This research study involved two companion projects: (1) a national random survey to determine the prevalence of clergy sexual misconduct (CSM) with adults; and (2) a qualitative study of three groups of women and men: (a) those who self-identified as survivors who had been the objects of CSM, (b) family or friends of survivors, and (c) offenders who had themselves committed CSM. The goal of both projects was to define the scope and nature of CSM, so that effective prevention strategies can be proposed for the protection of religious leaders and congregants.
General Statistics of the Research:
•national, random survey conducted in 2008 with 3,559 respondents
•phone interviews with 46 persons who had experienced clergy sexual misconduct as adults, representing 17 different Christian and Jewish religious affiliations
•phone interviews with 15 persons who were second-hand victims of CSM (husbands, friends and other church staff members); and with 21 experts (non-offending religious leaders, researchers, and professionals who provide care for survivors and offenders)
The Prevalence of CSM
We used the 2008 General Social Survey (GSS) to estimate the prevalence of clergy sexual misconduct. This is an in-person survey of a nationally representative sample of noninstitutionalized English- or Spanish-speaking adults, conducted by National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. The 2008 survey included 3559 respondents. Although the GSS is an in-person interview, the questions we developed specifically for this project were self-administered, making it easier for respondents to report potentially painful or embarrassing experiences.
Clergy sexual misconduct was defined in this study as:
Minister, priests, rabbis, or other clergypersons or religious leaders who make sexual advances or propositions to persons in the congregations they serve who are not their spouses or significant others.
Of those surveyed:
•More than 3% of women who had attended a congregation in the past month reported that they had been the object of CSM at some time in their adult lives;
•92% of these sexual advances had been made in secret, not in open dating relationships; and
•67% of the offenders were married to someone else at the time of the advance.
•In the average American congregation of 400 persons, with women representing, on average, 60% of the congregation, there are, on average of 7 women who have experienced clergy sexual misconduct.
•Of the entire sample, 8% report having known about CSM occurring in a congregation they have attended. Therefore, in the average American congregation of 400 congregants, there are, on average, 32 persons who have experienced CSM in their community of faith....
We used the software package Atlas-Ti to code the interview transcripts and then to identify six common themes that describe the social characteristics of the congregations in which clergy sexual misconduct (CSM) occurs. Those themes include:
1.Family members, friends, and victims ignored warning signs. Religious leaders acted inappropriately in public as well as private settings, but in a culture that has no cognitive categories for understanding or explaining clergy misconduct as anything other than an "affair," observers mistrusted their own judgment, perhaps considering themselves "hypersensitive," particularly since the behavior was committed by a trusted leader. First indicators of CSM were thus ignored.
2.Niceness culture: American culture expects persons to be "nice" to one another, particularly those we know and respect, and particularly in a congregation. "Nice" means not being confrontational, giving the other the "benefit of the doubt," and overlooking social indiscretions in order to avoid embarrassment. Even when family members, friends, and victims knew about or suspected CSM or behavior leading to CSM, they did not speak about their observations.
3.Ease of private communication: E-mail and cell phones have replaced mailed letters and phone calls to the family household. An intimate relationship between leader and congregant can develop via e-mail and cell phones with complete invisibility to family and community.
4.No oversight: Religious leaders often answer to no one about their daily activities and are free to move about the community and to maintain an office that is isolated from observation.
5.Multiple roles: Religious leaders engage in multiple roles with congregants in addition to their role as leader, including counselor and personal friend. They obtain knowledge about congregants' personal lives and struggles that can make the congregant vulnerable and dependent.
6.Trust in the sanctuary: Congregations are considered sanctuaries-safe places-where normal attentiveness to self-protection is not considered necessary. Because of this perceived sanctuary, congregants share life experiences and private information with religious leaders that they would not share with others.
READ ENTIRE STUDY:
http://www.baylor.edu/clergysexualmisconduct/index.php?id=67406
A scathing critique of callow Hynes written by a one-time former associate, Arnold Kriss, a former Brooklyn assistant district attorney who challenged Hynes in 2005, has also served as a Police Department deputy commissioner for trials. He is currently in private practice in Manhattan.
