Looking Beyond the Kolko Case
There is no need for me to recount the sorrid accusations involving Yeshiva Torah Temimah and Rabbis Yehuda Kolko and Margulies. As I do not live in Brooklyn, my familiarity with this particular case only stems from various newspaper reports, blog posts, and their accompanying comments, most of which are a complete waste of time to read. While there are some commenters who offer constructive and purposeful comments, many commenters are throwing accusations that serve no purpose but to tar an entire set or subset of Jews and promote an unhealthy level of cynicism, while another set of commenters are out to convince us that the arrest and accusations spanning 30 years are completely baseless. These commenters seek to uphold the kavod of the Rabbinate by undermining the integrity of the alleged victims, labelling their accusations as "personal vendettas" and making comments alluding to their "problems." With these types of neighbors, it is no wonder that we are all so afraid of our own shadows!
Back in May 2006 when this topic came to light, I wrote a (hopefully constructive) post titled "Protecting Our Children, Protecting Ourselves: Sexual Abuse and Necessary Guidelines." I still stand by my original premises of the post including that "there are sexual predators in every community out there, including our own, that we need to protect our children from." In short, sexual predatorship (is that a word?) and sexual deviancy are human issues. And, frum society (both "Chareidi" and "Modern") are not immune to these issues.
My husband and I can claim more than a passing familiarity with a good handful of communities in the US: some small, some medium, and some large, and some super-sized. Outside of our current residence (for which I do not have enough historical knowledge), every single one of these communities that we have lived in has suffered from issues of sexual abuse perpetrated by authority figures. [And, even in our current community, there is a convicted sexual offender. While cries of lashon hara went out when someone publicly mentioned the offender database on the internet, I was personally glad to find out this tidbit of information as we were considering making a bid on a home within a stone's throw of this man's home at the time. While one man told us that his mistake that resulted in a conviction shouldn't affect our children, as a parent, I would rather play it safe and choose a different block to live on. (In the end, the home went for a price well above our range, and the issue became a non-issue-the story).]
Blame it on my professional background. . . but, while others continue to argue about the Kolko case, I prefer to concentrate on a different issue, one that extends beyond the shelf-life of this case, or similar cases. Namely, how can the Jewish community provide reasonable assurance that Jewish children are safe in day schools, camps, synagogues, and youth groups?
As it stands today:
*I have a list of numbers to call when I need to know if a product is kosher. And, if I find an unauthorized heksher, I know where to call to report it.
*I have a list of poskim who I can call for questions of all sorts.
*I know where to call when I need to borrow a wheelchair for my visiting grandmother or request a Shabbat box in the hospital.
*I know where to call if we need hospitality in an out-of-town community, and I even know where to call should we need to borrow a porta-crib or stroller.
*I know where to call when there is a family desperately in need of funds to pay their rent.
. . . But, I do NOT know where to call if (chas v'shalom, it should happen to no one) my child is abused by an authority figure!
When the Rabbis and the Yeshiva in question have had their day in court, the case will have come to a close. But, the issues that have come to light will be here to stay. And parents need to know where to turn to should there be a problem, and our institutions also need to know where to turn to before there is a problem.
While it is impossible to give a 100% guarantee of safety, we must institute a structure that gives us reasonable assurance that our children are safe. Fortunately, we have community members like Elliot Pasik who are actively involving themselves with these issues, especially on the lobbying end, which requires a special skill. However, I believe, as parents we also need to be asking the "hard questions" to let the administrators in our children's schools know that we want structure.
Your (constructive) thoughts?
Recommended links:
Rabbi Michael J. Broyde: Informing on Others for ViolatingAmerican Law: A Jewish Law View
Lecture by Rav Herschel Schacter "Nobody Talks About It"
Ari Kinsberg: "A Failure of the Orthodox Community"
P.S. Please keep it clean.
19 comments:
To some extent, we trust our schools, and we need to. It's one of the things we simply need to do. We trust that our schools will act properly and promptly when a situation comes up. When there is a coverup, as was alleged in the Kolko case, I'm not sure how much a person can do if they want to remain in that school. If you think something is happening, you bring it up to the principal/board/whoever. If nothing happens, or what happens is not satisfactory, you have to bite the bullet and pull your child out.
