newspapers)
Timeline
2004
- SNAP Supporter The Journal (Webster University) (03/31/2004)
2005
- Kudos For Courage - Baltimore Jewish Times (09/24/2005)
- Fleeing The Scene - Jerusalem Post (06/16/2005)
- Let survivors speak - Chicago Herald News (06/22//2005)
- Rape victims must be honored - Christian Science Monitor (06/22//2005)
- Sex offender registries - Kansas City Star (07/07/2005)
- Combat sex offenders - USA Today (07/27/2005)
- A friendly state for sex offenders? - Baltimore Sun (08/05/2005)
- Convicted abusers just tip of the iceberg - Baltimore Sun (08/25/2005)
- Sexual Assault - Baltimore Jewish Times (09/24/2005)
2006
- Truly Missed - Baltimore Jewish Times (03/7/2006)
- Don't investigate yourself rabbi - Miami News Times (07/20/2006)
- Beyond The Pain - Baltimore Jewish Times (11/10/2006)
- Violence unchained - Jerusalem Posts (11/28/2006)
2007
- Let the experts do it - Jerusalem Posts (01/25/2007)
2008
- Sex abuse survivors need compensation, however late - Baltimore Examiner (06/13/2008)
- The Awareness Center wants to thank David Framowitz, Mark Weiss, Joel Engelman Baruch Sandhaus - New York Jewish Week (10/30/2008)
- Sad Statistics - The Southhampton Press - (11/06/2008)
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Awareness Center Articles Published
- The Awareness Center's Articles
Timeline
2003
- When a Family Member Molests: Reality, Conflict & the Need for Support - Many Voices (12/2003)
- Myths About Male Rape - Crescent Life (12/2003)
- Síntomas Comunes en los Adultos Víctimas de Abuso Sexual Infantil - No2 Violence Israel
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- Help I'm Burnt Out!: Vicarious Victimization, Secondary Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Compassion Fatigue. - No2 Violence Israel
2004
- Nobody's Child - Aish HaTorah (02/2004)
- Remembering To Exhale - Plain Views: A Publication of the HealthCare Chaplaincy (4/21/2004)
Deborah Walike Special to the Jewish Times
Baltimore Jewish Tiimes - December 6, 2002
Victoria Polin says she wishes there was some kind
of award she could bestow upon Beth Tfiloh Community School.
An alleged sexual predator was stopped Nov. 21 when
the Jewish day school in Pikesville alerted authorities about Adam Theodore
Rubin, a former teacher and coach who was arrested and charged with soliciting
sex on the Internet from a 13-year-old female Beth Tfiloh student.
Ms. Polin says she wants local Jews to study and discuss
the case over and over again.
"Right now, because Beth Tfiloh had an incident, it's
an ideal time to get in," said Ms. Polin, who is developing an international
Jewish organization to combat childhood sexual abuse and support survivors.
"It is the time to teach kids about 'good touch, bad touch,' and we should
honor those girls who came forward to tell the authorities. Now, what you
should do is grow with it. It happened and the community should say, 'We
won't let it happen ever again.'"
An Upper Park Heights resident, Ms. Polin has professional
experiences with such cases as rape, incest, sexual abuse and domestic violence.
Besides being an art therapist, she is a licensed clinical professional counselor
recognized by the state of Illinois who is working on her Maryland licensure.
Ms. Polin said that attention to reports of possible sexual improprieties
is a rare occurrence. In the alleged sex abuse by Mr. Rubin, Ms. Polin said
Beth Tfiloh's staff did all of the right things. They believed the child's
story, listened to her parents and called the police.
But normally, Ms. Polin said, possible child sexual
abuse goes unnoticed for a variety of reasons.
Schools, agencies and child care facilities are reluctant
to report their suspicions because of liability in possibly falsely accusing
an innocent individual. Many administrators, she said, are more concerned
with the reputation of their facility and will "hush-up" a problem. Most
importantly, Ms. Polin feels that almost all organizations suffer from a
lack of basic education on the signs of sexual abuse and how to deal with
it.
Since Ms. Polin has only been in Baltimore for a year,
she said she does not know if any local Jewish facilities have training for
recognizing, reporting and providing therapy for sexual abuse survivors.
For this article, the Baltimore Jewish Times interviewed administrators from
Beth Tfiloh Community School, the Jewish Community Center of Greater Baltimore,
Hillel of Greater Baltimore, the Beth El Pauline Mash Early Childhood Education
Center and Bais Yaakov School for Girls.
Among them, only Beth Tfiloh had a "crisis team" prepared
in what Ms. Polin said is a very specialized sort of training for sexual
abuse.
"[Child care providers, educators and facilitators]
need ongoing training, and it has to be by someone with training in sexual
abuse," said Ms. Polin. "It can't be just any therapist because most are
not trained in this area and most, without knowing it, could put blame on
the victim, the parent, or the teacher. Once [teachers] recognize all these
symptoms, the school has to make a system for reporting to someone who is
highly trained in sexual abuse, beyond the administration, who may want to
keep it hush-hush for the school's reputation."
Zipora Schorr, director of education at Beth Tfiloh,
said her school has "a network of support" and the crisis team, and they
openly discuss and train staff in sexual abuse awareness.
"Five years ago, I would say there was a huge amount
of denial," said Mrs. Schorr. "But with all we've learned and all that has
happened in the Jewish and non-Jewish communities, we have a heightened degree
of acceptance and awareness. These are the ills of society, and the Jewish
community is not immune."
Buddy Sapolsky, executive director of the JCC of Greater
Baltimore, said the center checks all references and conducts a criminal
background check for every employee. He said the preschool and Camp Milldale
work closely with Jewish Family Services' social workers, who train the staff
to recognize physical and sexual abuse and are regular consultants.
"Our preschool staff talks to the kids about 'good
touch, bad touch,' and the camp people talk to the kids," said Mr. Sapolsky.
"But those discussions happen based on the relationship with the kids by
the staff. They are not required, but they are encouraged."
But Ms. Polin warns that criminal background checks
and references are also not enough. Although she admits there is no foolproof
way to catch a potential sex abuser, Ms. Polin maintains that specific training
and aggressive reference-checking practices — including utilizing the
disclosure of information available since the recent passage of Megan's law
opening up access to names and addresses of convicted sex offenders —
could minimize the number of predators hired.
Psychological testing, she said, would probably not
work since "sociopaths usually pass a lie detector test." And criminal background
checks are not a tell-all, since Ms. Polin cites the statistic that pedophiles
will act out an average of 118 times before ever being reported.
"Pedophiles often go into service — Girl Scout
leaders, rabbis, teachers," said Ms. Polin. "So people who hire need to be
trained. They have to listen to words that aren't being said when they're
interviewing, and when they check references they have to push for the
truth."
Rabbi Naftoli Hexter, middle school principal at Bais
Yaakov School for Girls in Owings Mills, admitted that his school does "not
often" conduct criminal background checks on staff members. In particular,
he said that when a teacher comes from within the local Jewish community,
he feels it is "not necessary."
Rabbi Hexter said every potential staff member goes
through a series of interviews, and the candidate's references are
checked.
"Nowadays, we have to listen because of this new
phenomenon," he said. "We don't in any way teach 'good touch, bad touch,'
but we constantly meet to discuss, 'Are we preparing the girls properly for
whatever they need to be ready for?'"
While sexual abuse is widely unreported and ignored
in the general society, Ms. Polin feels the Jewish community is especially
inadequately prepared to handle the problem. She said the idea for her
organization, the Awareness Center, stemmed from counseling survivors of
sexual abuse and the realization that there were no Jewish outlets for
victims.
Although there has been little research done within
any Jewish community to determine how prevalent this issue is, Ms. Polin
said that the number of e-mails she is receiving since opening her Jewish
survivors of sexual abuse Web site makes her believe there is "a serious
problem."
"[In previous counseling work] people called looking
for a rabbi they could go to," said Ms. Polin. "When they called a rabbi,
they were told their stories were loshon horah [gossip forbidden by Jewish
law] and no one would believe them. They were angry. They were abused, and
they were abused again trying to find help. One of the main things they want
to know is where was God during this time, and they could only find some
missionary who was loving and kind to them."
Even before last month's Beth Tfiloh case, Ellen Marks,
director of both Beth El Pauline Mash Early Childhood Education Centers,
said she felt that sexual abuse was not "indigenous to any one community."
But Mr. Rubin's arrest, she said, still shocked her.
"It's just unconscionable that anybody could violate
a child," Ms. Marks said.
Deborah Walike is a former Baltimore Jewish Times
staff writer who now lives in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Rabbi's Odyssey Reflects Struggle on Sexual
Abuse - Jews Begin to Confront Silence That Hid Clergy's
Misdeeds
By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post - Sunday, February 2, 2003; Page
A17
During his 30-year career, Sidney I. Goldenberg taught
math in the New York schools, served as cantor at two synagogues on Long
Island and became the rabbi of a Jewish congregation in California. He was
a respected teacher, a man of learning -- and a child molester.
Before he was convicted and sent to prison in 1997
for sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl during bat mitzvah lessons, there
had been numerous complaints against him. But each time allegations arose,
he moved to a new community, leaving a trail of whispers and shattered
lives.
Prosecutors, alleged victims and their families say
Goldenberg was able to move from job to job because of a wall of silence
and shame around sexual abuse in the Jewish community -- a wall that some
believe is finally coming down, thanks to the scandal over sexual abuse by
Roman Catholic priests.
"In the past it was covered up, just like in the Catholic
Church," said Vicki Polin, an art therapist in Baltimore who is forming an
association of Jewish survivors of childhood sexual abuse. "Survivors' stories
were discounted. They were told they were lying. Their parents would go to
the proper authorities within the Jewish community and nothing was
done."
While Catholicism has been hardest hit, almost every
major religion in the United States has grappled with cases of child sexual
abuse by clergy. Protestant and Jewish leaders assert that their problems
are much smaller than those of the Catholic Church, with its celibate priesthood
and global hierarchy. But they are moving nonetheless to shore up their
disciplinary procedures, prevention programs and insurance policies.
In recent years, for example, the Episcopal Church
has revised its disciplinary code and extended its internal statute of
limitations to encourage victims of abuse to come forward, while the Presbyterian
Church (USA) has eliminated its time limit on such complaints. The United
Methodist Church recommends that two unrelated adults be present with any
child or group of children.
The reasons are clear: Lawyers who have specialized
in suing Catholic dioceses are turning their sights on other religious groups,
including Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. Liability insurance costs are
rising for synagogues as well as churches. State legislatures are requiring
clergy of all faiths to report allegations of child sexual abuse.
"I don't think pedophilia has a religion," said Na'ama
Yehuda, a speech pathologist in New York who is co-founder, with Polin, of
the Awareness Center, an organization for Jewish survivors of childhood
trauma.
The center's Web site (www.theawarenesscenter.org)
lists more than 30 Jewish officials who have been accused of child sexual
abuse. They include the late Shlomo Carlebach, a renowned Hasidic rabbi;
Baruch Lanner, an Orthodox rabbi who was convicted last year of molesting
two teenage girls; and Jerrold Levy, a Reform rabbi imprisoned for sex crimes
involving teenage boys.
Goldenberg's story -- pieced together from court documents
and interviews with prosecutors, alleged victims and their families -- is
a particularly well-documented example of how some Jewish and Protestant
clergy, like some priests, have relied on children's shame, parents' trust
and other adults' disbelief to keep their misconduct hidden for years.
His trail through four communities in two states resembles
the movement of pedophile priests from parish to parish. But there are
significant differences.
Unlike the priests, who were transferred by superiors,
Goldenberg moved on his own volition. The families of some of his alleged
victims, all teenage girls, believe that their complaints were ignored or
hushed up. But none has sued.
"In the Catholic Church, the issue was the cover-up
by the church hierarchy. Here, it's the community, not the hierarchy. It's
the whole community not wanting to admit trouble in our midst," said Yosef
Blau, an Orthodox rabbi at New York's Yeshiva University who counsels victims
of sexual abuse.
Goldenberg arrived in California in 1996 with glowing
recommendations. Leaders of Congregation B'nai Israel, a small Conservative
synagogue in the farming town of Petaluma, say they checked the 58-year-old
rabbi's references, and no one hinted at any improprieties.
The rabbinate, however, was Goldenberg's second career.
He had been ordained a year earlier at an independent Orthodox seminary,
Tifereth Yisrael in Sayville, N.Y. Before that, he was a public school teacher
and a cantor, or prayer singer, at synagogues on Long Island. And there had
long been trouble.
In 1971, the superintendent of schools in Levittown,
N.Y., reprimanded Goldenberg and sent him for a psychiatric evaluation after
he allegedly made suggestive remarks to a high school student.
In 1976, school records show, he was arrested after
another student complained that he had exposed her breasts. The charge was
dropped when he resigned, and a lawyer for Goldenberg sent school officials
a letter suggesting that they should not mention the incident if they received
requests for references.
Goldenberg went to work as a part-time cantor and teacher
at the Seaford Jewish Center on Long Island. In 1985, a member of that
congregation, Donald Novitt, complained that Goldenberg had made sexual comments
to his daughter during a lesson for her bat mitzvah, the coming-of-age ceremony
for Jewish 13-year-olds.
"My first move was to call the rabbi," Novitt recalls.
"I said, 'Rabbi, I have something to tell you that's about Cantor Goldenberg.'
He said, 'I know what you're going to tell me. We've had complaints before.'
"
The rabbi, Esor Ben-Sorek, later told police in California
that he had received three complaints from 12-year-olds tutored by the cantor.
Goldenberg "apologized, said that he was aware of his problem and would seek
help, and I then informed him that he would no longer be able to offer religious
instruction to girls in the religious school," Ben-Sorek wrote to California
investigators.
One of Goldenberg's accusers, now in her thirties,
is still angry about the synagogue's response.
"They did not fire him, they did not really do anything.
Nobody ever apologized to me. I had my bat mitzvah and he was there -- he
was the cantor who sang in front of my whole family," she said, speaking
on condition of anonymity. "When I think back about that, I can't believe
it."
Another alleged victim, Robin Patrusky, 37, said Goldenberg
"spoiled my innocence" but that "I was too shy, too scared to say anything."
"It has affected all my relationships to this day," she added.
Goldenberg soon moved to the Jewish Center of Bay Shore,
another Long Island synagogue, where he was cantor from 1990 to 1996. Its
former rabbi, Steven Rosenberg, wrote a letter to the California court saying
he was unaware of any allegations before Goldenberg left for California.
But he said he later learned that several girls had complained to parents
or teachers about suggestive remarks and inappropriate touching by the
cantor.
The complaints never reached him, Rosenberg said, because
the parents and teachers were trying to protect their children from
embarrassment, did not want Goldenberg to be fired or "could not believe
that Cantor Goldenberg would have done such a thing."
In December 1996, Goldenberg was arrested by the Petaluma
Police Department for molesting a teenager at Congregation B'nai Israel.
Over a four-month period, the girl said, Goldenberg made lewd remarks, touched
her breasts, had her lift her shirt, exposed his undershorts and coaxed her
to reach into his front pockets for coins.
The arrest "really split the congregation here, because
he was an extremely popular rabbi, and very few people believed this young
girl," said the prosecutor, Sonoma County Deputy District Attorney Gary A.
Medvigy.
As news of the arrest hit the media, however, 10 women
in New York alleged that Goldenberg had abused them in similar ways, usually
beginning with dirty talk and progressing to fondling but not intercourse,
Medvigy said.
Facing mounting allegations, Goldenberg pleaded no
contest to a single charge of lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor. He
was sentenced in April 1997 to three years in state prison. Although he was
released on parole in 1999, he could not be located for this article.
The manager of a Santa Rosa, Calif., apartment complex
where he lived in 2002 said he moved out a month ago. His attorney, Stephen
M. Gallenson, said he did not know Goldenberg's whereabouts. His wife, reached
by telephone in New York, said he was in another state and that she did not
know when, or if, she would hear from him. His name did not turn up in an
online search of sex offenders' registries, computerized public records and
telephone listings around the country.
