Passing the trash...
The Catholic church is not the only institution that needs to confront, and deal with, sexual crimes against children....
David Prashker resigned from Toronto school in 2008 over sexual and sometimes violent poetry he wrote and posted on his website.
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| Former Leo Baeck Jewish Day School director David Prashker (seen in photo taken from school website in 2008) has now been charged in connection with child-pornography offences in California. |
A man who resigned as director of a Toronto
private school in 2008 over graphic poems on his website is now facing
child-pornography charges in California.
On Monday, the district attorney of Contra
Costa County in the San Francisco Bay area charged David Prashker, 60,
with possession of child pornography and attempting to destroy evidence.
County investigators went to search Prashker’s
home in Lafayette, Calif. on Feb. 18. When they arrived, Prashker
allegedly ran to the back of the house and threw a laptop out a
second-storey window into the backyard.
The district attorney’s office said that forensic examiners later found evidence of child pornography on the laptop.
Prashker had recently worked as a substitute
teacher at two private schools in Contra Costa, the district attorney
said. He has also worked at schools in London and Miami.
From 2004 to 2008, Prashker was director of
Leo Baeck Jewish Day School, a kindergarten-to-Grade-8 private school
with campuses in Thornhill and just west of Forest Hill.
Prashker resigned in March 2008, after six poems he had written and posted to his personal website were circulated to parents in an anonymous email.
The writings contained vivid sexual imagery
and profane language, and one piece began with the line “The first act
of killing is the hardest” and ended with “the second time is remarkably
straightforward.”
Prashker is scheduled to appear in court in Martinez, Calif. on Tuesday morning. ***
From the Economist, April 2002:
"Baruch Lanner, an Orthodox rabbi, went to trial in New Jersey for sexually abusing two teenage girls while he was the principal of a Jewish day school. Orthodox authorities stand accused of ignoring evidence that Rabbi Lanner sexually abused more than 20 teenage girls while he was in a position of authority in the Orthodox Union's National Conference of Synagogue Youth.
In 1999, Sports Illustrated described American youth sports, in which millions of children are coached or supervised by unscreened male volunteers, as “a ready-made resource-pool for paedophiles”.
Why is it so hard to protect children? To begin with, adults are often looking for predators in the wrong places. Parents teach their children to fear strangers, yet abductions off the street are a small fraction of child sex-abuse cases. Counsellors and teachers are trained to recognise sexual abuse by family members. Yet a third group, so-called “acquaintance molesters”, is responsible for about 40% of sexual abuse cases—and a higher percentage of crimes against boys.
"When an allegation is made, the victim is often a troubled or delinquent young person. The accused adult, however, may be a pillar of the community—in many cases, because of his eagerness to do extra work with children. Communities desperately seek to convince themselves that a particular sex offender is different because of his other good deeds. “Adult human beings tend to believe what they need to believe, and the stronger the need, the stronger the tendency,” says Kenneth Lanning, a retired FBI behavioural analyst and an expert on the sexual victimisation of children.
He points to a recent case in which 20 teachers testified in a trial on behalf of a convicted colleague, describing him—without irony—as a “child magnet”. Such cases are so common that educators have coined the term “passing the trash”. A 1995 study of 225 cases in which pupils were sexually abused by teachers or other staff members found that in only 1% of the cases did the school-district superintendent attempt to revoke the culprit's teaching licence.
That may be changing, in large part because the cost of covering up is rising. As cases of abuse receive more publicity, parents and victims have begun to win lawsuits against schools that either fail to sack teachers with a history of sexual abuse or ship known offenders elsewhere. Still, an awful lot of trash is being passed around.
What can be done? Any responsible institution ought to begin with a thorough background check of all potential volunteers or employees, checking their fingerprints against a national criminal database. Authorities should take note of seemingly innocuous past offences, Mr Lanning says, such as trespassing or disorderly conduct.
Second, every institution should have a system of management and supervision that limits the time any adult spends alone with a child. Listen to rumours, says Ms Shakeshaft. Although only 6-7% of victims report the abuse to someone in authority, most will tell their friends. “The kids tend to know,” she says....
READ IT ALL:
From the Economist, April 2002:
"Baruch Lanner, an Orthodox rabbi, went to trial in New Jersey for sexually abusing two teenage girls while he was the principal of a Jewish day school. Orthodox authorities stand accused of ignoring evidence that Rabbi Lanner sexually abused more than 20 teenage girls while he was in a position of authority in the Orthodox Union's National Conference of Synagogue Youth.
In 1999, Sports Illustrated described American youth sports, in which millions of children are coached or supervised by unscreened male volunteers, as “a ready-made resource-pool for paedophiles”.
Why is it so hard to protect children? To begin with, adults are often looking for predators in the wrong places. Parents teach their children to fear strangers, yet abductions off the street are a small fraction of child sex-abuse cases. Counsellors and teachers are trained to recognise sexual abuse by family members. Yet a third group, so-called “acquaintance molesters”, is responsible for about 40% of sexual abuse cases—and a higher percentage of crimes against boys.
"When an allegation is made, the victim is often a troubled or delinquent young person. The accused adult, however, may be a pillar of the community—in many cases, because of his eagerness to do extra work with children. Communities desperately seek to convince themselves that a particular sex offender is different because of his other good deeds. “Adult human beings tend to believe what they need to believe, and the stronger the need, the stronger the tendency,” says Kenneth Lanning, a retired FBI behavioural analyst and an expert on the sexual victimisation of children.