I'm not sure we can do much without unequivocal proof short of pushing schools with our children and money. When a school doesn't take care of a problem, and enough parents really start taking their children out, it will get the school's attention. To some extent, their hands are tied also - they may not be able to find any information one way or the other, and a world where people can accuse baselessly is almost as bad as one where predators roam. But they should present anything they do find to the concerned parents to show they are on top of the situation.
Strict sets of guidelines as to what is and isn't proper for a teacher/student relationship should be mandatory and clear. In my high school, all meetings with rabbeim were conducted either in public, with a door open, or with the shades wide open (and through which anyone could easily see from a path between two buildings). That's a place to start, perhaps.
Enacting standards for teacher/student relationships would make baseless accusations more difficult. Like I said in my May 06 post, Rebbes should want these standards, just as many parents do.
Sephardi Lady, you do well to attempt to pull something positive out of this to protect our children. I can't think of any concrete suggestions other than reinforcing the point I noticed my pediatrician making at my children's exams. They should never allow themselves to be touched even by people they know. I would add that they should be able to come to their parents in confidence. That should be the first avenue for a child of any age.
But I really don't know what can be institutionalized.
We wish that they could feel safe in schools and utterly trust the administrators there to protect them and be on their side, but that, unfortunately, is not the reality. In far more minor matters, I've seen schools side with teachers, principals, etc. who are clearly in the wrong b/c they feel that they have to back them up. So I can see how those sentiments could come up with far uglier consequences in situations with potential for scandal.
I think we have learned that we can't trust our schools, not at all. They simply aren't equipped to deal with these issues. Ezzie, if the parents don't announce publicly why they are pulling out their kids, how will it help? Would a school of Torah Temimah's size really care if 15 kids, say, left the school (and that is a huge number because only a small percentage of abused kids would tell and not all of the parents would act). And what if it's the only school, or if none of the schools in town take care of their problems?
Ariella is right that we need to teach our children well and maintain open communication with them although that is certainly not enough. What struck me about the original story in the Daily News? about the first accuser, the one who now lives in Israel, is that his mother had remarried and moved him to NY, and his home life was very unstable at the time.
Who to contact for suspected or known child sexual abuse?
www.theawarenesscenter.org
which is a Jewish organization. Then, call your local police or child protective services, because the law of the land is the law, according to halacha. It is not lashon hara to report a reasonably credible suspicion of child molestation. Silence does not help anyone and ignoring a problem will not make it go away.
Ezzie, if the parents don't announce publicly why they are pulling out their kids, how will it help?
I think it should be discussed with every student in that class, and that all should leave. The reasons for their leaving would be clear... and anytime a large group leaves a school, it leaves an impact, however large the school.
10 students left YU this year, and it was written up quite a bit, especially among anyone who pays attention to YU. They were leaving without any complaint, but simply because they felt they were better off elsewhere. If 15 kids left a school suddenly, especially in an elementary/high school, the impact would be far greater.
I think it should be discussed with every student in that class, and that all should leave. The reasons for their leaving would be clear...
I hate to pull rank here, Ezzie, but it's obvious that you don't have kids in school yet. My brother has a kid in Torah Temimah and when I asked him about the Kolko scandal, he told me how the whole thing was a vendetta against Kolko for one reason or another. People don't pull their kids out of school very easily, and there is a lot of denial when parents have invested years and dollars to a particular institution.
Make that "in" a particular institution.
excellent post. in my view immunization is the most effective way to deal with this problem, since you cannot really educate or completely know all the teachers and staff and the school (or anywhere else for that matter.
in that spirit, i was immediately reminded of this post:
"What Parents Need to Know About Child Sexual Abuse" which sums things up pretty well including this statement: "The best way to prevent abuse when the parent or care-taking adult is not present is to provide children with the skills they need to help protect themselves".
the rest can be read in this link:
http://drdeborahserani.blogspot.com/2006/01/what-parents-need-to-know-about-child.html
Sephardilady,
I have something I'd like to email you regarding a recent post. Do you have an email address?
Charlie Hall
Orthonomics AT gmail DOT com
Please shoot a note. Good to hear from you.
Hello Sephardi Lady:
I agree with your comments.
I would like to add a few things to help put the status of sexual abuse in the Orthodox Community in perspective.
1. There are no data to suggest that there is a problem in Orthodox communities which is any different than non-Orthodox Jewish communities or than non-Jewish communities.
2. Orthodox Jews are conservative and somewhat squeamish when talking about sexuality, and it is therefore not surprising that Orthodox parents and Orthodox educators have lartely not, as of yet, been able to formulate a coherent community wide policy for abuse.