Wherever he is, Goldenberg can still call himself a
rabbi, because Jewish authorities say ordination is like an academic degree
-- once conferred, it cannot be revoked. However, officials of the major
Orthodox, Conservative and Reform rabbinical associations said he would not
be eligible for membership and doubted that he could find work as a
rabbi.
Jeff Zaret, president of Congregation B'nai Israel,
said it has hired a female rabbi and made a rule that teachers should not
meet alone behind closed doors with children.
"Everyone here took it seriously," he said. "They weren't
going to sweep it under the rug and make it somebody else's problem."
Staff researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this
report.
Legislators reject bill requiring priests to
break seal of Confession
by Henrietta Gomes
Catholic Standard - March 6, 2003
Last week, Maryland State Senators rejected a bill
which would require priests to report any information about child abuse obtained
in the confessional except from the abuser. The bill was unanimously defeated
by the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee a few days after it was introduced
by Sen. Delores Kelley (D-Baltimore). Asked whether the measure overstepped
the boundaries of religious freedom, Kelley said during the hearing, "sometimes
the state must intervene" to protect children.
Before the hearing, many Catholics from the Archdiocese
of Washington contacted legislators by phone, e-mail, and fax, urging them
not to pass the legislation. Writing in his weekly column in the Catholic
Standard, Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick said he would instruct his
priests to disobey such a law and would be willing to go to jail on the matter.
Breaking the seal of Confession would violate canon Law, causing any priest
who does so to be excommunicated.
Since 1987, a law in Maryland has been in effect that
requires priests to report all instances of child abuse they hear about outside
of the confessional.
"There is a mandate in Maryland that teachers and police
must report any type of abuse, and so clergy should also report," said Kelley
at the hearing last week. Passing the bill, said Kelley, would be in the
best interest of Maryland's protection of children, "who are most
vulnerable."
Ellen Mugmon, representing the Coalition to Protect
Maryland's Children, testified that the state must "regulate religion when
children need to be protected."
Vick Polin—a member of the Awareness Center that
provides resources for Jewish survivors of childhood sexual abuse or
assault—testified "because many cases have been covered up in the past,
the bill should pass." Polin added, "If clergy were mandated to report then
these people (abusers) will get help."
Arguing against the bill, Dick Dowling, the executive
director of Maryland Catholic Conference, said, "There is not one example
of a person suffering of being abused because of our Sacrament of
reconciliation." About Confession, Dowling said "this is a time honored
agreement," and he said the sacramental seal of Confession is a central tenet
of the Catholic faith. He noted that the current abuse reporting law, which
respects the privacy of the confessional, was "carefully scrutinized by elements
of the interfaith community: when it was drafted in the late 1980s.
Father Daniel Mindling, a dean of Mount Saint Mary's
Seminary in Emmetsburg called the Sacrament of Reconciliation, "an act of
worship which needs protection. You can't admit sins with no guarantee,"
he said. "It would weaken our ability to practice our faith. We believe God
instituted this," the priest said about the sacrament. About abuse, he said,
"If I learn about it in any other way, I report it."
The controversial bill would have required priests
to report suspected abuse heard about in the confessional from a non-abuser,
such as a family member. Church policy in the archdioceses of Baltimore and
Washington requires priests and any church workers to report suspected abuse
to civil authorities, but information learned in the confessional is confidential
according to canon law.
David Kinkopf, an attorney for the Baltimore Archdiocese
said, "Our country was founded on religious freedom and religious exercise."
He said the proposed measure would be unconstitutional and violate the separation
of church and state.
State Sen. John Giannetti Jr. (Prince George's and
Anne Arundel), a member of the Judicial Proceedings Committee, said in a
statement that his office received hundreds of calls and e-mails on the matter.
"When a man becomes a priest, he takes certain sacred vows," the senator
said. "No law should impose on those sanctified vows, and I am going to make
sure that they are upheld.
Jewish Community Grapples With Sex
Abuse
By Stephanie Saul - Staff Writer
Newsday - May 26, 2003
This is the first in a three-part
series.
It was the sound of ripping cloth, they said, that
woke them up.
On an August night in the Catskills, with summer camp
almost over, the boys had fallen asleep in their bunkhouse, exhausted from
play and religious study. Only minutes later, they would later testify in
court, the noise awakened them. Then came mysterious movements in the dark
cabin. The campers lay still. Why was a human figure hovering over the bed
of a 10-year-old Woodmere boy?
The terrified boy blurted out his allegation to a camp
counselor almost a day later: Someone, he said, had torn open the seat of
his pajamas and sexually abused him.
The boy's parents were called to camp more than a day
later, but police were not notified.
"We all concurred that considering the trauma that
would possibly result from further action, it would be best not to take any
additional action," according to the camp's notes, later filed in court in
a civil suit. A state Department of Health sanitarian later found that the
camp violated state regulations by not reporting the accusation.
Police learned of the allegations two months later,
alerted by a psychologist who was treating the boy. The boy's mother later
told a state official she felt pressured to remain silent, according to state
health department records. After all, the alleged abuser and the camp officials
were revered religious leaders.
The accused was eventually acquitted by a judge, who
said "contradictory and sometimes retracting statements" left him unclear
about what happened. The camp suggests that the alleged incident was
fabricated.
After more than a year of charges and disclosures
concerning sexual abuse of young people by Catholic priests, the story may
sound familiar. But the camp, Mogen Avraham, is a popular summer retreat
in Bethel for Orthodox Jewish children. And the accused was not a priest,
but a teaching rabbi from Forest Hills.
The alleged 1998 incident at Camp Mogen Avraham is
just one in a growing dossier of allegations that rabbis, cantors and other
Jewish religious leaders have abused children and teenagers in their care,
a Newsday investigation has found.
In sheer numbers, the problem is unlikely to rival
the Catholic Church's, since priests outnumber rabbis by roughly nine to
one. While there is no data on the number of clergy with sexual disorders,
experts say that, anecdotally, the problem does not seem as severe in the
rabbinate as in the priesthood, even in relative terms.
Even so, some rabbis call the sexual abuse allegations
a "crisis," and religious organizations are grappling with ways to handle
it.
"We have a huge problem on our hands, a problem that
is just beginning to be addressed in religious circles," Vicki Polin, a
psychotherapist, said in recent testimony to the Maryland legislature.
Polin, who is Jewish and calls herself a survivor of
childhood sexual abuse, runs The Awareness Center, a Baltimore-based
clearinghouse that tracks sexual abuse allegations against Jewish religious
leaders. The center's Web site lists about 40 alleged cases of abuse involving
rabbis and cantors. As with the Catholic scandals, Jewish victims say they
still struggle years, even decades, later with this betrayal of trust.
"I can honestly say that he ruined not only my Bas-Mitzvah,
but my faith in Judaism," wrote one woman, now 30, referring to Rabbi Sidney
Goldenberg. In a letter to California prosecutors, the woman said Goldenberg,
then a cantor, made lewd comments and rubbed her thigh in her parents' home
in Seaford in 1985. At the time, he was supposed to be helping her prepare
for her bat mitzvah, the joyous and solemn religious celebration when a Jewish
girl turns 13.
Goldenberg was convicted in 1997 of abusing a 12-year-old
California bat mitzvah student, after investigators uncovered a 27-year trail
of complaints by girls against him. He served three years and is now living
on Coney Island, according to police.
Like the Goldenberg case, the abuse allegations tend
to have common elements, including some familiar from the Catholic
scandals:
Children and in some cases parents are reluctant to
accuse respected clergymen. When they do, they are often disbelieved, dismissed,
even derided.
"You have to understand the extent to which the guys
in the school looked up to [the rabbi]," says one man, now 38, who says he
was abused as a teenager by a rabbi now teaching in Israel. "He was beyond
question."
And another rabbi recalls dismissing several girls'
complaints against Goldenberg as "some giggly thing."
Religious authorities fail to report abuse charges
to the police. Among strictly observant Orthodox Jews, this tendency is bolstered
by the ancient doctrine of mesira, which prohibits Jews from informing on
other Jews to secular authorities, a legacy of centuries of oppression of
Jews in many countries.
When religious leaders try to investigate cases and
prevent abusers from having contact with children, their efforts often fail.
"Few rabbis have any training in recognizing abuse, and the rabbinical courts
have no investigative arm," says Rabbi Yosef Blau, the spiritual counselor
to students at Yeshiva University.
Alleged abusers continue to operate freely by moving
among congregations, states, even countries. Avrohom Mondrowitz, a self-styled
rabbi who once had a popular radio show in Brooklyn, is living openly and
teaching in a Jerusalem college although he is wanted on charges of sexually
abusing four Brooklyn boys, aged 10 to 16. If he ever returns to the United
States, he will be arrested, according to the office of Brooklyn District
Attorney Charles J. Hynes.
Many of the alleged abusers were popular, even charismatic
leaders, who were thought to be particularly good in relating to young people.
Rabbi Baruch Lanner, convicted last year of endangering the welfare of two
girls at a New Jersey yeshiva, sidestepped abuse allegations for years, in
part because of his reputation as a dynamic figure in an Orthodox youth
program.
Unlike the Catholic Church, Jewish authority is not
centralized, but various groups within the branches of Judaism have begun
to strengthen anti-abuse policies for their members.
At its annual meeting, which starts today in Rye, the
Rabbinical Council of America, an organization of 1,100 Orthodox rabbis,
features programs on curbing abuse, including one entitled "Rabbinic Behavior:
Confronting a Crisis of Accountability."
"We're trying to establish that inappropriate behavior
is inexcusable," said Rabbi Hershel Billet, president of the organization
and rabbi at Young Israel of Woodmere.
Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, a psychotherapist who is
also the Orthodox Union's executive vice president, said he hopes the rabbinical
council will make a firm commitment during the meeting "to develop a real,
real tight program" combating sexual abuse.
The rabbinical council is expected to discuss ways
to adjudicate abuse allegations against its members, with penalties that
include ouster.
Sources within the organization say that the impetus
for the panel's work includes old abuse allegations against Rabbi Ephraim
Bryks of Kew Gardens Hills, which he has repeatedly denied, and the recent
arrest of Rabbi Israel Kestenbaum of Highland Park, N.J.
Kestenbaum, a chaplaincy leader for the New York Board
of Rabbis, was charged in February with endangering the welfare of a minor
after allegedly discussing sex with an undercover police officer posing as
a teenage girl in a chat room called "I Love Older Men." Kestenbaum has pleaded
not guilty.
Rabbis concerned about sex abuse say accusations against
a rabbi are often handled quietly, or not at all. Accused rabbis go on hiatus
briefly, then revive their ministries in other congregations, even other
countries in the far-flung Diaspora.
One of those was Rabbi Matis Weinberg. Accused of sexually
abusing students at his California yeshiva two decades ago, he is said to
have agreed to leave teaching. But Weinberg resurrected his teaching career
in Israel. When Yeshiva University in Manhattan recently unearthed the
allegations against Weinberg, the New York school severed its ties to the
Jerusalem college where Weinberg had lectured until recently.
Weinberg has never been charged with a crime and has
denied the former students' allegations. Through a friend, he declined to
discuss the charges with Newsday.
The allegations against Weinberg have been widely reported
in the Jewish press and have helped bring the issue to the fore in recent
months.
Like the Orthodox rabbis' council, representatives
of other branches of Judaism say they are taking steps to combat sexual
abuse.
"I would rather this not become an epidemic and I think
what we need to do is take affirmative steps to guide people before they
make mistakes," said Rabbi Jerome Epstein of the United Synagogue of Conservative
Judaism, the lay arm of the Conservative movement. Epstein said the group's
committee on congregational standards is currently working on a "best practices"
document.
Rabbi Steven Rosenberg of McAllen, Texas, formerly
the leader of the Jewish Center of Bay Shore, said his Conservative congregation
already has adopted such rules.
"If I have a bat mitzvah in my office, the door is
never closed," said Rosenberg, who also tells his 23 religion school teachers
"they are not allowed to touch students, not a pat, not a hug."
"It is very important for me for my congregants to
know: That kind of behavior -- we will not tolerate it," said Rosenberg.
Rosenberg was sensitized by the case against Sidney
Goldenberg, the former cantor, who had worked at the Bay Shore synagogue
before moving to California.
Many rabbis say their groups would always notify police
about abuse although their rules usually do not spell this out. Such notification
was one of the remedies embraced by Roman Catholic bishops in the priest
abuse scandal. And Reform rabbis are in the process of revising their ethics
code to include such a requirement, according to Rabbi Paul Menitoff, executive
vice president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis.
The National Conference of Synagogue Youth, an Orthodox
group, does have a policy requiring that police be notified, an outgrowth
of its scandal involving Lanner, a longtime youth leader with the group.
In that case, a religious court called a bet din concluded
in 1989 that the most serious charges against Lanner were unfounded, clearing
the way for his continued youth work. Last year, more than a dozen years
later, he was convicted in New Jersey on abuse-related charges.
Orthodox Jews frequently rely on the batei din, but
Blau, a member of the Lanner bet din, has become an outspoken critic of the
religious court system.
For one thing, he said, judges in the religious courts
often know the accused, making fair decisions difficult. In addition, he
said that perjury before a bet din is rarely punished.
Appearing in February before dozens of students in
the main study hall at Yeshiva University, Blau and the two other members
of the Lanner bet din issued an extraordinary public apology for their role
in allowing Lanner to continue unchecked for so many years.
"We must do everything in our power to protect potential
victims from abuse," the apology said. "This includes reporting accusations
of abuse to Jewish and, at times, to secular authorities."
Such a secular-reporting requirement is controversial
among some Orthodox groups, partly because it appears to run counter to the
doctrine called mesira.
In ancient times, one who violated the doctrine and
reported a fellow Jew to secular authorities could be killed on sight. Today,
the punishment is generally ostracism in the community.
The vast majority of rabbis agree that mesira is overridden
when there is imminent danger to possible future victims, but Blau says the
taboo remains, particularly among the most traditional Orthodox.
Civil authorities who seek to act against rabbinic
abuse often become frustrated by the reluctance of witnesses to testify.
Prosecutors in Sullivan County complained during the
case that their witnesses faced pressure when they tried to prosecute Yaakov
Weiner, the teaching rabbi acquitted in the Mogen Avraham case.
"It was a bitter pill for me," remembers Tom Cawley,
the former Sullivan County assistant district attorney who prosecuted the
Mogen Avraham case. "They sent their kid to camp up here in Bethel and thought
he'd be taken care of. Someone was taken care of, all right, but it wasn't
him."
Weiner, who has taught in several yeshivas throughout
the metropolitan area, consistently denied the charges. Attempts to reach
him through one of his lawyers were unsuccessful.
The boy's mother and father, a rabbi himself, would
not discuss the case with Newsday. But camp and State Health Department records
filed in court indicate that the parents were not told of the alleged abuse
until nearly 48 hours after the boy spoke of it, while the 36-year-old Weiner's
father, a rabbi well-known in the Queens Orthodox community, was notified
sooner.
Contacted recently, the camp's current executive director,
Moshe Wein, defended the camp's handling of the accusation, saying, "There's
no evidence to indicate that an incident took place." He added, "This may
be one of those cases in which a child lied."
Lawyers for Weiner at his bench trial made much of
contradictions in the boy's statements. But the most confusing testimony
came from the alleged victim's bunkmates.
One of the boys reversed his story between the time
he spoke to police and the trial several months later, Cawley said in
court.
"We believe that there was pressure placed on the victim
and children's families to get them not to testify," said Sullivan County
District Attorney Stephen Lungen in a recent telephone interview. "There
was a child who could have substantiated what was said, and that family would
not cooperate."
The entire matter left Sullivan County Judge Frank
Labuda confused.
"It is clear in the evening hours of August 8 and the
morning of August 9, two years ago, something happened at bunk 3 Gimel bunk...
" he said in his January 2000 ruling. But Labuda concluded that trial testimony
"does not create a clear picture for this court of exactly what happened
in Gimel bunk nor who did it."
He found Weiner not guilty.
