Child Sexual Abuse in the Jewish Community
Last week I attended a major
three-day conference of hundreds of Jewish funders, where I participated
in a panel discussion on how philanthropic foundations such as ours
have succeeded in addressing various stigmatized social needs — issues
that other funders seem to avoid. I spoke about our pioneering work in
the field of mental health, and two colleagues representing other
foundations described their groundbreaking work in helping people with
disabilities and people with addictions.
The
room in which our panel discussion took place was situated at the edge
of the hotel grounds, quite a distance from the nerve center of the
conference. I don’t doubt that the choice of location was purely
coincidental, but the symbolism was hard to miss. Unsavory topics tend
to hover on the fringes of Jewish philanthropy’s collective
consciousness — perhaps because donors are loath to acknowledge that
Jews succumb to the same sordid impulses as do the rest of humanity; or
maybe these issues simply depress them.
In the course of my presentation on our work
in mental health, I elaborated on our recent activities addressing child
sexual abuse within the Jewish community. Statistics point to incidence
rates of 1 in 3 among girls and 1 in 7 among boys.
Just over a year ago, our foundation together with two others launched an organization called ASAP.
Since that time, hundreds of child sexual abuse survivors in the US
have come forward to request our help in accessing therapy, and
thousands are being assisted by local NGOs. Similarly, programs that we
support in Israel are experiencing an exponential increase in demand for
their services. And yet, institutions where children congregate, such
as schools, summer camps, synagogues and youth groups, lack effective
policies to prevent incidents of child sexual abuse.
During that panel discussion’s question and
answer session, while we fielded numerous questions from those in
attendance, there was not one question about child sexual abuse. Despite
all the publicity this issue has received, such as the movie Spotlight, the Penn State scandal and the current allegations against former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, the subject remains taboo.
Our efforts to promote awareness have made
inroads with a handful of prestigious educational networks, whose
administrations now realize that implementing effective child-safety
policies — and soon — is vitally important and is in fact in their own
best interests as well. We hope to support these efforts, monetarily,
professionally and operationally, and to extend them to other
institutions.
Yet our coalition of Jewish funders for this
cause remains small. Interestingly, all of us are haredi. As an active
member of this coalition, I have reached out to highly educated,
progressive, deeply caring donors from across the Jewish spectrum to
partner with us to combat this scourge, but with scant success. This
puzzles me, for child sexual abuse is hardly a theoretical problem; the
children and grandchildren of these very donors are vulnerable. All of
our children are at risk.
How is it, then, that we blithely send our
children to institutions that lack effective safeguards against a widely
recognized danger that causes untold damage to such a huge percentage
of boys and girls everywhere? Why aren’t we speaking up, demanding that
our schools and camps and synagogues implement basic protocols for
preventing further incidents? Could anyone think that we can afford to
remain in denial?
It seems that it will take more time for the
Jewish philanthropic community to realize the extent of the problem. We
must be patient, as this happens every time our foundation identifies
and tackles an unaddressed need. It happened in 2007, when we began
helping haredim in Israel integrate into the workforce, and no one else
was interested. It happened again in 2009, when we began helping victims
of domestic violence start a new life – not a popular cause back then.
In each of these cases, eventually, the broader community caught up.
And the community will certainly catch up with our deep concern for child sexual abuse as well. The only question is, How many more of our children will need to suffer before that happens?