3. Silence, sending abusers out of town to another community, telling the victims to remain quit, concerns about ruining a person's reputation, wanting to beleive that people can recover and be given a second chance, doubting the veracity of the victims allegations, etc.--all of these are features of how all human beings in all communities (not just frum Jews) respond to allegations of sexual abuse.
4. It is NORMAL to not want to believe allegations of sexual abuse, especially about our own children.
5. Therefore, in my opinion, all policies regarding sexual abuse should be future oriented, and should not focus on failures of the past. Sexual abuse of children (unlike theft, adultery, and other sinful behaviors) is NOT something which ordinary people fantasize about. A normal person is not on the lookout for sexual abuse of children unless he or she has been educated about and alerted to this issue. Therefore, we should not be surprised that Orthodox communities (like all other communities in the world) in the past have been very naive and inept at dealing with sexual abuse.
6. There is no evidence that sexual abuse is more of a problem in Haredi communities than Modern Orthodox communities. (IN fact, there have recently been a large number of scandals about sexual misconduct by rabbis in the Modern Orthodox world.)
7. We should all be supporting Elliot Pasik, Esq., by paying him to come speak in our shuls and day schools all over North America. He is an erlicheh mentsch and a competent professional, and a great role model for all of us. I recently spoke with him in Chicago. He is really a great resource. For those of you who do not know him, he is an advocate for organized and systematic procedures in day schools, camps, and yeshivos to protect children from sexual abuse, such as mandatory criminal background checks for all school or camp employees, and a central registry for all sexual offenders in Orthodox communities in collaboration with state and municipal authorities.
8. The consequences of sexual abuse are often catostrophic for the victims, and may not express thmemslves until much later in life (such as when the victim is an adult, attempting to engage in a loving, sexual relationship). Those who cast aspersions on the reality of how serious the consequences of sexual abuse are should be ignored--they are either uninformed or are cynically spreading misinformation in order to pursue some sort of agenda.
9. "Behind the scenes" handling of cases of sexual abuse have not worked because these methods of dealing with sexual abuse allow the perpetrator to continue to victimize children, as no one knows that they have a history of predatory behaviors.
10. There are numerous cases that I am familiar with 1st hand, and countless that I've heard about through reliable 2nd hand information, where victims of sexual abuse have been forbidden to seek psychotherpy treatment because of "loshon hora", "chillul HaShem", or "kibud av ve-em." I am not a Rabbi and therefore will not advance a halakhic argument. I will merely say that all responsible and informed posekim encourage victims who require or desire treatment to pursue it, which means that they must be free to talk to their psychtoherapists openly about what has happenned to them.
11. There are now a number of zealots who, in order to protect the honor and dignity of the rabbinical leadership which has failed to address this problem in previous decades, are resorting to very dishonest and cynical misinformation. They are accusing victims of lying, defending perpetrators, and minimizing the seriousness of this issue. These people should similarly be ignored.
12. Not all victims require treatment. Experts in sexual abuse are adept and identifying who needs treatment, who does not need treatment, and who may need treatment in the future but not in the present. THey are adept at telling parents how to deal with children who have been victimized, and how to help parents channel their own rage, shame, anger, and guilt about what has happenned to their children into healthy and helpful activities for their families and for their communities. The Mayerson Clinic of the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center is the resrouce I am personally familiar with, and I would definitely trust them with my own children if ch"v they required an evaluation or intervention. Many other cities, particularly those with medical schools and children's hospitals have similar resources. People should be encouraged to seek treatment for themselves and for their children if ch"v they have been victimized.
13. Many frum Jews are afraid to see non-frum or non-Jewish therapists because of concerns that an uninformed therapist will automatically assume that the demands of halakhic life are the cause of one's psychological problems. This is not true, however. I think it is great for frum Jews to be treated by frum mental health professionals, but there are many, many therapists who have provided very effective psychotherpay treatments for Orthodox Jews. An endorsement from a fellow Orthodox Jew who has received good treatment from a non-Jewish mental health professional is much more meaningful than the fact that a therapist is frum.
". . . But, I do NOT know where to call if (chas v'shalom, it should happen to no one) my child is abused by an authority figure!"
How about the police, if there is no other way to stop the abuse? I would hope that preventing other children from being raped or fondled is more important than laws against malshinus.
People don't pull their kids out of school very easily, and there is a lot of denial when parents have invested years and dollars to a particular institution.