Rabbi's visit canceled amid abuse
allegations
The Jewish community in D.M. received e-mails accusing
the man of a history of child abuse.
By SHIRLEY RAGSDALE, Register Religion Editor
Des Moines Register - November 14, 2003
A Des Moines orthodox synagogue has canceled the appearance
of a prominent New York rabbi scheduled to speak this weekend, after the
Des Moines Jewish community was barraged with e-mails suggesting the guest
speaker had a history of child abuse.
Rabbi Ari Sytner of Beth El Jacob Synagogue had invited
Rabbi Ephraim Bryks of Richmond Hill, N.Y., to speak at an event today. Bryks
had spoken twice before in Des Moines at Sytner's invitation.
Members of a victims advocacy network found the
announcement on DesMoinesRegister.com and sent messages to the newspaper
and members of the Iowa Jewish community, said a member of that network.
Bryks would not speak to a Register reporter Thursday,
but in a May article in a New York newspaper denied the allegations, which
are more than 20 years old. Despite the fact that he's never been charged
with child abuse, Bryks said in the article that the allegations are like
a ghost trailing him from city to city, school to school.
And to Des Moines.
"Rabbi and Mrs. Bryks have visited our community twice
before in the last few years (before we knew of the allegations), and they
were welcomed, loved and respected by all that met them," Sytner said Wednesday
in a written statement.
"Nonetheless, I still have absolutely no basis for
determining this man's guilt or innocence, and unfortunately with the program
scheduled for this weekend, time is not on our side to further investigate.
As a result, I have decided to cancel Rabbi Bryks' trip to Des Moines until
we can further clarify the matter."
When approached about the e-mail messages earlier this
week, Sytner said he believed it was a case of mistaken identity, noting
that Ephraim Bryks is a common Jewish name. After Sytner received forwarded
e-mails from "all over the country," he decided to cancel Bryks' trip.
One of the early e-mails came from the executive director
and founder of The Awareness Center, an international organization dedicated
to advocacy and education on sexual abuse in Jewish communities. Founder
Victoria Polin said Bryks is one of about 100 alleged abusers whose names
are posted on the center's Web site.
"Pedophilia has no religion," Polin said. "Some Jewish
communities are 30 years behind the times in terms of addressing sexual abuse.
In some Orthodox communities, they do not watch TV or read the newspapers.
All they know is what the rabbi tells them. Someone has to speak out because
nobody listens to the victims."
The allegations stem from a period in the late 1980s
when Bryks was the leader at a Winnipeg, Canada, Jewish day school and
congregation, according to The Jewish Tribune, a publication of B'nai Brith
Canada.
According to various media reports, Bryks was accused
of abusing five Winnipeg students, including a 17-year-old boy who committed
suicide in 1994 after talking about the alleged abuse with his parents and
police.
A 1988 report by the government agency, Winnipeg South
Child and Family Services on a 14-year-old girl's allegations, said there
was no evidence to support a finding of criminal wrongdoing, but said Bryks'
interaction with female students was inappropriate. A year later, parents
of a young boy took a sex abuse complaint to Winnipeg police. The allegations
were investigated, but there was insufficient evidence to bring criminal
charges, according to a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation documentary.
Bryks left Canada in 1990, relocating in New York,
where the allegations blocked his hiring by at least one congregation and
forced his ouster from at least one other, according to the New York
newspaper.
Attempts have been made to remove Bryks from the Queens,
N.Y., Va'ad Harabonim, a council of rabbis that makes important decisions
in the borough.
Earlier this year, Bryks resigned from the Rabbinical
Council of America under criticism. In June, the 1,200-member Rabbinical
Council voted to report acts or suspicions of child abuse to the police,
a break from a longstanding practice of protecting errant rabbis rather than
reporting them to civil authorities, according to reports in The Jewish Week
newspaper.
By SHIRLEY RAGSDALE, Register Religion Editor
Des Moines Register - November 22, 2003
American Jews have joined Catholics and United Methodists
on the list of U.S. denominations that are wrestling with how to deal with
allegations of child sexual abuse.
This year, the Rabbinical Council of America joined
the other three Jewish denominations in voting to report allegations of child
abuse to the police.
Prompted in part by the case of a rabbi, whose appearance
in Des Moines was cancelled earlier this month, the rabbinical council reversed
a long-standing Orthodox practice of protecting accused rabbis or trying
to take care of scandal internally. The organization's ethics policy is being
rewritten with the help of mental health professionals and survivors of clergy
sexual misconduct.
It's a huge step forward for a faith tradition with
a history of persecution. That history undoubtedly contributed to an ancient
Jewish prohibition called a Mesirah, a mandate that no Jew should betray
another Jew to civil authorities.
The urge to stifle scandal and preserve the status
quo has been a common reaction for congregations that are confronted by
allegations of sexual abuse of children by clergy. But it's a bad choice
that ill-serves everyone involved - the victims, the accused, the congregation
and the community.
Resorting to secrecy got the Boston Catholic Archdiocese
in trouble, because when 50 years of accumulated accusations of sexual misconduct
poured out over six months, it exaggerated the scope of the problem.
A similar reaction by a Winnipeg, Canada, Jewish
congregation to allegations of child sexual abuse has permanently scarred
the synagogue, the victims, their families and the alleged abuser.
Beth El Jacob Synagogue on Nov. 13 cancelled the appearance
of New York Rabbi Ephraim Bryks because of an e-mail campaign to alert Iowans
that Bryks was accused of molesting children nearly 20 years ago when he
was the leader of a Canadian synagogue and Jewish day school.
Like the Boston Catholic cases, the charges are decades
old.
Like the Catholic cases, synagogue leaders did their
best to hush things up.
Instead of immediately asking police or child and family
services to investigate, they held an internal "investigation." A number
of meetings were held which reportedly disintegrated into yelling matches
between the families of the victims and the rabbi's supporters.
Winnipeg social services agencies didn't get the case
until later, after the congregation had taken sides and possibly victims
had been intimidated. No criminal charges were filed. But investigators said
Bryks' actions were inappropriate and unprofessional.
Bryks has always denied he did anything wrong. He left
Canada in 1990 and settled in New York where he worked as a principal and
a teacher. This year he resigned from the Rabbinical Council of America after
some members sought his ouster.
Victoria Polin, founder, and Na'ama Yehuda, advisory
board member of The Awareness Center, an international organization dedicated
to addressing sexual abuse in Jewish communities, have said that Jews carry
an extra burden when it comes to going public with a sex scandal.
"Over the years there have been many reasons why the
Jewish community kept silent about sexual crimes committed by individuals
in our community," Polin wrote on her Web site www.theawarenesscenter.org.
"There is a large number of hate groups that would love to promote their
propaganda on their Web pages and in publications by posting information
about Jews who molest. Their eagerness is a reminder that anti-Semitism is
alive and thriving."
Additionally, some fervently Orthodox congregations
feel bound by the Mesirah, that no Jew should betray another Jew to civil
authorities.
The prohibition arose because Jews have lived under
autocratic governments and biased judicial systems for much of their history.
Informing could lead to dangerous persecution of the entire Jewish
community.
Congregations relied on the judgment of special Jewish
courts to settle disputes and deal out punishment. While those courts still
exist, their power is limited, according to Rabbi David Jay Kaufman of Temple
B'nai Jeshurun in Des Moines.
"These special courts operated with authorities from
civil authorities," Kaufman said. "They dealt with Jewish law, which many
times was more stringent than secular law. It was useful for keeping community
social structures intact."
While the local Jewish community is still mindful of
anti-Semitism and avoiding scandal, it would be unconscionable for anyone
in the Jewish faith tradition to hesitate to report a child abuse situation
today, Kaufman said.
"In some states, clergy are required to report suspicions
of child abuse," Kaufman said. "As far as I'm concerned, it is a good thing.
My primary concern is for the children. The people who do this kind of thing
usually don't have just one victim, so if you don't do something to stop
them, you are endangering other children. I can't think of a reason that
would morally or ethically make it allowable not to report."
The work of Jewish leaders who share Kaufman's attitude
toward reporting child abuse and the Orthodox community's decision to embrace
a reporting policy show an "ongoing maturation process for the community
in general to have the courage and determination to act aggressively against
problems which have always been with us," said Rabbi Mark Dratch, who authored
the Rabbinical Council resolution.
"A lot of factors are forcing us to deal with (child
abuse) to assert leadership and not just to look for cover," Dratch told
The Jewish Week. "We need to do what is necessary for the welfare of the
community and the integrity of the Torah."
Orthodox Feminists Debate Future
By Phil Jacobs
Baltimore Jewish Times - Feburary 13, 2004
The Fifth International Conference on Feminism &
Orthodoxy is scheduled for this Sunday, Feb. 15, and Monday, Feb. 16, at
the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City. JOFA, the Jewish Orthodox Feminist
Alliance, which was founded in 1997, is the event's sponsor.
The conference's theme this year is "Women and Men
In Partnership," asking the question are Orthodoxy's defined gender roles
unchangeable.
Workshops over the two-day conference cover many issues
touching the overall theme. Its opening plenary is titled "Judaism as a Gendered
Experience." The description of the plenary asks the question, "Is there
Jewish value in breaking gender differences down?"
Topics of the workshops range from "Raising an Orthodox
Feminist Child: An Interactive Dialogue With Mothers" to "Love, Learning
and Laundry: Gender Roles Within Jewish Marriage" to "Sharing Life Cycle
Events: Inclusive Ceremonies and Roles for Women."
There are workshops asking how men and women can work
together to effect change, giving women more inclusion in ritual practices
within synagogue life. Issues of sexuality, issues of divorce and the agunot
(women who have not been given a Jewishly legal divorce by their husbands),
and exploring gender roles within Orthodox schools are also on the
program.
JOFA describes as its mission the expansion of "the
spiritual, ritual, intellectual and political opportunities for women within
the framework of Halachah" (Jewish law). It advocates "meaningful participation
and equality for women in family life, synagogues, houses of learning and
Jewish communal organizations to the full extent possible within
Halachah."
Laura Shaw Frank and her husband, Rabbi Aaron Frank
of Pikesville, will both be speaking at the conference. Mrs. Shaw Frank,
an attorney, is one of JOFA's founding members. Her husband, Beth Tfiloh
Community Day School's Lower School Judaics principal, has made the issue
of gender roles in the classroom a personal focus.
"This is a getting-together of like-minded people to
explore issues that don't get explored enough," said Mrs. Shaw Frank. She
will be presiding over a workshop titled "The Politics of Gender in Confronting
an Abusive Rabbi" as well as teaching a workshop called Kol Kevudah Bat Melekh
Penima (All The Glory of the King's Daughter is Internal). The phrase from
Psalms is traditionally cited as a prescription for modesty among Jewish
women and as the reason why, according to the course description, "women
should remain at home and not in the public sphere."
Mrs. Shaw Frank's workshop will ask how these
interpretations can work in terms of modern society.
"We want to enhance the lives of Orthodox women as
well as their synagogue lives and their communal lives while remaining faithful
to the requirements of Halachah," she said.
The conference draws up to 2,000 people. "It's a real
movement, and it needs a conference," said Mrs. Shaw Frank.
"I must live in a community that adheres to Halachah,"
said the former Wall Street lawyer. "It's of paramount importance to me.
I have concerns and needs as a woman that I don't believe contradict
Halachah."
Rabbi Frank will present a workshop entitled "Scenes
from the Classroom: Gender Education in Action," as well as "Orthodox Day
Schools: Can We Do Better?" The second workshop offers questions such as
"How do we educate young girls and boys to understand their relationship
to gender and gender roles?"
"My main goal is to have teens think," said Rabbi Frank
of the gender seminars he's held at Beth Tfiloh, "to have them be aware of
the messages they are getting around them. My goal is not to tell them this
is right or wrong, but to make them be critical consumers of gender
messages."
He gives an example. He asked his seminar participants
once to free associate between Jewish men and Jewish women in the form of
a list. What words describe Jewish men, what words describe Jewish
women.
One of the words that was listed under the Jewish women
category, he said, "mini-van."
He takes it to another level when he says, "What does
it really mean when a woman wants to wear tefillin," he asks. "What does
it mean for girls to see a woman wearing tefillin? Some kids have thought
about it, some haven't. I want them to become thinkers."
At least one other panel will include a Baltimore expert,
Vicki Polin, founder of the Baltimore-Based Awareness Center, an Internet
resource for information on childhood sexual abuse.
More information on the conference can be obtained
by checking the JOFA Web site at
www.JOFA.org.
Web Site Tracks Sexual Abusers
By Debra Nussbaum Cohen - Staff Writer
The Jewish Week - March 24, 2004
Vicki Polin's efforts have received praise and criticism
in the Jewish community
From an apartment in a fervently religious section
of Baltimore sits a nonobservant Jewish woman working fervently herself on
a project that has become the center of her life and is making an impact
— for good or bad, depending on whom you ask — in the Jewish community
internationally.
Vicki Polin, 44, created and runs The Awareness Center,
an organization devoted to the issue of sexual abuse in the Jewish
community.
Essentially a one-woman operation, the center exists
only on-line, through its Web site, www.theawarenesscenter.org, and over
the phone. Polin and her board members, who include prominent rabbis and
professionals knowledgeable about issues of sexual trauma, consult with people
who turn to the organization for help.
All sorts of Jews, from all over the world, contact
The Awareness Center for advice, counseling and referrals, says Polin, who
puts in 60 to 80 hours a week on the project. She says the Web site is visited
by about 15,000 people each month — victims of abuse, called "survivors"
in the sexual trauma community, their family members, rabbis, lawyers, law
enforcement officials and others concerned about the issue.
It is a clearinghouse with layers of information that
includes lists of clergy, therapists and medical doctors who are sensitive
to the needs of sexual trauma survivors, definitions of different types of
abuse, and articles published by The Awareness Center explaining aspects
of surviving and reporting such experiences.
The site also includes links to relevant sites within
other faith communities.
The controversial element in The Awareness Center's
site is its listing of rabbis who are believed to be sexual abusers. The
documents listed were all published elsewhere first.
In some cases the people named have been prosecuted
and convicted by the courts. In others the posting is based on allegations
alone.
And that, say some, is unfair.
"It's a dangerous precedent to have a Web site listing
unsubstantiated accusations made against people," says one New York rabbi,
who asked not to be named.
The site also lists rabbis accused or convicted of
a broad range of sexual misdeeds, from viewing child pornography several
times to rape. But in order to distinguish the degree of severity of the
offense, a viewer has to wade through the pages of documentation that have
been posted.
"It is like guilt by association," concedes Rabbi Mark
Dratch, an Awareness Center board member and head of the Rabbinical Council
of America's Task Force on Rabbinic Improprieties.
Rabbi Dratch and others say that the good accomplished
by the organization outweighs the potential damage of some of its
postings.
"People who are survivors of sexual trauma don't have
many places to turn, and Vicki has succeeded, through the accessibility and
anonymity of the Internet, for people to have resources, have places to call,"
Rabbi Dratch says.
"If we had more resources we'd be in a better position
to separate different levels of offenses, different kinds of accusations,"
says Rabbi Yosef Blau, a dean at Yeshiva University and Awareness Center
board member.
"But without a much larger organization, at this point
this is about all that could be expected to do under the circumstances. Hopefully
people will read the articles and not just see names on a page.
"It's a tricky business, at what point we go public,"
he says.
Polin agrees it's a dilemma.
"We're not doing it to hurt people. We're doing it
to protect people," she says.
The site also names rabbis without identifying their
denomination. That's because sexual abuse "is a Jewish problem, not an Orthodox
problem, or a Reform problem or an unaffiliated problem," Polin says. "It's
a Jewish problem."
With the help of a law clinic volunteer, Polin hopes
to gain status soon as a tax-exempt, nonprofit organization.
The project was born out of her experience working
as a counselor with sexually abused clients in Illinois, where she lived
at the time, through an organization called Voices, Victims of Incest Can
Emerge Survivors.