ReplyDeleteThe New York Daily News:
"The selective justice of Charles Hynes
His only duty should be to the victims
By Arnold Kriss
June 6, 2012
[Photo caption: Charles Hynes in 2009, announcing a program for Orthodox Jews to report sexual abuse. Nevertheless, he has been accused of not doing enough to root out sex crimes in that community.]
Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes’ justification for not disclosing the names of sex abuse defendants in the Orthodox Jewish community as a way to protect victims and witnesses — a revelation of which much has been made lately in the press — is unpersuasive.
“I haven’t seen this kind of intimidation in organized crime cases or police corruption,” Hynes told the Daily News last week. “Nobody gives a damn about victims (in the Orthodox community). All they care about is protecting the abusers.”
Prosecuting sex abuse cases is always tough — and the closed-off world of Orthodox Judaism does pose its own challenges. But that is no excuse for the kind of lax (some might even say nonexistent) prosecution that Hynes oversaw for some two decades — at least until becoming more aggressive in recent years.
And then there is Hynes’ nondisclosure policy, which remains unchanged despite calls for openness. Hynes has been steadfast in his position that disclosing the names of arrested sexual predators from this insular community will discourage future victims from coming forward."
"The selective justice of Charles Hynes
ReplyDeleteWhat makes Hynes’ position indefensible is that, while he has long protected Orthodox Jews accused of sex crimes, he has no hesitation releasing defendants’ names in similar cases when it comes to other groups.
For instance, on Jan. 26, 2011, Hynes announced the indictment of two men (neither an Orthodox Jew) who forced teenage girls into prostitution. One of the victims filed a report that resulted in the arrest of two named defendants.
A year later, in another press release, Hynes’ office announced the indictments of 43 gang members, disclosing the names of the gang leaders charged and describing the crimes perpetrated against the unnamed victims.
Any of the violent gang-affiliated defendants who were charged could have easily figured out the identity of the victims and witnesses by simply reading that press release.
These in-the-open prosecutions demonstrate the imbalance of Hynes’ practice of disclosing only the identities of certain charged defendants who live in certain communities — while keeping the public in the dark about other defendants, perhaps those who come from powerful voting blocs whose support Hynes needs.
After all, gang members and pimps do not simply “shun” a victim who reports a crime, as is supposedly done by the Orthodox. Instead, they often intimidate, threaten, coerce and, in some cases, kill, witnesses and victims.
Even without publicly disclosing an Orthodox defendant’s name to protect a victim, the extremely personal nature of a sex abuse allegation usually means that the victim’s and witness’ identity is discernible to an alleged sex abuse defendant and his lawyer.
All they have to do is to read the factual portion of a criminal complaint and review other material furnished by the prosecutor.
And while the criminal case is pending for months, nothing stops a criminal defendant from disclosing that an informant lives among them, thus opening the floodgates of intimidation.
In other words, Hynes’ “discretion” does nothing for the very victim he purports to serve. It just garners him favor from a group that does not like attention drawn to itself.
But that’s not how our criminal justice system should work; the rule of law requires equal treatment for all individuals. A district attorney who represents the people of Brooklyn compromises the mission of his office by serving one community’s self-interest for secrecy. This unequal treatment is unacceptable no matter how you justify it.
Kriss, a former Brooklyn assistant district attorney who challenged Hynes in 2005, has also served as a Police Department deputy commissioner for trials. He is currently in private practice in Manhattan."
Um, isn't Mr. Hynes, supposed to be FIGHTING the Mafia, be it Haredi or Italian, or whatever shade it is, what will his next "creative" excuse be???
ReplyDeleteFrom the New York Post:
"Hynes’ ‘Mafia’ excuse
June 2, 2012
As his excuse for refusing to identify certain Orthodox Jews charged with sexually abusing children, beleaguered Brooklyn District Attorney Joe Hynes has long cited the fear of witness intimidation.
According to Hynes, once an individual has been charged publicly, victims become promptly known — and historically have been “intimidated and threatened” with tactics reminiscent of the Mafia, he said last week.
“I haven’t seen this kind of intimidation in organized-crime cases or police-corruption cases,” Hynes complained.
Really?
What would the DA do if these were Mafia-type cases?
