“It can take a lifetime to learn how to speak up to Jewish
authority,” Kabakov told me as she drove home from Albany. “It can
silence people. It silenced me.” ....
Will New Jewish Effort Force New York To Change Sex Abuse Laws at Last?
Sara Kabakov had never done this before. Never driven three hours
from her home in Ithaca, N.Y., to the state capitol in Albany nearly 200
miles away, never tried to enter the mosh pit of lobbying lawmakers,
never thought of herself as a political activist.
But there she was yesterday at the capitol, seeking an audience with
her state senator, meeting with other legislators, learning from other
advocates, all in service of persuading them to protect victims of child
sexual abuse.
She was moved to do this by a simple act of bravery: Last January,
Kabakov shared her own story of sexual abuse at the hands of Marc Gafni,
the former rabbi and spiritual guru. “I am the woman Gafni molested
when she was 13 years old,” she wrote
in an exclusive essay for the Forward
. “This is the first time I am telling my story in my own name.”
Gafni was a Yeshiva University rabbinical student five or six years
her senior, who regularly molested her at night in her bed when he would
stay at the Kabakov family home for Shabbat. The abuse continued for
months; the pain and confusion lasted for many years, exacerbated by the
refusal of an array of Jewish leaders to take Kabakov’s story
seriously. By the time she was able to fully address what happened, she
was 38 years old.
And in New York State, that was 15 years too late.
Courtesy of Sara Kabakov Working Together: Sara Kabakov with Rep. Margaret Markey, the champion of the Child Victims Act.
That’s because New York has one of the most cruel, reactionary laws
in the nation, ranking right down there with Mississippi, Michigan and
Alabama as states that
advocates say are the worst for victims and the best for predators.
Victims of sexual abuse in New York have only until the age of 23 to
bring either criminal charges or file a civil lawsuit against their
alleged abusers, one of the shortest windows in the country.
While other states have reformed their laws — Georgia did so last
year — legislators in Albany have rebuffed repeated attempts by the
indefatigable Queens assemblywoman Margaret Markey. Since 2006, she has
championed the
Child Victims Act
, which in its current iteration eliminates the civil statute of
limitations in the future and creates a one-year window when older abuse
victims can bring their claims. A companion bill would eliminate the
SOL in criminal cases in the future.
The measures have passed the state House and have been left to die in
the state Senate, while Gov. Andrew Cuomo has stayed
uncharacteristically silent.
Sensing a growing national disgust with this kind of harmful
politics, Markey and State senator Brad Hoylman from Manhattan, both
Demcorats, organized a two-day lobbying blitz continuing today. The
lawmakers and their supporters are veritable Davids battling the Goliath
of the Catholic Church on this, and the church’s compatriot in blocking
real reform, Agudath Israel of America, which represents ultra-Orthodox
Jews.
But rabbis and other Jewish leaders are beginning to fight back. Just
last week, Rabbi Ari Hart of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale was the
first to sign a petition he organized with the group
Kol v’Oz
supporting the Child Victims Act; now there are 161 names below his, representing all denominations.
Hart
was in Albany yesterday, too. He considers this advocacy part of his
rabbinate — not only because of his pastoral obligation to hear and heal
the pain of fellow Jews, but out of the shameful recognition that too
many Jewish leaders have denied the seriousness of child abuse for too
long.
“Early on in my rabbinate, I sat in a room of survivors who shared
stories of abuse, and heard how rabbis and Jewish institutions had
failed these survivors over and over again,” he told me. “I feel like it
has to change. Religious institutions should be places of healing,
places of hope and protection for people — not the other way around.”
This urge to protect institutions from allegations of abuse that may
have happened long ago is rooted in ignorance and fear. There’s no need
for either anymore. We know from research and countless human examples
that it may take an abuse victim decades to be able to even verbalize
the experience, especially when the abuser was a person held in high
esteem, like a rabbi or teacher.
“It can take a lifetime to learn how to speak up to Jewish
authority,” Kabakov told me as she drove home from Albany. “It can
silence people. It silenced me.”
Besides ignorance, there is fear that opening a window to claims from
the past will unleash a torrent of frivolous lawsuits that will
bankrupt churches, yeshivas and other institutions. But none of that has
happened in the states where the SOL has been reformed or eliminated.
And then there’s a deeper fear that Kabakov names, one that
especially afflicts Jews and other minorities — fear of bringing shame
onto one’s own. “That’s probably one of the biggest barriers to changing
the paradigm of silence,” she said. “Everyone is afraid of persecution,
of stigma, and we don’t want to add to it.”
We simply have to get over it, if for no other reason than
suppression of abuse inevitably leads to more harm and more communal
shame. The Jewish advocates in Albany yesterday, along with their
coalition partners from other faiths, are not disrespecting their
communities and traditions by lobbying on behalf of child victims. They
are acting out of love made desperate by denial and suffering.
Do the right thing, New York. Allow the victims their voices. Let their stories be heard.