"I'd get calls from people who were Jewish, and I found
that I had to refer them to Christian resources," Polin recalls. "I realized
I was handing over Jewish survivors to missionaries, and that really bothered
me. I started telling everyone that the issue needed to be addressed in the
Jewish community, but nobody did."
She said a number of Christian organizations were dealing
with these issues, "and it always bothered me that there was nothing like
it for Jewish survivors."
Now her efforts are being embraced by the Jewish
establishment, with 140 rabbis of every denomination adding their names to
the list of endorsers. And Polin says she has more to add but just hasn't
had the time to get to it.
In the last few months Polin has been invited to address
the conferences of Jewish Women International and of the Jewish Orthodox
Feminist Alliance.
Her organization is struggling to stay afloat, though,
with a few small donations to support the effort. Polin says that with more
funding, she would like to put together a large conference — a "summit"
— later this year of rabbis and other Jewish professionals, professionals
working in the sexual trauma community, law enforcement officials, survivors
of abuse and their family members.
Another goal is to set up a rabbinic certification
program, "so if we need a referral we can say `this rabbi has that training,'
" Polin says.
"We'll provide about 40 hours of training so they know
the different kinds of offenders and victims, know the difference between
sexual harassment, abuse and sexual assault, and domestic violence."
One person who praises Polin's work is a rabbi listed
as a sexual offender by The Awareness Center.
"I give the Awareness Center a lot of credit," says
Juda Mintz, an Orthodox rabbi who was released this month from a federal
prison into a halfway house after serving 10 months on charges of viewing
child pornography.
"We know that dealing with clergy there has been tremendous
cover-up and denial. There have been concerted efforts by powers-that-be
within the Jewish community to cover up or at best minimize what is more
often than not serious offenses," he says.
"If this is a mechanism by which those offenses can
be uncovered and the community can be sensitized, that is all to the good.
And I say this as a perpetrator."
Facing A Mixed Legacy
By Adam Dickter - Staff Writer
The Jewish Week - September 9, 2004
As the 10th anniversary of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach's death nears,
his family and followers are working on a tribute to the charismatic man
whose guitar-strumming, story-telling and bear-hugging approach to Judaism
inspired a worldwide spiritual outreach movement that continues to
thrive.
But the first international conference on his legacy
may be tempered by past allegations — some dating back decades —
that the pioneering rabbi harassed or abused women, although no such accusation
was brought publicly while he was alive.
The Awareness
Center, a Baltimore-based advocacy group for Jewish victims of sexual
abuse, has issued a "call to action" against efforts to rename an Upper West
Side street Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach Way.
And in planning the three-day international conference
here in late October to commemorate the rabbi's teachings, Carlebach followers
seem to be tackling the issue head-on by scheduling a session on boundaries
between rabbis and their disciples.
Rabbi Naftali Citron, leader of the Carlebach Shul
in Manhattan, which is organizing the conference, would not say if the session
stemmed from the allegations, but cited increasing attention to the issue
of relationships between clergy and their flocks.
"This is more the reality of what is going on in the
last few years," Rabbi Citron said. "Sometimes people get very close to their
spiritual leaders."
He said other sessions at the conference would include
workshops on spiritual activism, how to start a Carlebach minyan, and new
and old chasidic teachings.
Rabbi Citron said it was unfair to allege improper
behavior after Rabbi Carlebach's death.
"Reb Shlomo was a great man, and it pains me that different
things are being said about him when he is not here to defend himself," Rabbi
Citron said. "People could have come forward when he was alive to talk about
what he did or didn't do."
Amy Neustein, a sociologist who studies abuse in the
Orthodox community, said until recently a perception of futility has kept
such abuse victims from speaking out, as in the case of many religious
communities.
"They tend to hide their victimization because the
community has hitherto been unresponsive to their plight," said Neustein,
who contacted The Jewish Week in response to an e-mail from the Awareness
Center. "What they often do is sacrifice their victims on the altar of
shame."
Allegations of impropriety by Rabbi Carlebach first
became public four years after his death in a 1998 story in the feminist
journal Lilith. The article claimed that he "sexually harassed or abused"
women over the course of a Jewish outreach career spanning four decades.
In the article, several women spoke of encounters with
Rabbi Carlebach involving inappropriate contact or behavior. Others said
they heard from other women about such experiences.
According to Lilith, a group of Jewish women confronted
the rabbi about his behavior in a private meeting in Berkeley, Calif., in
the early 1980s and, after initially denying a problem, he declared, "Oy,
this needs such a fixing," said participants.
Rabbi Carlebach split from the Lubavitch movement in
the 1950s, rejecting the strict separation of the sexes, and forged a brand
of celebratory Judaism that encouraged the participation of women. Across
the country today, his presence is felt in rousing Carlebach Shabbat ceremonies
rich in song and dance at Modern Orthodox and other congregations.
He was known for literally embracing his followers,
male and female — an untraditional practice among Orthodox rabbis.
"It was a different time, a different way, a hippie
kind of generation," said Rabbi Citron, a former student of Rabbi Carlebach.
"It was no secret that he hugged and kissed women, and got plenty of flack
from the religious community. From what I know of him he would never knowingly
ever hurt somebody."
But Vicki Polin, director of the Awareness Center in
Baltimore, which is dedicated to addressing childhood sexual abuse in Jewish
communities around the world, believes that renaming a street in honor of
Rabbi Carlebach would be insensitive to those who have made allegations against
him.
"They also deserve to have a voice," Polin said. "It
would be very difficult for them to walk down a street and see that it was
named after him."
Polin's Web site features a page on Rabbi Carlebach's
history, including the Lilith article.
Penny Ryan, district manager of Community Board 7 in
Manhattan, which must approve the name change before it is submitted to the
City Council, said Tuesday that she had received several calls on the
matter.
"We asked them to come to the committee meeting when
it will be discussed," Ryan said.
The meeting will be held Tuesday night at the community
board's office.
City Councilwoman Gale Brewer, whose district includes
the Carlebach Shul on West 79th Street, where the street would be renamed,
said she had been unaware of the allegations against the rabbi until Tuesday,
when she heard from the community board about the calls.
"I will go to the hearing and listen," Brewer said.
"There will be discussions. I'd like to hear what everybody has to say. I
know the daughters and the rabbi and I know they are good people."
Carlebach's daughters, Neshama and Dari, have started
an online petition to support the name change.
"We have been given the opportunity to rename West
79th Street from Broadway to Riverside Drive in his name, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach
Way," reads an introduction on the petition. "It is only too appropriate
to honor him in this way, to forever remember how he changed lives as he
walked up and down this street."
A call to Neshama Carlebach, who has followed in her
father's footsteps as an inspirational singer, was returned by a family friend,
Corey Baker.
"It's too early, on such a sensitive issue, to be giving
a comment," Baker said.
Rabbi Goldie Milgram, one of the women who told Lilith
she was molested by the rabbi — in her case at a summer camp when she
was 14 — said she would not oppose the street renaming in his
honor.
"There are many public figures who had significant
shadow sides," said Rabbi Milgram, an author and teacher in Woodstock, N.Y.
"It is not for us to remove the places they have earned with their work but
to rejoice in the good they have done, to provide opportunities for healing
those who were hurt and not denying their pain."
Naomi Mark, a Manhattan psychotherapist and longtime
student of Rabbi Carlebach who will participate in the boundaries panel at
the conference, said the rabbi "never wanted to be a flawless guru."
As the 10th anniversary of his passing approached,
Mark said she hoped Rabbi Carlebach would be remembered for his ability to
empathize and inspire.
"He really understood our lives and the sense of alienation
people sometimes feel living in the modern world, trying to juggle spirituality
and Judaism in the context of the many contradictions they feel," Mark said.
"He understood what those struggles are like and that's what made him different
from other traditional rebbes.
Trust and Teshuvah
© (2005) Carrie Devorah
Goldberg Memorial.org
Jewish Women International Magazine published an excerpt
from David Berger's last letter written, 1941, before he was murdered by
the Nazis. It stands to consider that David, like many other victims of Nazi
degradation, was stripped of his sexual identity, head shaved, dressed in
shapeless clothing, then dehumanized with verbal, physical and sexual abuse.
When dead, Nazis left their victims, forgotten. David was committed to living
eternally. He wrote, "I should like someone to remember that there once lived
a person named David Berger."
Victims of other abuses wish to be seen and heard,
while still living. Some speak up. Social pressure and religious beliefs
step in the way of their allegations being paid credence, so the abuse continues,
a tradition, so to speak, passed down within families, even Jewish families,
along with recipes for Passover's French toast, gefilte fish or chicken soup.
Victims are reproached with, "he's a Rabbi," "you must be lying," "God forbid
people should find out," "what would they think," and "it is your fault,
he/she wouldn't have done it without you starting it." Plausible, except
sometimes victims are toddlers, or younger.
Abuse is no longer a Jewish myth. Trusted people-
grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, teachers, rabbis, baby sitters, friends,
and youth coordinators- are being reported as encouraging sexually inappropriate
behaviours. The abused struggle to shed their shame. The abuser moves forward
public in their life, their secret kept too often, allowing them to abuse
again. Sometimes, the victim becomes an abuser themselves, even toddlers.
On a recent airing of the TV show, "yes, dear," a pre-schooler mooned his
kindergarten classmates. He told the teacher, he watched his Dad mooned a
picnic. So, he thought it was ok to moon his classmates. Mooning may be a
mild example. What does one say when a toddler performs fellatio on classmates,
that children live what they learn?
Cycling non-sectarian behaviours of violence, neglect,
emotional and sexual abuse within the community, is a recipe for Jewish disaster.
Crossing economic, ethnic and religious boundaries including Judaism-Orthodoxy,
Reform, Conservative, Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Mizrachi, interfaith balabustahs
and homemakers, "abuse" is now part of the contemporary Jewish vocabulary,
with victimizations being reported from Jewish spouses, elderly parents and
children.
There is a finger to be pointed but not at the victims
often shunned after making public allegations.
Two such people holding molesters and communities that
harbor them accountable are The Awareness Center's Rabbi Yosef Blau and his
colleague, Vicki Polin. Rabbi Blau is a member of the RCA, a graduate of
Yeshiva University's Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. Polin,
establishing a network of Jewish practitioners experienced with sexual
victimization issues and Judaism, is familiar with special needs of Jewish
sexual abuse survivors. She advocated empathetic support for victims prior
to starting her own Center.
Rabbi Blau stood at the lectern, front of the Capitol
Hilton meeting room, up the street from the White House in Washington, DC.
Co-hosting a session with Polin, at the Jewish Women's International Conference
on Domestic Abuse, "Lost In The Shuffle: Jewish Survivors of Sexual
Victimization," Rabbi Blau focused his audience on the challenge the Center
faces educating Jewish community leaders and others, lacking training, to
recognize signs of abusive relationships and to understand victims' needs
of religious and physical healing. Blau and Polin addressed victims' spiritual
struggle to maintain faith in traditional teachings, such as Sanhedrin's
"one who teaches another's child torah, is regarded by the tradition as one
who gave birth to the child," in light of their abuser being an outwardly
religious individual.
Rabbi Blau's and Polin's eclectic audience was filled
with people wanting to make a difference. Men, women, old, young, North American,
Middle Eastern, were "called to action" at Jewish Women International's
conference to pursue, within the framework of the Jewish Community, justice
and righteousness from abuse. A representative from "Shalom Bayit," a Northern
California domestic abuse shelter for women and children was present. "Shalom
Bayit" advocates to victims they do not have to suffer alone, they are not
to blame as often they are accused by congregants, family and community members.
"Shalom Bayit," "Peace In The House," advocacy that no one deserves to be
abused, recalls a hand drawn poster, probably long forgotten, victims need
to reminded. A young boy is pictured. Under him the words, "God don't make
no junk..."
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National
Review Board requested New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice examine
Catholic clergical abuse against under 18 year olds. The report investigated
10,667 abuse claims lodged against 4, 392 priests in 52 years. Some clergy
reported they were abused as children. 50% plus of their victims were children
aged 11 to 14 years old. 81% of their victims were male. The surveyors were
asked to profile alleged abusers characteristics. They studied diocese and
church records of the accuser, the accused, and the lay leader. The surveyors
concluded sexual abuse is under reported. And the surveyors requested
corresponding data from Muslim, Buddhist, Protestant, Jewish and other
denominations and movements.
Non-denominational statistics that bear heeding are;
95% of the abusers are men; one of every three to five women, one of every
five to seven men have been sexually abused by their 18th birthday; 2.78
million men have been victim to attempted or completed rape; one out of every
eight reported rape victims was male. By the time they are high schoolers,
28% of students, have experienced abuse. 48% of the abused are in grades
5 through 12. Women teachers sexually molest children too; Seattle teacher
Mary Kay Letourneau, married mother of four, Florida teacher Debra LaFave,
23; Oklahoma basketball coach Elisa Nielson, 29; Tennessee physical-education
teacher Pamela Turner, 27; and California teacher trainee Margaret De Barraicua,
30. Each of the four was charged with sexual assault of a male student aged
between 12 and 16. A Jewish statistic- 20 to 30% of Jewish families in Israel
and the United States suffer domestic violence
Victimization practitioners are encouraging women to
come forward and get help. Often, victims are unaware they are being abused.
They think the behaviour is 'normal' or 'acceptable,' a sign the abuser 'likes
them,' rather than danger signals. Industry practitioners release information
outlining abusive behaviours. Signs of abusive behaviour include "approval
withheld as punishment, locked into or out of the house, held against ones
will or pushed around, punched, shoved, slapped bit, kicked, burned, choked
or hit, personal items destroyed, abandoned in strange places, ridiculed
or insulted, abandoned in strange locations, harassed about fictitious affairs,
publicly or privately humiliated, criticized, or shamed with names called,
isolating victim from family and friends, makes them feel bad, demands to
know whereabouts, does not want victim to share time with others, threatens
to hurt or kill sell if victim leaves,"
Rabbi Blau said, the Jewish commandment against "lashon
harah," gossiping, in the matter of suspected abuse, is waived, overridden
by the teaching of Lev. 19:16, "Thou shalt not stand idly by the blood of
your neighbor." Abusers must be reported. It is a "hilul hashem," a moral
desecration, of God's name and of the Ten Commandments, for a Jewish individual
not to report suspicions of abuse. Abuse is a matter the "law of the land,"
"dina demalkhuta dina," can adjudicate in secular courts and must pursue.
Enforcement has raised its own concerns for responding to claims of abuse
within Jewish communities. Officers have reported being charged with
anti-semitism in the course of their doing their job, responding to a citizen's
call for help.
As Rabbi Blau waited for his ride to the airport, I
told him, a few blocks away in Lafayette Park, there stands a monument titled
"Military Instruction." A sculpted older man is seated, a naked young man
at his side. Then I pointed kitty corner to the hotel, a Planned Parenthood
abortion clinic. September 4, 2004, I told him, a pregnant twelve year old
was escorted by her mother past right-to-life advocates. Blocks away from
the hotel, on Constitution Avenue, I described a display at the National
Gallery of Art. Mythological statues. Mercury, in all his glory, stood above
a crowd of NE DC junior high schoolers. Down the corridor, on a marble pedestal,
stood Bauccus, with a pan, half-boy, half goat. The pan's eye is level with
Bauccus' erection. I noticed that in the photo I took of the junior high
schooler's walking by, giggling. In a media week, when ober-icon Michael
Jackson was accused of feeding Jesus-Juice in a can to a kid alleging sexual
abuse, it was no wonder, some kids grabbed their crotches emulating the one-glove
wonder's Moon Walk as they passed by. Sometimes truth is stranger than
fiction.
Rabbi Blau shook his head. In a world of mixed signals
children are expected to sort better than adults can, distinctions between
good touch bad touch, appropriate behaviour versus inappropriate, being told
not to talk to strangers but answer the "nice man" talking to grandma since
"convicted sex offender" isn't stamped on his forehead, get lost.