Is he suggesting that he’d let witness-intimidation get in the way of pursuing — and, post-arrest, publicly naming — thugs involved with organized crime ?
Surely, Hynes wouldn’t shy away from bringing charges of witness intimidation and tampering, if and when appropriate, just because the Mafia was involved.
No one disputes the fact that sex-crime cases are difficult. Just ask Hynes’ Manhattan counterpart, Cy Vance, who’s drawn a few tough ones over the last couple of years — with mixed results.
But they ultimately are still crimes that need to be fully adjudicated in the sunlight.
Hynes’ “no one gives a damn about victims” whining isn’t helpful.
It encourages victimization, for one thing.
As a prosecutor, he’s not supposed to be focusing on only the victim (or on one community’s concerns). Crimes are offenses against society — the broad public.
That’s why criminal charges are brought in the name of “The People of the State of New York.”
Moreover, refusing to identify individuals who have been arrested has serious civil-liberties implications.
Perverts, odious though they may be, have rights; balancing them with the interests of victims and society in general is difficult, but it’s part of any conscientious DA’s duties.
It’s called equal justice under the law."
Half blind motormouth Chometz LePesach Krohn was all full of himself at the recent anti-Internet hoopla held at CitiField in New York where he notoriously went on the record on camera and told a Haredi reporter that if it was up to him, he would "block" all comments on news sites that report on Haredi life and he would even put them in "cherem" ("excommunicate" -- a very serious accusation) anonymous bloggers (what about those he knows about, would they get "misas beis din" -- capital punishments?)
ReplyDeleteWhat half blind motormouth Chometz LePesach Krohn won't tell you is that he has made a mint writing verbal trash and mind-numbing garbled tales that he's gleaned/pocketed from others for FREE on his travels (like easy jokes that comedians collect to tell over at their paid shows, and this creep is HIGHLY paid as a speaker, you can bet on that!)
Even worse, the FartScroll publishers are in collusion with him, and will never tell you that he has plenty of "tales of the immoral magid" that could and should be known, but never make it into print, except on blogs of course, which is why he wants to "ban" them, naturally. Such as the immorality surrounding a guy like rabbi Ephraim Bryk his brother in law that he protects and promotes, like this:
http://www.lukeford.net/profiles/profiles/ephraim_bryks.htm
CONTINUED:
"In December 1987, the board, rabbi Bryks and his lawyer heard the evidence for three nights. The teenage girl and two women testified. They were not believed. They were threatened with lawsuits from rabbi Bryks, who also threatened to use personal information he had gathered against his accusers.
The board held a final meeting on the matter January 1, 1988. A hundred supporters of rabbi Bryks gathered outside the boardroom, threatening those who criticized the rabbi.
Ten board members voted to retain rabbi Bryks while nine voted to fire him.
After the vote, the nine board members opposed to Bryks resigned in protest. They were replaced by supporters of the rabbi. The new vote over Bryks was unanimous.
Next, the new board asked Jewish Child and Family Services (JCFS) - where rabbi Bryks had been a member of the board of directors - to investigate the allegations. The JCFS referred the matter to Winnipeg Child and Family Services (WCFS).
Over the next two months, social workers interviewed 45 students, teachers and parents before reporting in March 1988 that while there was insufficient evidence to bring criminal charges, many of the physical interactions rabbi Bryks had with his female students (hugging, tickling, kissing) were inappropriate.
A year after the WCFS report, a seven-year-old boy told Winnipeg police that rabbi Bryks molested him. Sitting in the next room, the boy's parents watched him use a doll to show to the police that rabbi Bryks masturbated him.
WCFS refused to investigate because the atmosphere at rabby Bryks's shul and school was so "emotionally charged" that any investigation would be "contaminated."
"The case was sent to the Crown," said Winnipeg police inspector Lou Spado, "but no charge was laid because there was no corroboration. You have to be very careful in an investigation like that. It becomes the word of an eight-year-old boy against that of an adult. We brought the rabbi in for questioning but he refused comment."
TO BE CONTINUED.
Check out NY Times website for blockbuster report on the exclusive Horace Mann school in Riverdale. Bunch of teachers molesting & raping kids for decades.
ReplyDeleteDisgracef NY AG R' Elya Spitzer is an alumnus.