That's true - but as we can see, announcing it publicly doesn't do anything either. Heck, even an arrest doesn't. I still think that what I said above is the best approach - whether people want to blind themselves to what's happening is a different issue entirely.
When ‘dayanim’ and ‘rabbis’ use the Torah for their own power and commercial profit, this is the behaviour of a swine i.e. a Pig.
No other ‘rabbi’ will ever act against another ‘rabbi’ - even when he knows his colleague is clearly desecrating the Torah. Each rabbi is only worried about losing his own position.
Therefore, the ‘rabbi’ and ‘dayan’ will never effect justice. And he will never truly stand for the Torah or the Honour of Hashem. His pocket will always prevail.
The Torah must never be used for commercial gain and profit. Am Yisrael can only be lead by those who have the necessary love and respect of Hashem and the Torah.
1. The ‘dayan’ and ‘rabbi’ may use lies. They turn the innocent into the guilty, and the guilty, become the innocent. They will not hesitate to tell lies in the Synagogue.
2. The ‘dayan’ and ‘rabbi’ may steal. They steal and siphon off money for themselves, from the community and individuals.
3. The ‘dayan’ and ‘rabbi’ may shame a Jew in public, even repeatedly. This is one of the most vile acts of murder in Jewish law – and they know this.
4. The ‘dayan’ and ‘rabbi’ will not hesitate to use Lashon Hara - the ‘Evil Tongue’ - to suit his own ends. Slander and gossip. This too, is one of the worst acts of murder in Jewish Law. Their slander is never challenged by the community, because they hold positions of power. And the slander may begin with the Rebbetzin herself.
5. The ‘dayanim’ and ‘rabbis’ worship idols and other gods. Their only god is Money. Especially the ‘Dayanim’ – the ‘Judges’ who sit on a Beit Din. They only care about their high incomes and retirement packages. They have little or no love for the Torah or Hashem.
In the case of Lubavitch/Chabad, all their rabbis are carrying out a form of Avodah Zarah – strange worship. They are using mediation and intercession. This is completely forbidden, and against the Torah. We are only allowed to pray to Hashem, directly ourselves.
6. When the NAME of Hashem has been taken in Vain – repeatedly - by reshaim, the ‘rabbi’ will turn a deaf ear and blind eye to the
CHILLUL HASHEM.
This is the abhorrent behaviour of a Pig.
This is an extremely severe and dangerous situation.
There is NO forgiveness for this evil sin and aveirah.
7. The ‘dayan’ and ‘rabbi’ may also offer large bribes, tell lies and bring False Witnesses – when he in fact has committed the crime. These are heinous acts of the most despicable kind. This is especially vile when the ‘dayan’ is sitting on a ‘Bet Din.’
8. The ‘rabbi’ may commit adultery. And when he gets divorced, he may spread slander about his own ex-wife, blackening her name – when in fact he was at fault.
9. The ‘dayan’ and ‘rabbi’ may also desecrate Shabbat – if it suits him. He will use physical violence to assault another Jew or Jewess at any time. This evil and venomous behaviour is 100% against the Torah.
The Swine Flu is common in PIGS.
This is a clear indication that it is the Dayanim – ‘Judges’ - and ‘Rabbis’ of today who are the PIGS and swines.
They twist and use the Torah for their own power and commercial benefit.
They are corrupt. And they are interested in only one thing:
MONEY.
Not the Torah.
William-Please don't open up really old posts with comments.
There are many fine people in the Rabbinate. Look for them and vote with your feet.
I have a further word of advice regarding those who masquerade as a ‘dayan’ ‘rabbi’ or false ‘mekubal’:
1. These men may knowingly and willingly, deliberately deceive a Jew or Jewess. e.g. in the area of shidduchim, or offering to perform a ‘pidyon nefesh’.
This abhorrent and deceptive behaviour has caused tremendous harm to people who are innocent and trusting.
2. Do not ever ‘kiss the hands’ of these men (which they might offer to you in public).
3. And do not be duped into queuing and waiting, to see them for their ‘brachot’ (‘blessings’). They peddle ‘brachot’ purely for their own selfish gratification and ‘kavod’ (‘honour’).
Their duplicitous behaviour is nothing short of deception and cunning. In short they are abhorant and causing so much harm to amm israel. They prey on the vulnerable, and those who are naïve, unsuspecting and trusting of these pedlars.
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