The night before, details of the confirmed murder of
9 year old Jessica Lunsford, by a man who lived across their street, were
being released. I told the Rabbi, one interview from the Couey killing stands
out as textbook to facilitating citizen's understanding why abusers remain
at large until a murder trips them up. A restaurant owner in Jessica's town
told reporters he employed Couey, until he fired him. The restaurant owner
aware of Couey's colorful background, felt badly for "the loser." So, he
hired him, firing the 30' old only after Couey wrote a love letter to a 14
year old co-worker. No one complained to authorities about the incident.
Until, Jessica was kidnapped, raped and sexually abused over days, before
being murdered. Her community failed her. Not just the community in which
she died but the global community in which other children still live.
Heading towards the Metro, I leafed through the Jewish
newspaper in my hands, filled with holiday activities for children, puppet
making, noisemaker activities followed by megillah readings for kids. Growing
up I heard about a rabbi, sent packing, for abusing bochers at a Yeshiva,
north of our house. Eventually, news filtered north the rabbi had been accused
of molesting bochers at the American yeshiva that sent him north. His resume
listed many attributes Sexual offender and deviant were not amongst them.
Nor did it contain those warning when he was sent packing, again.
I looked inside the information packet for conference
attendees. Amongst letters from various Democratic Congressmen was Gary
Ackerman's. He wrote "If we are serious about tikkun olam, repairing the
world, we need to begin in the home, the place where our values are most
strongly rooted," "one home at a time."
As I walked, I wondered if parents would ever take
as much time to vett their children's caretakers- teachers, babysitters,
friends parents, the kids friends themselves, families they marry into- as
they take in selecting holiday outfits they wear. An ad caught my attention.
A Rabbi offering Jews "may the Lord bless and protect you," if they prayed
in the language of their forefathers. I thought about the young girl attacked
by three classmates in the basement bathroom of her yeshiva. An older boy
came to her rescue. Her parents refused to take action, after all, it had
to be her fault. I stepped off the curb, asking myself who protects victims
from those who prey in the language of their forefathers. Trust must be earned;
granting of tikkun, repentance, sought by some abusers, remains in control
of the abused..
BIO: Carrie Devorah is a DC based investigative
photojournalist. Trained as a PI, mediator, crime analyst and profiler, she
writes on themes related to faith, homeland security and terrorism. I dedicate
this piece to the memory of Yechezkel Chezi Scotty Goldberg,
www.goldbergmemorial.org. He will never be replaced.
Once a rabbi, always a rabbi
by Eric Fingerhut, Staff Writer
Washington Jewish Week - November 17, 2005
Rabbi David Kaye has resigned from Conservative Judaism's
rabbinical association, but the title of "rabbi" cannot be taken away from
him.
Such a designation is earned when one graduates from
rabbinical school, according to leaders in the Conservative and Reconstructionist
movement.
Kaye submitted his resignation to the Rabbinical Assembly
a few days before the airing of the Nov. 4 Dateline NBC hidden camera
investigation of sexual predators on the Internet in which he was
ensnared.
A former rabbi at Congregation Har Shalom in Potomac,
Kaye also resigned his position with the teen educational group Panim: The
Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values due to the Dateline program.
Rabbi Joel Meyers, the R.A.'s executive vice president,
said that giving up membership in the organization essentially means that
Kaye is "no longer a member of the Conservative rabbinate" and "can't function
as a Conservative rabbi."
The Awareness Center, an organization advocating for
the rights of sexual abuse victims in the Jewish community, has been urging
its supporters to ask that Kaye's s'micha, or rabbinic ordination, be revoked.
But Meyers said that "we can't take his s'micha away" because he "earned
his degrees," and "unless fraud was found in achieving the degree, he has
the degree."
Kaye was ordained at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical
College two decades ago before joining the Conservative movement's rabbinical
association after he was hired at the Conservative Har Shalom. The president
of the RRC, Rabbi Dan Ehrenkrantz, said revoking one's ordination "is not
something we ever do, nor do I think it's doable."
"You can't take away the fact that he successfully
fulfilled the requirements for graduation," said Ehrenkrantz.
He noted that rabbinical groups like the R.A. act as
licensing-type organizations, and losing membership in such a group effectively
tells the public that a rabbi has not conducted himself properly.
He compared the situation to a doctor who engages in
misconduct the physician does not lose the title doctor, but can
lose his or her license.
Kaye, however, would still, for example, be able to
officiate at a wedding if a couple desired.
The rabbi also has left his teaching position at B'nai
Israel Congregation's Hebrew high school, according to the Rockville Conservative
synagogue's Rabbi Jonathan Schnitzer.
Kaye had been teaching a Tuesday evening class for
the post-confirmation class of 11th- and 12th-graders and had led the Shabbat
teen minyan since the beginning of the school year. He resigned those posts
three days before the Dateline program aired, Schnitzer said this week.
Schnitzer said that the teen sessions were "always
in a group" and that the shul had not received any complaints about his
conduct.
Criminal charges are still not expected against Kaye.
A Montgomery County Police Department spokesperon said that it has not received
any criminal complaints or been provided with other information that would
trigger an investigation of the rabbi, although an inquiry could be opened
in the future if such facts did arise.
The Fairfax County Police Department said once again
this week that it still does not anticipate filing charges because of both
jurisdictional issues and reservations about the methods of Perverted Justice,
the group that partnered with Dateline in the investigation. The group's
volunteers pose as children on the Internet in order to expose potential
predators.
Fairfax County police have noted that even though the
alleged predators were lured to a house in Virginia, the Perverted Justice
volunteer chatters were based in Michigan and Kaye and many of the other
alleged predators lived in Maryland. With the alleged crimes crossing state
lines, it is unclear if the FBI could get involved in the case.
A spokesperson for the FBI's Baltimore field office
could not say at this point whether it would be investigated.
Rabbi Challenges Right to Anonymity on
Internet
By Rebecca Spence
Forward - July 14, 2006
The latest chapter in an ongoing saga pitting an Orthodox
rabbi from Monsey, N.Y., against female former congregants who have accused
him of sexual harassment is raising broad legal questions about the right
of free speech in cyberspace.
Rabbi Mordecai Tendler, who was accused of sexually
propositioning women who came to him seeking spiritual guidance, petitioned
a California court May 24 to force Google — the Internet giant that
hosts electronic message boards through its Blogspot division — to disclose
the identities of four anonymous writers who post comments to Web journals,
known as blogs. Tendler, the scion of a storied rabbinic lineage, has fiercely
denied the allegations of sexual harassment since they first surfaced in
2004. He claims that the bloggers have posted "false, misleading, and defamatory
materials" about him on their Web sites.
In response to the petition, Public Citizen, a national
public interest group whose litigation group has played a lead role in defending
free speech on the Internet, filed motions on July 6 to throw out Tendler's
case and reimburse the defendants' attorney fees, saying that the request
violates the bloggers' First Amendment rights to free speech.
The newest development in the controversy surrounding
Tendler, who was expelled from the Rabbinical Council of America in 2005
and was later sued for sexual harassment by one former congregant, is part
of a growing body of court cases that are grappling with how to balance the
rights of those who say they are being libeled with the rights of their anonymous
critics, legal analysts said.
"Our interest is in the problem of balancing the right
to speak anonymously on the Internet against the right of someone who has
been harmed by unlawful speech to get redress," said Paul Levy, the Public
Citizen attorney who filed the motion in response to Tendler's petition.
Levy leads the group's Internet free speech project. "For ordinary people,
the only effective way to reach the community at large is through the Internet,
which provides a voice and an opportunity to speak," he said.
Tendler is seeking to learn the names of those who
operate the blogs Jewishwhistleblower.com and rabbinicintegrity.blogspot.com,
among others.
The issue of anonymous free speech on the Internet
is particularly salient in the Orthodox Jewish community, where electronic
message boards have often served as a safe space for airing allegations and
discussing claims of sexual abuse by rabbis. Fearing both retribution by
the accused clergy and ostracism from their communities, many Orthodox victims
of sexual abuse have sought refuge in cyberspace. Jewish-themed blogs, which
have proliferated in recent years, have also served as an effective means
for victims to take action when allegations of sexual misconduct have gone
unheeded by rabbinic authorities, some critics said.
In response to Tendler's petition, Rabbi Yosef Blau,
a spiritual adviser at Yeshiva University, filed a three-page affidavit with
the Superior Court in San Jose. Calif., arguing that it is important to maintain
the anonymity of the bloggers. "The potential consequences of speaking out
can be especially severe when the target of the criticism belongs to an
influential family, as is true of Rabbi Mordecai Tendler," wrote Blau, who
has himself been the subject of attacks on blogs and in the print media from
critics who accused him of organizing efforts to oust Tendler.
Tendler is the son of Rabbi Moshe Tendler, a prominent
Talmud instructor and bioethicist at Yeshiva Univeristy, and the grandson
of the late Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, widely considered to be his era's preeminent
decisor of biblical and rabbinic law.
In 2005, Blau was attacked in a series of articles
published in two Orthodox newspapers, the Jewish Press and the Jewish Voice
and Opinion, as well as on a now-defunct Web site that was created to discredit
him. Blau said that he was never able to prove that Tendler's associates
were behind the Web site and that he eventually gave up his efforts to expose
them. "The supporters of Tendler have never revealed themselves, but no one
is suing on the other side," he added.
Lawyers for Tendler did not return repeated calls from
the Forward seeking comment.
While a strong precedent for cases involving free speech
on the Internet has yet to be established, in previous cases that have come
before state courts — most recently in a 2004 state Supreme Court ruling
in Delaware — judges have placed the burden of proof on the plaintiff
to prove defamation before they are willing to force an Internet host to
reveal a blogger's anonymous identity.
"The First Amendment reflects an understanding that
sometimes the most valuable speech is uncredited," said Jonathan Zittrain,
a professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford University. Zittrain
cited as a historic example the Federalist Papers, which were written anonymously
by the authors of the United States Constitution. "And no one would call
the framers cowards," he said.
Some advocates for sexual abuse victims contend that
anonymous blogging is necessary not only to shield accusers from potential
harassment, but also to help them through the process of healing.
"One of the things most healing to any victim of
a serious crime is to talk about it," said Vicki Polin, founder of The Awareness
Center Inc., a volunteer organization that maintains a Web site on sexual
abuse in the Jewish community. "When people start blogging, they realize
they're not alone," she said.
But some Jewish bloggers expressed disdain toward those
who remain anonymous. Stephen I. Weiss, who operates the religion blog Canonist
and founded one of the first Jewish blogs to host discussions on sexual
harassment by rabbis, said that while anonymity may be legally justified,
it can't be morally justified. Many blogs "claim to bring down abusive rabbis
when they don't," Weiss said. Still, Weiss added, "legally, the potential
ramifications for what Tendler is proposing are horrendous."
Meanwhile, an Israeli Knesset member, Yisrael Hason,
was set this week to introduce a bill that would require Internet sites to
only post comments from participants who identify themselves, according to
Israeli news reports. That bill was sparked by similar cases in Israel of
public officials who were anonymously criticized by Internet bloggers.
By Daphna Berman
Haaretz - July 5, 2006
A lecture by an American rabbi accused of sexual
improprieties by several of his New York congregants, scheduled to be held
in Jerusalem on Thursday night, was cancelled, following threats of protests
and a flood of complaints, activists said.
Mordechai Tendler, a scion of a prominent rabbinic
family, was expelled unanimously last year by the Rabbinical Council of America
(RCA) after the organization decided that he had "engaged in conduct
inappropriate for an Orthodox rabbi." In March, he was also suspended by
the board of Kehillat New Hempstead, the New York synagogue that he founded.
Tendler, who is currently in Israel, was scheduled to speak Thursday in the
ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Har Nof. A protest was scheduled to take place
outside the event.
"This is definitely a victory," said Leah Marinelli,
a former congregant from New York, Wednesday. Marinelli was one of the first
community members to speak out against the rabbi and convinced some of his
alleged victims to come forward publicly to the RCA.
"We put out a call for action on Tuesday morning and
the next day it was cancelled and so I am pretty convinced that there is
a connection," said Vicki Polin, founder of the U.S.-based Awareness Center,
the Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse and Assault."We didn't want him
to recreate in Israel what he had done in Monsey [in New York]."
Both, however, expressed concern that Tendler would
proceed with the lecture in a smaller and non-publicized location with a
core group of supporters.
Moshe Siegel, a former congregant who immigrated to
Israel some 10 years ago, was coordinating the lecture and had publicized
the event on various English-language list servers around the country. He
was subsequently flooded with e-mails and phone calls, urging him to cancel
the event. Wednesday afternoon, Siegel posted a message on the list serves,
informing the public that the event was cancelled. He did not provide a reason
and did not respond by press time to Haaretz requests for further
clarification.
Other community leaders in the U.S. have welcomed the
cancellation. Rabbi Mark Dratch, chair of the RCA's Task Force on Rabbinic
Improprieties said that the move had proven that "there is no place a person
can hide. We're one community and though we are distanced by an ocean, that
doesn't mean that what happens in one place gets ignored by another." He
said that members of Tendler's former community felt "that he compromised
the rabbinate and should not be given the opportunity to teach Torah publicly,"
Dratch said.
At least nine women have come forward against Tendler
with claims that he used his rabbinic authority to solicit sexual favors.
According to allegations, women who approached him with marital problems
and sought spiritual counseling were sexually harassed. Last year, a former
congregant filed a civil lawsuit in Manhattan against Tendler in which she
accused him of giving her "sex therapy" when she went to him for help. Their
affair allegedly took place in his rabbinical study from 2001 to 2005.
Following the RCA ruling last year, Rabbi Benzion Wosner,
head of the Shevet Levi rabbinical court in Monsey, New York, issued a ruling
that Tendler "can no longer officiate at divorces, weddings ... One should
never allow their wives or daughters to go to him at all including [for]
counseling ... and all his rulings are null and void."
The allegations against the rabbi, who is married and
is the father of eight children, surfaced three years ago. Tendler's grandfather
is the late Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, one of the leading religious arbiters
of the twentieth century.
Tendler's attorney, Glen Feinberg, did not have information
about the reasons for the cancellation. "I represent Rabbi Tendler in the
lawsuit brought against him. My representation does not extend to other matters.
Thus, the rabbi does not discuss his travel or lecture plans with me and
I have no information about this." He added, however, that "Rabbi Tendler
completely denies the allegations of sexual misconduct and expects to be
vindicated through the judicial process."
Kaye sentenced for sex crime
charges
by Eric Fingerhut
Washington Jewish Times - December 6, 2006
The lawyer for the rabbi caught in a hidden camera
sting of online sexual predators said Tuesday that he and his client are
still discussing whether to appeal his conviction on sex crime charges.
A notice of an appeal must be filed within 10 days
of last Friday's sentencing of David Kaye, in which Alexandria U.S. Court
Judge James Cacheris sent the Rockville rabbi to prison for 78 months.
Kaye was found guilty in September of "coercion and
enticement" and travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual contact with
a minor. Those charges were brought after Kaye was featured in a broadcast
of the Dateline NBC "To Catch a Predator" series.
Kaye lawyer Peter Greenspun said he was pleased with
the sentence considering that the government had originally asked for a term
of 121 months. But, the lawyer said, "that doesn't mean it's not a difficult
and harsh ... sentence."
Federal sentences are determined by a system that assigns
a certain number of points for a specific crime and and then adds or subtracts
points based on various enhancements and reductions.
Prosecutors asked for three enhancements, but the judge
only accepted one, for obstruction of justice. Cacheris ruled that Kaye had
commited perjury by testifying that he had gone to the house in Herndon expecting
to meet with a young adult. For that reason, the judge also rejected the
defense request for a sentence reduction based on his acceptance of
responsibility for the crimes.
Kaye testified at trial in August that he believed
his chat partner had been lying about being 13 years old and was engaged
in a "role play."
In fact, his chat partner was an adult and a member
of an organization called Perverted Justice, a controversial group whose
volunteers pose as children online in order to expose potential Internet
predators and then turn over chat logs and other information it gathers to
the police.
The group was working with Dateline NBC, and Kaye was
confronted on camera by a Dateline reporter when he arrived at the Herndon
house.