He points to a recent case in which 20 teachers testified in a trial on behalf of a convicted colleague, describing him—without irony—as a “child magnet”. Such cases are so common that educators have coined the term “passing the trash”. A 1995 study of 225 cases in which pupils were sexually abused by teachers or other staff members found that in only 1% of the cases did the school-district superintendent attempt to revoke the culprit's teaching licence.
That may be changing, in large part because the cost of covering up is rising. As cases of abuse receive more publicity, parents and victims have begun to win lawsuits against schools that either fail to sack teachers with a history of sexual abuse or ship known offenders elsewhere. Still, an awful lot of trash is being passed around.
What can be done? Any responsible institution ought to begin with a thorough background check of all potential volunteers or employees, checking their fingerprints against a national criminal database. Authorities should take note of seemingly innocuous past offences, Mr Lanning says, such as trespassing or disorderly conduct.
Second, every institution should have a system of management and supervision that limits the time any adult spends alone with a child. Listen to rumours, says Ms Shakeshaft. Although only 6-7% of victims report the abuse to someone in authority, most will tell their friends. “The kids tend to know,” she says....
READ IT ALL:
http://kron4.com/2016/02/22/contra-costa-teacher-arrested-for-possession-distribution-of-child-pornography/
ReplyDeletePrashker has been a teacher and school administrator for 30 years, having held positions in Toronto, Canada; London, England; and Miami, Florida.
“Most recently, Mr. Prashker has been employed as a substitute teacher at two private schools in central Contra Costa County.
Prashker faces a maximum penalty of 44 months in prison, and fines, if convicted.
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/02/22/east-bay-teacher-arrested-on-child-porn-charges/
He continued to be a Jewish community leader and fundraiser and has apparently spent the past few years working to build “BibleNet,” an educational online encyclopedia regarding the Jewish and Christian scriptures.
https://plus.google.com/112754951484874189621/about
David Prashker was born in London in 1955 and has lived in France, Israel, Canada and the United States, where he is currently based.
He is the author of thirty books, including contemporary and historical novels, short stories, poetry, songs, plays and scholarly works, as well as being a painter, musician, singer-songwriter, the owner of The Argaman Press, his own publishing imprint, the author of TheBibleNet and the founder and CEO of The Campaign for a Charter of Human Responsibilities.
As a teacher and senior school administrator he has covered every age from nursery to adults, including day and boarding schools, religious schools, kibbutz schools, summer camps, and regular Shabbat morning Torah shi'urim for adults. His subjects include English, French and Hebrew language and literature, world religions, history, music and art.
David is a former teacher-mentor on the prestigious Project Sulam, and a Past President of PARDES, the day school network of Reform Jewish day schools in North America; he has served as Head of schools in Canada and the United States. He was the founding Chair of DAVAR, the Jewish Institute in Bristol (UK) and of the Bristol Anne Frank Society, has served on the Court of the University of Bath, the Standing Advisory Council for Religious Education in North Somerset (UK), and was founding director of The Polack's House Educational Trust.
http://patch.com/california/martinez/contra-costa-county-substitute-teacher-pleads-not-guilty-child-porn-charges-0
Prashker is not a citizen of the U.S. His United Kingdom passport has been seized but prosecutors are concerned he could still flee the country.
As much of a Reform type that he is, this Prashker pervert does have a slight connection to the left wing modern orthodox world.
ReplyDeletePrashker was headmaster of the Shoshana Cardin School in Baltimore which has no official denomination but the rav of the school during his tenure was the far left modern orthodox Rabbi Yaakov Chaitovsky, a YU musmach.
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2013-01-15/news/bs-md-teacher-sexual-abuse-20130114_1_sexual-abuse-police-investigation-private-school-teacher
There were multiple pedophiles working at Cardin, at least one of whom was arrested.
The pedophile Minton at the Cardin school also worked at the Baltimore Hebrew Day School which is where police came to arrest him. Baltimore Hebrew started off Orthodox in 1830 but became Reform at some point. They closed their doors two years ago, not surprisingly, as only 6% of Reform parents enroll their kids in Jewish day schools.
ReplyDeleteAnd it seems that almost nothing in Baltimore is untouched by scandal. It is an outrage that a Jewish school was named after Shoshana Cardin. She is a Judy Rapfogel type who was living the high life because her husband Jerome Cardin stole almost $400,000 during the 1980s S&L scandals for which he was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He caused the collapse of banking in Maryland & refused to accept responsibility, launching futile appeals for years all the way to the US Supreme Court.
Their daughter is the "rabbi" Nina Beth Cardin who was working in the JTS Chancellor's office in Manhattan, seemingly around the time that JTS was covering up for the father & son Roth molesters / perverts.
http://www.cjnews.com/news/canada/former-toronto-day-school-head-arrested-on-child-porn-charges-in-california
ReplyDeletePrashker made headlines in Toronto in 2008 when his poetry was found to contain graphic allusions to sex and murder.
In one poem, Voluntary Admission, he wrote, “I raped her lust I confess,” while in another, he described “the first act of killing [as] the hardest… and the second time is remarkably straightforward.”
Another verse spoke of an “earth-shaking, messianic orgasm.”