Kaye, who served for more than three years as vice
president of program at the Rockville-based teen educational group Panim:
The Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values, resigned from that post just
days before the Dateline segment first aired. Until 2001, he had been a rabbi
at Potomac's Congregation Har Shalom for 16 years.
His time in prison is likely to last about five more
years. His sentence includes the more than six months he has already served
since his May indictment and can be shortened by 15 percent with good
behavior.
Once he serves his time, though, he faces an additional
10 years of supervised release. He will be required to register as a sex
offender and banned from accessing the Internet and being alone with children
under the age of 18 without the prior approval of a parole officer, among
other conditions.
Cacheris also recommended that Kaye be admitted into
the Sex Offender Treatment Program at the federal prison in Butner, N.C.,
although he said that Kaye may have to wait a while. The program is currently
full.
In congressional testimony in September, Andres Hernandez,
director of that program, said that therapy at Butner includes about 15 hours
of treatment activities per week that "help offenders manage their sexual
deviance in an effort to reduce sexual recidivism" by teaching "effective
self-control skills."
Charles Onley, a research associate at the Silver
Spring-based Center for Sex Offender Management, said that he wasn't familiar
with the specifics of Butner's program. But, he said that such treatments
often teach offenders to identify "triggers" for their behavior and make
them much better prepared for re-entry into society.
In his statement to the judge at Friday's hearing,
an emotional Kaye acknowledged his father and others family members in the
courtroom and asked the media Æ specifically citing Washington Jewish
Week by name Æ to "keep this private."
He then said that the Dateline incident was "my cry
out for help," and while it may be a cliche, "sometimes cliches are true."
(Major media outlets have already reported details of Kaye's statement.)
Reactions to Kaye's sentence were mixed. Vicki Polin,
executive director of the Awareness Center, which tracks sexual abuse in
the Jewish community, said she thought Kaye received a "fair sentence,"
considering that there was no evidence presented in court that he had contact
with a child.
Congregation Shaare Tefila's Rabbi Jonah Layman sees
the sentence as a "positive thing for him and his family," given it is "a
lot less that he could have gotten."
"I hope that this can begin the process of David's
healing and his family's healing," said the Silver Spring rabbi, a friend
of the Kaye family.
Agudas Achim Congregation's Rabbi Jack Moline, a longtime
friend of Kaye's, said he was less concerned with the sentence than with
the vigilante methods used to catch him.
"I can't defend what he did. I don't think that's the
issue," said the Alexandria rabbi. "Whether or not he should have been doing
[it] ... the man was convicted by NBC," which was "interested in the most
sensational story."
"It's not about justice, it's about ratings," and "it's
a terrible way for justice to be served," he added.
Moline noted that NBC continues to rerun the video
of the Kaye sting and the video can be viewed on the program's Web site.
"Now that he's convicted and sentenced, what is the
purpose of ... keeping it up on the Web site?" he said.
Dateline did not respond to a message requesting comment.
Meanwhile, the show has scheduled a program with "updates" on those caught
in its "To Catch a Predator" series for this Saturday night.
REINING IN ABUSE
Awareness Center a
clearinghouse of concern — and controversy
JTA - January 10, 2006
By Eugene L. Meyer
Vicki Polin, founder of the Awareness Center, at
her Baltimore home office.
NEW YORK (JTA) — There is no unabridged database
of rabbinic sexual abusers. But there is the Awareness Center.
It´s not a physical place, but a Baltimore post-office
box, cell-phone number and Web site — www.theawarenesscenter.org —
where online surfers can find a listing of scores of Jewish clergy and hundreds
of other Jewish officials in positions of trust or authority who are alleged
to be sexual predators. Some of them have been convicted of crimes; some
have not even been charged or sued. A roster of them can be found on the
Web site at: www.theawarenesscenter.org/clergyabuse.html.
Vicki Polin, 47, is the nonprofit organization´s
executive director and only full-time staffer. A licensed clinical professional
counselor and an art therapist, she founded the Awareness Center in 2001
after becoming fed up over what she deemed to be inaction in bringing
perpetrators to justice and protecting the public.
Her biggest weapon: exposure of alleged
wrongdoers.
Polin's efforts have won her loyal supporters and harsh
critics.
"Vicki´s site is very valuable," said Rabbi Yosef
Blau, religious adviser at Yeshiva University and a vocal advocate for victims
of rabbinic sexual abuse and other forms of sexual misconduct.
"Since you can´t get people arrested and there
are no court cases, you have to use a standard that´s reasonable and
[disclosure] works in that context."
The Awareness Center´s outing of alleged and confirmed
abusers has inspired an army of Jewish bloggers eager to discuss the topic.
Their anonymous postings appear on Web sites such as the Unorthodox Jew,
the Canonist, Jewishwhistleblower.blogspot.com and Lukeford.net.
"In the Orthodox community it is much harder to be
heard, so people go online instead of going to police and the rabbi," said
a woman now living in Israel who reported being abused as a child by her
father, an American rabbi who is principal of an Orthodox school on the Eastern
seaboard. "The blogs are safe for survivors."
The Awareness Center and the bloggers not only have
brought this sensitive subject to the attention of a wide audience, they
have also stirred up considerable controversy over issues of fairness,
attribution and transparency.
"The blogorai, as I call it, is the new way of making
irresponsible accusations," charged Rabbi Avi Shafran, spokesman for the
fervently Orthodox advocacy organization Agudath Israel.
"Using a blog is a very easy and effective way of casting
aspersions on people."
Blau said blogs are a mixed blessing.
"Since they are anonymous, they can say almost anything,"
he said. "On the other hand, until the community is more willing to deal
with issues, I can understand why writers won´t reveal their
identity."
One blog-intensive case listed on the Awareness Center
site involves
Mordechai
Tendler, a disgraced modern Orthodox rabbi from Rockland County, N.Y.,
who was accused of having illicit sexual relationships with several women
who had come to him for counsel.
The charismatic scion of distinguished rabbinic scholars,
Tendler
ironically was known as a strong advocate for Jewish women who were unable
to obtain a get, or religious release from marriage, from their
husbands.
Tendler
was expelled from the Rabbinical Council
of America in March 2005 for "conduct inappropriate for an Orthodox rabbi."
The Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance praised the RCA "for taking these issues
seriously and instituting formal procedures to deal with them." Those procedures
included hiring a Texas-based private investigative firm to conduct a probe
of the matter and convening an in-house ethics panel to rule on the
case.
In April,
Tendler
was fired from the congregation he had helped establish in the mid-1980s,
Kehillat New Hempstead. Undaunted, he held High Holiday services this year
in a public elementary school directly across the street from his former
shul.
Tendler,
married and the father of eight, has consistently denied the allegations
against him, but did not respond to inquiries from JTA seeking comment. His
attorney, Glen Feinberg, said his client retains a large following in Rockland
County. JTA asked Feinberg to encourage
Tendler´s
supporters to contact JTA, but none did.
The scandal has spawned at least three lawsuits, including
one filed by
Tendler
against his former congregation for alleged breach of contract. That suit
has been dismissed, but the ruling is being appealed. The litigation filed
against
Tendler
has publicized the sort of matters that once would have only been whispered
about in private.
For example, a lawsuit filed in December 2005 by former
congregant (Name Removed) states that
Tendler,
who portrayed himself as "a counselor and advisor with expertise in women´s
issues," advised (Name Removed) to have sex with him so that "her life would
open up and men would come to her," and she would then marry and have
children.
The suit also claims that Tendler told (Name Removed)
that he "was as close to God as anyone could get" and that he "was the Messiah."
And when the relationship ended, the suit contends,
Tendler
encouraged congregants to "harass, threaten and intimidate" (Name Removed)
in an apparent attempt to discredit her accusations.
As for Tendler, his legal filings included petitions
submitted in Ohio and California seeking to force the disclosure of the
identities of anonymous bloggers who had been attacking him publicly for
his alleged conduct. But he withdrew both petitions.
In the California case, a judge ruled Oct. 12 that
Tendler
must pay the bloggers´ legal fees — a decision that was praised
by attorney Paul Alan Levy of Public Citizen, who represented three of the
bloggers involved in the case.
"The right to criticize anonymously on the Internet
is a fundamental free-speech right and an important tool for whistle-blowers
and consumers who speak out about the misconduct or corruption of big companies
or public figures," Levy said in a press release.
A letter from
Tendler
to the judge who had ruled in the California case was posted Nov. 15 on a
victims´ advocacy blog. In the letter,
Tendler
asked the judge to reconsider his decision on attorney´s fees, adding:
"I have been the subject of a concerted and constant Internet campaign to
destroy my reputation, livelihood, and family. Disgusting allegations of
sexual impropriety, all of them false, have been circulated about me and
amplified in such horrific proportions as only can happen on the Internet.
These allegations and threats have, in fact, destroyed my reputation as a
rabbi and teacher and have caused me hundreds of thousands, if not millions
of dollars in actual and future damages."
The letter described the bloggers as being "like poisonous
snakes" who "want to continue to do their damage and spread their filthy
vicious lies with no accountability."
The Awareness
Center, also known as the Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse/Assault,
has its own confidentiality policy regarding victims of sexual misconduct
and others.
"As a victim advocate, I never name the survivors,"
Polin said.
The
Awareness Center no longer names its board members, either,
"due to
harassment," according to Polin, who said she herself has been threatened
repeatedly with physical harm and once was spat on by a woman who was angry
over an Awareness Center disclosure.
In 2003, Polin said, a supporter of
an alleged
abuser named on her site did background checks on her advisory board
members, "found something about them or someone they cared about and threatened
to make it public." Half a dozen resignations ensued, she said.
Among those who were formerly listed but resigned for
other reasons is Rabbi Mark Dratch, who chairs the
Rabbinical Council of America´s
Task Force on Rabbinic Improprieties and has founded the organization JSafe
to deal with sexual abuse in the Jewish community.
Dratch said he left the Awareness Center board in
"disagreement with [Polin] on the
standards required
for publishing on her Web site. I wasn´t satisfied with the threshold
of verification. There are people who´ve been victimized and others
who´ve been subject to false reports also being victimized. The big
problem we have in this area is verifying the allegations and moving
forward."
As of early December, the Awareness Center site still
listed 236
"supportive rabbis." Polin said more than 500 people receive her e-mail
alerts, and the Web page averages around 35,000 visitors per month.
One of the e-mail recipients is Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb,
executive vice president of the Orthodox Union and a trained
psychologist.
"I
read everything with a grain of salt," he said. "On the other hand,"
Weinreb said, the Awareness
Center and the blogs
"have served the purpose of keeping this in the public spotlight and
keeping the pressure on established institutions to police their
constituencies."
As of late December, the Awareness Center was in danger
of closing for lack of funds, according to Polin,
who was
seeking donations to keep the organization afloat.
----------------------------------------------------
Over the last few years The Awareness Center has
asked Rabbi Mark Dratch for a list of names that he objected to being on
The Awareness Center's Site. As of today we have never received a list.
The Awareness Center is asking that you contact
Rabbi Dratch requesting that he supplies The Awareness Center with a list
of the names he objects to.
Telephone: 203-858-9691
Email:
mdratch@jsafe.org
By Melissa Harris
Baltimore Sun - December 18, 2007
A former bar mitzvah lessons teacher in Baltimore's
Orthodox Jewish community has been charged with sex offenses against two
boys that are alleged to have occurred more than a decade ago, according
to the city state's attorney's office.
The boys were learning to chant passages from the Torah
at Israel Shapiro's home on Olympia Avenue on separate occasions in September
1988 and June 1994 when the offenses are said to have occurred, according
to court documents.
Shapiro was charged Dec. 4 with felony child abuse,
second-degree assault and a fourth-degree sex offense in both cases. The
boys, who are related, came forward in June, according to Baltimore police
spokesman Sterling Clifford.
Prosecutors handling the case were not in their office
Tuesday, and the men making the accusations did not return phone calls
Tuesday.
Accusations against Shapiro were known in the Orthodox
community as early as 2004, when alleged victims began circulating a flier
with Shapiro's name and picture, according to
Vicki
Polin of the Awareness Center
Inc., which is an advocate on behalf of Jewish victims of sexual abuse
in Baltimore.
Polin has posted a copy of the flier on the center's
Web site.
According to court documents, Shapiro put the boys,
then age 12 and 13, on his lap while they practiced chanting the Torah. One
of the victims reported that Shapiro would touch him inappropriately over
his clothing, and the other said he was held on Shapiro's lap against his
will and touched inappropriately.
Shapiro, 57, works in a kosher butcher shop, according
to the Jewish Times, which reported extensively on the allegations
in June.
A phone message left Tuesday at Shapiro's house was
not returned.
Arthur
C. Abramson, director of the Baltimore
Jewish Council, said that the organization recently became aware of the
allegations but had not been involved in the matter or Shapiro's removal
from teaching.
"The Orthodox community -- that end of the Orthodox
community -- tends to be very insular," Abramson said. "Information can circulate
very rapidly within the framework of the Orthodox community, and it doesn't
necessarily get out into more general circles unless reported by The Sun
or the Jewish Times."
In April, amid discussions in the Orthodox community
about the allegations, Vaad HaRabbonim of Baltimore, the city's Council of
Orthodox rabbis, released a letter on
"Abuse in Our
Community."
"We feel it essential to discuss this matter directly
with you, as the greatest allies of the abuser are ignorance and silence,"
according to the letter, which was signed by nearly two dozen rabbis.
Shapiro is out on a combined $175,000 bail in the two
cases.
Accused Of Molesting Bar Mitzvah
Students
by Adam May
CBS News (Baltimore) - December 19, 2007
Click here to watch video:
http://wjz.com/local/rabbi.molesting.yisroel.2.614587.html
PIKESVILLE,
Md. (WJZ) — At a kosher deli off Reisterstown Road in a Pikesville
stripmall, Eyewitness News found Rabbi Yisroel Shapiro, a butcher who jumped
out from behind his desk and hid from our cameras when we tried to ask him
about new criminal charges that he sexually abused two young boys during
Bar Mitzvah lessons.
Shapiro never came out, but a coworker did. The man
later yelled at Eyewitness News after we walked out the door that the allegations
against Shapiro were "fabricated."
City prosecutors say "Over the past several months,
police and prosecutors have conducted an extensive investigation that led
to the charges."
The alleged abuse took place at Shapiro's home off
Olympia Street in 1988 and 1994. Some neighbors caught wind of the allegations
a few years back and posted flyers.
One victim tells police he was forced to chant passages
from the Torah as he was inappropriately touched.
"The problem is that we don't know if there's more
victims. We know a few but not how many there have actually been," said
Vicki
Polin.
Polin heads
a support group for victims of rabbi abuse. She's concerned that some
leaders in the Orthodox community keep abusers quiet.
"They're told they shouldn't report it to secular
authorities because it could start another holocaust. Unfortunately, it starts
another type of holocaust where an accuser has access to hundreds of children
and each time they perfect their skills," she said.
Pedophile suspect extradited from Israel charged
in NY
by Michal Lando
Jerusalem Post - January 9, 2008
A suspected Brooklyn pedophile extradited from Israel
to the US under a revised extradition treaty was arraigned and held on
$10-million bail on Tuesday.
Stefan Colmer was indicted by a Brooklyn grand jury
on charges that he sodomized two 13-year-old boys from the haredi Jewish
community in Brooklyn where he lived.
To avoid arrest, Colmer, a computer technician and
salesman, fled to Israel, where he has been hiding under the name David
Cohen.
A revamped extradition treaty between the United States
and Israel, which went into effect January 10, 2007, allowed Colmer to be
returned to Brooklyn. Prior to the newly amended treaty, Israel and the US
had agreed to extradite suspected sex criminals only if they had been charged
with rape. Since last January, at least two other sex offenders have been
extradited, including
Michael Leon
Zeve and
KennethFrank.
"Until now, Israel has been a Mecca for sex offenders,"
said Vicki Polin, founder and executive director of The Awareness Center,
the international Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse/Assault.
The indictment charges that between March and May
2006, Colmer sodomized two teenage boys on numerous occasions, after luring
them to his home from a nearby yeshiva high school, according to the US
extradition request.
Colmer is charged with eight counts of criminal sexual
acts in the second degree, eight counts of sexual misconduct, 19 counts of
sexual abuse in the second degree and two counts of endangering the welfare
of a child.
In the Orthodox world, "the status quo has been to
protect offenders' parnassa [income] and not shame family members, at the
expense of shaming those who have been victimized," said Polin, who has been
working in the sexual violence field for just under 25 years.
The new treaty may also allow for the extradition
of Avrohom
Mondrowitz, who claimed to be a rabbi and posed as a school psychologist
in Boro Park during the late 1970s and early 80s. He was indicted in 1984
for sodomizing young boys, and he fled to Israel after learning he was under
investigation. Since then, Mondrowitz has remained in Israel, protected by
the now-defunct treaty. He was recently arrested there, pursuant to the amended
treaty, and extradition proceedings are pending.
Michael Lesher, an Orthodox lawyer representing six
of Mondrowitz's alleged victims and actively pursuing his extradition, has
been facing intense pushback.
"I continued to bang on the door about Mondrowitz,
but I am operating against tremendous institutional logic," said Lesher.
"He should have been first to be extradited years ago. When they arrested
Colmer, I think they were testing the waters."
She founded resource for sex abuse
victims
By Bryna Zumer
Owings Mills Times - January 24, 2008
Vicki Polin, a counselor specializing in sexual violence,
noticed years ago that there seemed to be no Jewish resources for sex abuse
victims, and she was uncomfortable referring them to Christian organizations,
which she felt might proselytize them or be unable to speak to Jewish
issues.
Before relocating to Israel in 2001, she attended Neve
Yerushalayim, a women's college in Jerusalem, and saw that people who had
been sexually abused had no place to turn.
"All these young women started telling me what happened
to them," Polin said. "I started seeing what a problem it was."
A Chicago native, she moved to Baltimore in 2002 and,
in 2003, launched the nonprofit International Jewish Coalition Against Sexual
Abuse/Assault, now known as The Awareness Center.
The organization's goal is to provide resources to
victims and educate the general community, but Polin, an incest survivor
herself, has also drawn controversy for posting information on alleged offenders,
including many prominent rabbis, on the center's Web site.
"Our goal is education. It's not just about, 'Get this
guy, get that guy,'" she said, explaining that many in the Orthodox world
do not watch TV or read secular news, but have gained information from the
center's Web site.
After she, together with a volunteer board of directors,
began posting information on offenders, "survivors started saying, 'Why don't
you have my story?' The same (victims) were talking about the same (offenders),
and we started putting the pieces together."
Although more than 250 rabbis worldwide support The
Awareness Center, critics have accused Polin of "lashon ha'ra," derogatory
or damaging speech against another person, which Jewish tradition
condemns.
"In some places, we're seen as heroes and in some we're
seen as crazy or vindictive," she said.
After Polin received allegations against rabbis by
a group that turned out to be linked to al-Qaida and was anti-Semitic, she
posted resources on abuse for Christians and Muslims as well.
She also works with groups like The Survivors Network
of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, and, in addition to running the non-profit
almost single-handedly, regularly testifies in court on behalf of victims
of sexual violence.
The goal is not just to educate and reach out to victims,
Polin said, but also to help abusers.
"There's no proven treatment for offenders. We don't
know what to do, how to stop them," she said.
Local
Advocates upset over rabbi's
plea deal
By Luke Broadwater
The Examiner - March 12, 2008
BALTIMORE - A group of Jewish advocates against sexual
assault is angry over a plea deal for a Baltimore City rabbi who pleaded
guilty to abusing young boys but avoided jail time.
"I'm very upset about it," said Vicki Polin of the
Awareness Center in the city.
"He should go to jail. I'm also very upset that he
won't be on the sex offender registry."
Israel Shapiro, 57, pleaded guilty Monday to one count
of sexual abuse of a child and one count of third-degree sex offense before
Baltimore City Circuit Judge John Miller and was sentenced to five years
of probation.
He must stay away from his victims and have no unsupervised
contact with children, under the terms of the plea agreement, prosecutors
said.
Shapiro also was ordered to pay $10,800 in restitution
to one of the victims, undergo sex offender screening and treatment.
He is also prohibited from using a computer to contact
children.
Shapiro was not required to register as a sex offender
because the incidents occurred before the sex offender registry was
created.
Lawmakers in Annapolis are working on a bill that would
make the registry retroactive.
Baltimore City State's Attorney Patricia Jessamy said
in an interview Monday she was hoping to get the law changed to make Maryland
residents aware of the those living in their neighborhoods who committed
sexual offenses prior to the creation of the registry.
A statement of probable cause is not in Shapiro's court
file because Shapiro was charged by a grand jury indictment.
But Polin said the abuse dates back to 1988 and involves
12- and 13-year-old boys whom Shapiro taught.
The Awareness Center posted a photo of Shapiro on its
Web site to make the Jewish community in the Baltimore region aware of the
allegations against Shapiro, she said.
But Polin said she worries that without Shapiro registering
as a sex offender, there won't be enough scrutiny on him.
"This guy goes into a synagogue where there's tons
of little kids, and no one is monitoring him," Polin said.
NY Lawmaker Becomes Confidant on Child Sex Abuse
Associated Press - November 23, 2008
NEW YORK (AP) -- It started as a discussion about a
taboo subject: child molestation among Orthodox Jews.
A Brooklyn assemblyman said that after he broached
the subject on his radio show this summer, dozens of people came forward
with stories about children being molested in the Orthodox community. As
many as four people a day have come to him over the past three months with
painful accounts of secrets often kept for decades, accusing more than 60
perpetrators, he said.
But the politician, Dov Hikind, said he won't breach
victims' trust by disclosing the private exchanges to prosecutors -- or to
a lawyer who subpoenaed him in a civil case against a school accused of
concealing abuse.
Hikind's campaign has fueled a firestorm in the insular
world of Orthodox Judaism, where mounting calls to address sex abuse are
met with reluctance to turn to secular authorities. One local rabbi said
he got death threats for speaking out.
"In our community, people don't talk about the things
that they've come to my office'' and revealed, said Hikind, the Orthodox
son of Holocaust survivors.
The outpouring has spurred him to work on devising
mechanisms within the Orthodox world for reporting sex abuse and sharing
information on school staffers' previous postings. He aims to present a plan
to rabbis this winter.
Orthodox Jews strictly follow Jewish law. Studies have
found they account for as much as 10 percent of Jews nationwide, and a far
greater share in parts of the New York metro area. Some 37 percent of the
more than 516,000 Jews in Brooklyn are Orthodox, according to the UJA-Federation
of New York, a Jewish social-service group.
Critics have said sex abuse claims are sometimes handled
quietly in Orthodox rabbinical courts, rather than being reported to authorities,
though Orthodox leaders are hardly alone in trying to keep such allegations
private.
For decades, Roman Catholic leaders often transferred
predatory clergy among parishes without telling parents or police. In a 2007
nationwide investigation of sex abuse by teachers, The Associated Press
discovered efforts to stop individual offenders but, overall, a deeply entrenched
resistance toward recognizing and fighting abuse.
Some sexual abuse cases involving Orthodox Jewish schools
have spilled into the secular legal system in Brooklyn.
In one of the most notorious,
Rabbi Yehuda
Kolko was charged with sexually abusing boys at an Orthodox school. He
admitted no sexual wrongdoing and pleaded guilty in April to a misdemeanor
child endangerment charge. Kolko was sentenced to three years of probation
and has been dismissed from the school, said his lawyer, Jeffrey Schwartz.
The school's lawyer didn't immediately return a telephone call.
Six former students are suing the school, saying it
covered up Kolko's misdeeds. Their lawyer subpoenaed Hikind this month, seeking
to find out whether he learned anything relevant to the case during his impromptu
fact-finding about sexual abuse among the Orthodox.
Brooklyn prosecutors say they are open to hearing the
claims, and Hikind said he encourages those who confide in him to talk to
the authorities. But none will, he said, for fear of ostracism from a community
worried about being stigmatized.
A rabbi and psychologist told Jewish media outlets
he was hounded into quitting a task force on child molestation, days after
Hikind appointed him to lead it in September; the panel is going on with
other members. Another Brooklyn rabbi told the Daily News this month that
vicious fliers and death-threat phone calls scared him into shutting down
a sex abuse victims' hot line he had set up.
"For me to release any information from people who
have come forward to me with absolute confidence ... could you imagine?''
said Hikind, a Democrat first elected in 1982. "It would destroy the entire
project and would accomplish nothing.''
He said lawyers were assessing how to respond to the
subpoena.
Plaintiffs' lawyer Michael Dowd said he was willing
to safeguard victims' identities but determined to pursue whatever information
Hikind has.
"I don't question his motivation, but at the same time,
I don't accept it as a reason'' not to provide information that could expose
child molesters, said Dowd, who won $11.4 million in damages last year for
two people raped as teenagers by a Roman Catholic youth minister on Long
Island.
Hikind said he would ultimately consider unmasking
accused sexual predators but wants to focus now on setting up a broader framework
for addressing the issue.
His endeavors have generated a torrent of debate in
Orthodox circles. A recent post on the subject on the news site VosIzNeias.com
generated more than 140 reader comments within 24 hours, some lauding Hikind
and some blasting him.
Some victims' advocates see little point in collecting
information without bringing in law enforcement.
"The only way things are going to be cleaned up'' is
with authorities' involvement, said Vicki Polin, the founder of The Awareness
Center. The Baltimore-based nonprofit group works with victims of sexual
abuse in Jewish communities.
But many observers praise Hikind's campaign.
"We can't achieve solutions without the public spotlight,''
said Elliot Pasik, an Orthodox attorney who represents plaintiffs in rabbi
sex-abuse lawsuits unrelated to Kolko.
Child abuse survivors advocate for legal
reform
By Ron Cassie
Frederick News Post - November 28, 2008
Ava Miegdzinski endured physical and psychological
trauma after being sexually abused as a 4-year-old by a Hebrew school teacher
in Providence, R.I.
At 58, Miegdzinski stepped forward publicly for the
first time to discuss the repercussions of her abuse, which she said included
sterility. She said she intends to lend her voice in support of legislation
that would extend Maryland's statute of limitations on lawsuits involving
cases of child sexual abuse.
She described her experience during a recent public
meeting at the C. Burr Artz Public Library in downtown Frederick.
Miegdzinski said that her sister Sandra is also a victim,
and that Sandra was 5 when she was sexually abused by a neighbor.
"The lawyers talked my parents out of filing a lawsuit
because they said the other side's attorneys would tear my sister apart,"
Miegdzinski said. "That makes us both so mad today."
Victims of such abuse have criminal but not civil recourse
after their 25th birthday. Studies show that only 10 percent of victims ever
report childhood sexual abuse, and most who do wait until they are well into
adulthood.
Prosecutors aren't likely to take on cases involving
sexual abuse that allegedly took place decades ago, victim advocates said,
thus the need for civil remedy.
The local meeting was sponsored by Child Victims Voice
of Maryland, a coalition working to abolish the state statute of limitations
on lawsuits in cases involving child sexual abuse, and The Awareness Center,
a Jewish coalition against sexual abuse and assault.
Similar events aimed at rallying support for legislation
already filed by Baltimore state Sen. Delores Kelley, the Civil Actions --
Child Sex Abuse -- Statute of Limitations, were scheduled in Pikesville and
in Bowie. Susan O'Brien, an Annapolis consultant and child sexual abuse victim
herself, said that more events around the state will be planned before and
during the General Assembly session.
"This is a bill that should have bipartisan support,"
O'Brien said. "This is a child protection measure. Do I want the right to
sue the guy who abused me 25 years ago? Yes, but the guy who abused me in
1978 was 23 years old at the time, and he's still out there.
"My son Charlie is 6, I was 8," O'Brien said. "When
you start having your own children, you start looking at what you can do
to protect them."
The proposed legislation has two components: extending
the statute of limitations and providing a two-year window for victims of
any age to come forward.
"Education is the key,"
said Vicki
Polin of The Awareness Center. "The simple fact is that people do not
come forward until they are 40, 50 and 60 years old, and the statute of
limitation needs to be extended."
The typical child sexual predator, Polin said, will
molest more than 100 children over the course of a lifetime.
Polin and O'Brien, who led the small gathering, encouraged
those in attendance to contact their local PTAs, neighborhood watch organizations
and Scout leaders, and talk with those groups about the issue and proposed
legislation.
The bill does not provide victims with any special
rights, O'Brien said.
"It does not attempt to legally redefine rape, or sexual
abuse, or child abuse, or any institutions. Victims still must present the
merits of their claim. They still have to go court and present evidence as
they would with any other court proceeding."
Although only 2 percent of child abuse victims claim
to have been abused by clergy (46 percent claim to have been abused by a
family member, the rest by teachers, neighbors and other adults), the Maryland
Catholic Conference has played an outsized role in lobbying against expanding
the statute of limitations in the past, Polin and O'Brien said.
That concern, plus the Catholic Church's ongoing sexual
abuse crisis, brought Charlie Diffenbaugh, a member of St. Ignatius in Urbana,
to the meeting in Frederick.
"It's my opinion that the church should stop lobbying
to defeat this type of legislation and finally face up to the issue," Diffenbaugh
said. "They're spending thousands of dollars of people's money to defeat
this, and I think that's a real problem."
Letters to the Editor
Letter to the Editor
The Journal (Webster University) - March 31, 2004
I wanted to let you know that The Awareness Center
supports the efforts of SNAP, requesting that Webster University let Rabbi
Magencey go.
The Awareness Center is The Jewish Coalition Against
Sexual Abuse/Assault. Please take time out to visit our web page where we
have listed the old articles regarding Rabbi Magencey. You may be interested
in reviewing the documents for yourself:
http://www.theawarenesscenter.org/Magencey_Mordecai.html
The Awareness Center contacted the licensing board
at the state of Missouri, and asked if Rabbi Magencey was in violation of
the agreement made years ago. On July 2, 2003 a response was sent to us from
Pamela Groose, Executive Director - Missouri State Committee of
Psychologists.
The response is : "To teach Intro to Psychology would
not require a license to practice psychology and the same would go for religious
studies. Whether or not his prior problem with his Missouri Psychology license
is a problem for him teaching at the universities would be a decision of
the universities."
Magencey is teaching at Webster University and Washington
University. He is a part-time rabbi at Covenant House, working with senior
citizens.
The state and Magencey, a psychotherapist in Chesterfield,
signed a stipulation that strips Magencey of his license in Missouri and
bans him from practicing in any state or foreign country.
Magencey is the son a prominent rabbi in St. Louis.
His Father, Rabbi Avraham Magencey a beloved, respected man was the 'mohel'
of St. Louis for years.
Vicki Polin, Executive Director
The Awareness Center
Letters to the Editor
Baltimore Jewish Times - May 25, 2005
I thank Editor Phil Jacobs and the Baltimore Jewish
Times for the courage it took to publish the recent articles regarding Judge
Robert I. Hammerman.
My heart goes out to "Barry" and the others who had
the experience of feeling sexually victimized by a man who had so much power
and control. It saddens me a great deal to see how badly our community needs
to be educated on the symptoms and ramifications sexual violence plays on
both children and adults.
My hope is that our community will be more open to
offering support to those who have been violated, and do what it can to help
those who offend to stop.
It's important to realize that even if an alleged offender
has passed away, the violence he caused others will live on. To discredit
someone who has been violated is a shameful thing.
Vicki Polin
The Awareness Center
Baltimore
Fleeing the scene
Jerusalem Post - June 16, 2005
Sir, – Re "Missing Arizona rabbi faces child abuse
charges" (June 9): I wanted to thank Sam Ser and The Jerusalem Post for writing
this article. As I'm sure you are aware, it's not uncommon for individuals
accused of sexual crimes to flee the community where the accusations have
been made. Unfortunately, many from Jewish communities tend to flee to Israel
to avoid prosecution. We have also seen a trend in which those who end up
in Israel change their names to avoid detection.
My hope is that
Rabbi David
E. Lipman will soon be found alive and well and able to face the charges
being brought against him.
VICKI POLIN, Executive Director
The Awareness Center: Jewish Coalition Against Sexual
Abuse/Assault
Baltimore
Letters to the Editor
Let survivors
speak
Chicago Herald News - June 22, 2005
I wanted to thank you for writing such an important
article as you did with the story of sexual abuse survivor Bobby Drish, ("Abuse
allegations go online," June 16). The Awareness Center is the international
Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse/Assault. We also have many stories
similar to that of Bobby Drish. It saddens me a great deal every time I hear
of another case where the survivor was blamed and not believed. I was so
happy that you gave Bobby the opportunity to empower himself enough to bear
witness and tell his story.
It is vitally important for newspapers like yours to
allow survivors to have a voice. Not only does it help survivors heal, it
also offers an opportunity for others to know they are not alone and gives
our communities the chance to understand the ramification sexual violence
has on our lives.
Vicki Polin, executive director
The Awareness Center
Baltimore, MD.
Rape victims must be honored
Christian Science Monitor - July 5, 2005
In response to the June 27 article, "A rape victim
defies traditional code": Thank you for writing such an important article.
I'm sure rape victims from many different cultures and religions could relate
to it.
It's sad to say that even today in many cultures, it
is believed that if it became known that a woman was sexually assaulted,her
reputation would be tarnished, as would that of her family. We need to start
sending messages to our children and our neighbors that the offender is the
criminal, and that the rape victim should be honored and respected.
Vicki Polin
Executive Director, The Awareness Center: The Jewish
Coalition Against Sexual Abuse/Assault
Baltimore
Sex offender registries
Kansas City Star - July 7, 2005
It amazes me, knowing what we know about sex offenders,
that anyone would question the constitutionality of a state sex offender
registry in Missouri (6/30, Metro, "Court to consider sex offender
law").
According to a 1997 study (Prentky, Lee, Knight and
Cerce), 52 percent of sex offenders re-offend over a 25-year period. Not
only is it critical that there be a sex offender registry in Missouri, but
there should be a national sex offender registry as well.
Offenders tend to move around, as in the case of William
Webb. He was on the registry in the state of Washington because of a child
molestation conviction in 1992. Recently, he was able to get a license to
teach driver's education to high school students in Wisconsin because officials
were unaware of his criminal background.
We need to start demanding criminal background checks
of anyone to be licensed or employed to work with children. We also need
to start lobbying our lawmakers to subsidize the cost of these expensive
background checks.
It's true this is not foolproof, as not all sex offenders
have been convicted or placed on a registry. But it is a step in the right
direction.
Vicki Polin
The Awareness Center: The Jewish Coalition Against
Sexual Abuse/Assault
Baltimore, MD.
Editorial/Opinion - Readers respond
Combat sex
offenders
USA Today - July 27, 2005
After 20 years of advocating for those who are survivors
of sexual violence, it's hard to believe there is finally a national registry
of sex offenders (National online registry of sex offenders launched, News,
July 21).
Now, I think it's time for federal laws on the books
that would stimulate a uniform approach to sexual offenses. The reality is
that too many states are considered to be "sex-offender friendly."
I also believe it's imperative that we have not only
a national sex offender registry, but also an international one. We know
that both alleged and convicted sex offenders move from one state to the
next to avoid prosecution, but they also move from one country to another.
We need to protect potential victims not only in the United States, but also
in the world.
There also needs to be a federal law that abolishes
the idea of statutes of limitations on civil and criminal charges when the
crime is related to sexual violence. Canada, for example, has no such statutes
on these sorts of crimes. We need to make our country safe for everyone.
Vicki Polin, executive director
The Awareness Center: Jewish Coalition Against Sexual
Abuse/Assault
Baltimore
Letters to the Editor
A friendly state for sex
offenders?
Baltimore Sun - August 4, 2005
As I was reading "Registry for sex offenders has gaps"
(July 28), I couldn't help but ask myself if Maryland is a "sex
offender-friendly" state?
It's really pretty scary to think that out of the 4,300
registered sexual offenders in the state database, 3,000 are no longer
supervised.
I believe that sex offenders need to be monitored for
life.
According to a 1997 study, the recidivism rate for
child sex offenders over a 25-year period is 52 percent. Given such statistics,
how can it be that Maryland only requires sex offenders to be on the state
registry for 10 years?
I agree with Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran
Jr. that we need specialized training for parole officers who work with sex
offenders and better treatment for sex offenders while they are
incarcerated.
The problem is that as of today there is no known treatment
for sex offenders that is really effective. Research in treating offenders
is still very much in its infancy.
I believe it is imperative that parole officers visit
offenders in their homes at least once every six months, as a way to verify
the offender's residence. I also believe that a sex offender should automatically
be placed on a registry and that this should not be left up to a judge.
Let's remember that the goal is to protect unsuspecting
individuals (adults and children) from becoming the next victim of sexual
violence.
Vicki Polin
Baltimore
The writer is executive director of The Awareness
Center Inc., a Jewish coalition against sexual abuse and assault.
Convicted abusers just tip of the
iceberg
Baltimore Sun - August 28, 2005
It's important for there to be stricter laws regulating
convicted sex offenders. But the proposed laws are only a Band-Aid to a much
larger problem ("Governor promotes sex-crime measures," Aug. 21).
These proposed laws pertain only to convicted sex
offenders. And it's important for residents of Maryland to be aware of the
fact that the majority of sex offenders have not been convicted of their
crimes.
As we all know, childhood sexual abuse and rape of
adults are often crimes of secrecy and silence. The problem is compounded
by the fact that only 32 percent of sexual assaults against people 12 or
older are reported to law enforcement.
According to another study, 84 percent of respondents
who identified themselves as rape victims did not report the crime to
authorities.
And according to the U.S. Department of Justice, the
majority of survivors of sexual violence are afraid to report sexual assault
to the police.
Reasons include fears that reporting could lead to
further victimization by the offender; fears of other forms of retribution
by the offender or by his or her friends or family; concerns about the arrest,
prosecution and incarceration of an offender who may be a family member or
friend and on whom the victim or others may depend; concerns about others
finding out about the sexual assault or about not being believed; and concerns
about being traumatized by the response of the criminal justice system.
Vicki Polin
Baltimore
The writer is executive director of The Awareness Center
Inc., the Jewish coalition against sexual abuse and assault.
Letters to the Editor
Sexual
Assault
Baltimore Jewish Times - September 24, 2005
The Awareness Center wants to thank both "Sharon" and
the Baltimore Jewish Times for having the courage to tell about and publish
the Sept. 16 article "Teens Talk About Life After Rape"
"Sharon" deserves a round of applause, for surviving
not only the assault, but misdiagnosis and inappropriate treatment, which
unfortunately is way too common. It's great to hear that finally both Sharon
and her family have been given the opportunity to heal.
It's so important for the Jewish community to accept
that one out of every three to five women, and one out of every five to seven
men have been sexually abused or assaulted by the time they reach age
18.
Sexual abuse and assault are often crimes of secrecy
and silence. The problem is compounded as only 32 percent of sexual assaults
against people 12 or older are reported. Reasons include fears that reporting
could lead to further victimization by the offender; fears of other forms
of retribution by the offender or by his or her friends or family; concerns
about the arrest, prosecution and incarceration of an offender who may be
a family member or friend and on whom the victim or others may depend; concerns
about others finding out about the sexual assault or about not being believed;
and concerns about being traumatized by the response of the criminal justice
system.
The Awareness Center Inc. is the international Jewish
Coalition Against Sexual Abuse and Assault, based in Baltimore. We are a
victim advocacy organization.
Vicki Polin
Executive Director, The Awareness Center Inc.
Letters to the Editor
Truly
Missed
Baltimore Jewish Times - March 17, 2006
Thank you for letting us all know
the
fate of the No. 19 bus, in which 11 individuals were murdered. One of
those precious lives lost was that of
Yechezkel Chezi
"Scotty" Goldberg, a man who had dedicated his life to helping survivors
of childhood sexual abuse.
Between being a prolific writer, and his vast knowledge
of resources for survivors of abuse, his loss has had an international impact.
Chezi was a valued resource of the Baltimore-based international organization,
The Awareness Center Inc. (Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse/Assault).
He is truly missed.
Vicki Polin
Executive Director
The Awareness
Center, Inc.
Letter to the Editor
Hands Off - Don't investigate
yourself
Miami News Times - July 20, 2006
Don't investigate yourself, rabbi: Regarding
Forrest Norman's
"Yeshiva
Dustup" (July 13): It's important to remember that clergy abuse has nothing
to do with religion, even though you will find it in all of them (Christianity,
Judaism, Muslim, Bahai, et cetera). Sex crimes are about an abuse of power
and the need to control others.
Unfortunately it's common for child molesters to choose
careers or volunteer time for organizations and/or institutions in which
they have ample access to the types of victims they prey upon. One of the
biggest problems we face is that instead of allowing law enforcement to conduct
criminal investigations, institutions attempt to handle things on their own.
When this happens, we end up in situations like the one we are seeing in
the case of Rabbi
Yehuda Kolko and Yeshiva Torah Temimah.
Just as we say, "It takes a village to raise a child,"
we can say the same thing about sex offenders. When an individual suspects
a child is at risk of harm, we all must become mandated reporters. Let those
with the education, experience, and training collect the physical evidence
and do the forensic interviewing. This is not the job for our clergy.
Vicki Polin
Baltimore, Maryland
Letters to the Editor
Beyond The
Pain
Baltimore Jewish Times - November 10, 2006
Reading the Nov. 3 article
"Bar
None" about kosher food for state prisoners, I started to think: prisoners
in Maryland include convicted sex offenders. We all seem concerned about
the rights of those who commit violent crimes, but not their victims.
It is not uncommon for those victimized by criminals
(especially survivors sex crimes) to go through periods of depression, which
can become severe leading to thoughts of suicide; psychiatric hospitalization
may be required. Most treatment facilities do not offer kosher food. This
means family members or friends must bring food to them.
Once again it appears that we care more about offenders
than about those victimized.
Perhaps Jewish groups involved in the kosher food effort
for prisoners (including Agudah Israel of America and the Orthodox Union)
will start an effort to help those living in a nightmare of flashbacks.
Vicki Polin
Executive Director, The Awareness Center Inc.
Violence unchained
Jerusalem Post - November 27, 2006
Sir, - I was outraged by the title
"Experts:
Sela poses 'no immediate' danger to women" (November 27), which can give
unsuspecting women a false sense of safety. Benny Sela should be seen as
extremely dangerous no matter if it's his first hour or first week on the
run.
Prof. Zvi Zemishlany is correct that "An escaped serial
rapist is like a wild animal who hides." The problem: If Sela is hiding in
a location where an unsuspecting woman is present, the likelihood of her
being assaulted is extremely high.
Research into the treatment of sex offenders is still
in its infancy. As of yet there has been no proven treatment for those who
offend, especially for violent sex offenders such as Benny Sela.
VICKI POLIN
Executive Director
The Awareness Center, Inc.
Baltimore, Maryland
Let the experts do it
By Vicki Polin
Jeruasalem Post - January 25, 2007
Sir, - Thanks to Rabbi Avi Shafran for helping to make
Israelis aware of the JTA series on clergy sexual abuse ("What the rabbi
said," Letters, January 24). I am not aware that any Israeli newspaper or
magazine has published the series, entitled "Reining in abuse."
It's time for all of us to face the reality of how
cases of sexual violence have been mishandled and covered up in all streams
of Judaism. The Awareness Center's goal is to prevent one more person from
becoming the next victim of a sex crime.
The only way things will ever change is via awareness,
education and the implementation of new policies. We must demand that our
rabbis report all cases of suspected sexual violence to law enforcement instead
of handling them alone. To this day I have not met one rabbi with any training
in collecting forensic evidence, or in conducting a victim-sensitive interview.
Until this changes, these cases need to be handled by those with the proper
education, experience and knowledge. They are not cases for a synagogue,
school, camp or beit din to be handling.
VICKI POLIN
Executive Director
The Awareness Center, Inc.
Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse/Assault
Baltimore
Letters:
Sex abuse survivors
need compensation, however late
Baltimore Examiner - June 13, 2008
One has to wonder how many other children Alan Beier
might have molested. ("Former teacher gets four years for sex abuse of student,"
June 9)
We all have to realize that the majority of offenses
committed against our children are never reported. If they are reported,
it will not be until many years later. The majority of survivors don't come
forward until they are in their 40s, 50s or beyond.
Maryland is one of the few states that has no statute
of limitations on criminal charges being pressed against an alleged sex offender.
However, it does have an archaic limitation for survivors of child sexual
abuse to file a civil suit. We have to remember most of those who were molested
do not realize how it has affected their lives until they have lived them.
Survivors of child sexual abuse need to be compensated for their pain and
suffering. Maryland needs to abolish the statute of limitations retroactively.
There also should not be any financial caps on compensation.
Vicki Polin
Founder and Executive Director
The Awareness Center, Inc.
Baltimore, MD
The Awareness Center wants to thank David Framowitz,
Mark Weiss, Joel Engelman Baruch Sandhaus
Letter To The Editor - New York Jewish Week
by Vicki Polin, CEO/Founder
Jewish Week - October 30, 2008
The Awareness Center wants to thank David Framowitz,
Mark Weiss, Joel Engelman Baruch Sandhaus for their courage for being public
and also for joining the fight in protecting children from sexual predators
and for helping to get the word out about the upcoming legislation in New
York in hopes of abolishing the statute of limitations on civil suits against
sex offenders and those who assist in covering up crimes.
We all need to remember that a quarter of the population
in the United States (including the orthodox world) have been sexually abused
by the time they reach their 18th birthday (National Crimes Victim Center).
Both male and female children are targets. According to a study conducted
by the National Institute of Mental Health (1988) the typical child molester
will offend on average 117 children, most of whom will never report the
crimes.
Over a 25-year period, child molesters had a higher
rate of re-offense than rapists: 52% versus 39%. (Prentky, Lee, Knight, and
Cerce). Considering the statistics above, as Jews we all need to do what
we can to protect children, educate our community members and demand change
in the way our community leaders have been dealing with both those who have
been victimized and those who perpetrate the crimes.
If you are interested in helping with the pending
legislation in New York contact Joseph Byrnes: jospbyrnes@optonline.net.
Vicki Polin, MA, NCC, LCPC, ATR-BC Founder and CEO
The Awareness Center, Inc.
(the international Jewish Coalition Against Sexual
Abuse/Assault)
www.theawarenesscenter.org
Letter to the Edtior
Sad
Statistics
The Southampton Press - November 6, 2008
I personally want to thank Jessica DiNapoli for writing
the story about Edward Tellez, who was charged with third-degree sexual abuse
["Authorities Arrest Gymnastic Coach, October 30].
Those who molest children are often attracted to careers
in which they can have easy access to those they prey upon. All too often
we only hear stories of Catholic priests who molest. The reality is that
only 2 percent of clergy (of all faiths) molest. Recent research suggests
that 42 percent of all reported cases involve incest. The remaining 64 percent
are perpetrated by teachers, babysitters, doctors, therapists, Boy/Girl Scout
leaders, camp counselors and coaches -- like in the case of Edward
Tellez.
We all need to do our best to protect our children
and help those who have already been victimized. The majority of those who
were sexually violated as children are unaware of how the offenses affected
their lives until they have lived them. The majority of survivors don't come
forward until theya re in their 40s, 50s or beyond.
Please help us learn the names of those who abused
children in the past by getting involved with upcoming legislation that will
allow a civil window, allowing those who have been abused the opportunity
to file a civil suit against their offenders. Please contact Joseph P. Byrnes,
New York City Metro Chair of SNAP (Survivors Network for those Abused by
Priests), at jospbyrnes@optonline.net
Vicki Polin
Founder and CEO
(The International Jewish Coalition Against Sexual
Abuse/Assault)
Baltimore, Maryland
Updated Last: 11/28/2008
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