“Could we say categorically that something like [the Sandusky scandal] isn’t happening right now at another university?” Heller said. “I don’t think we can say that.”

Ten years after the Sandusky scandal, what did Penn State — and the nation — learn?

Penn State students hold a candlelight vigil for victims in the Jerry Sandusky sexual abuse scandal on Nov. 11, 2011 in State College, Pa.

PITTSBURGH — 

Before and after football games at Penn State, many in the crowd of 100,000-plus at Beaver Stadium join to sing the university’s alma mater. It’s a tradition meant to promote unity and school pride.

When 2011 graduate Michael Oplinger attended games in recent years, he noticed something different about the inflection people bring to a single line in the song, written more than a century ago.

“There’s a line that says, ‘May no act of ours bring shame, to one heart that loves thy name,’ ” said Oplinger, a high school teacher in Camden, N.J. “People put more emphasis on that line now. It’s deliberate. It’s hard to think of a more shameful act than what Jerry Sandusky did.”

The former Penn State assistant football coach was arrested in Centre County, Pa., on Nov. 5, 2011, on charges of molesting eight boys he had met through his Second Mile charity over a span of more than a decade. Some of the assaults occurred at Penn State’s football building, to which Sandusky still had access after his retirement in 1999.

 

 

The scandal that unfolded 10 years ago this month had a profound effect on countless lives, none more so than those of the boys Sandusky abused. Within a year, Sandusky received what amounted to a life sentence in prison, the NCAA imposed unprecedented sanctions on Penn State, and major college football’s winningest coach had been unceremoniously fired.

Yet it’s difficult to assert that the punishment served as a deterrent. Sexual abuse scandals have continued to surface at major universities around the country — including in Los Angeles.

In terms of the immediate fallout from Sandusky’s indictment, no event was more momentous than Penn State’s dismissal of the legendary Joe Paterno, who had worked at the university for 61 years and was head coach for 46 seasons. Although prosecutors made clear that Paterno would not face charges, critics said he should have done more to stop Sandusky, particularly after being alerted to a 2001 assault at the football building.

Penn State coach Joe Paterno, right, poses with defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky during the team’s media day Aug. 6, 1999, in State College, Pa.

Four days after Sandusky’s arrest, the Penn State board of trustees fired the 84-year-old Paterno. The coach had announced earlier that day he would retire at the end of the season, but the trustees said they had to act immediately.

When news of Paterno’s dismissal broke, some students took to the streets of State College in anger.

“It was a chaotic, confusing time,” said Lexi Belculfine, who was editor in chief of the Daily Collegian, Penn State’s student-run newspaper. “After the board of trustees meeting, the anger and frustration boiled over.”

Reporters were hit with tear gas, lamp posts were ripped down and a news van was flipped over, Belculfine said.

Penn State students Ryan Smith, Brennan Pankiw and Jared Hook clean up broken glass and debris along East College Avenue in the early morning hours on Nov. 10, 2011, in State College, Pa.

Paterno rejects allegations that his father had heard whispers that Sandusky was molesting boys and ignored them to protect the high-profile football program.

“I’ve known Jerry Sandusky for pretty much my whole life,” he said. “I knew him as a churchgoing, non-drinking guy who was married and ran a charity that helped a lot of kids.

“My kids were around him. I was around him all the time when I was a kid. Do you honestly think we would have allowed that to happen if we had any idea of what kind of person he really was?”

On Jan. 22, 2012, 74 days after he was fired, Joe Paterno died.

“One of the last notes he wrote before he went to the hospital for the last time, and he never came home, was that hopefully the silver lining is that something good would come out of this,” Jay Paterno said.

In June 2012, a jury found Sandusky guilty of 45 counts of child sexual abuse. Still proclaiming his innocence, the 68-year-old former coach was sentenced that October to 30 to 60 years in state prison.

In July, a team led by former FBI Director Louis Freeh released a report commissioned by Penn State’s board of trustees. It concluded that Paterno, fired university President Graham Spanier and two other high-ranking administrators had actively concealed the allegations against Sandusky to protect the football program.

Spanier and the other administrators — former athletic director Tim Curley and vice president Gary Schultz — served time in jail. When they were sentenced in 2017, judge John Boccabella castigated them for not reporting Sandusky to the police. He did not spare Paterno.

Penn State president Graham Spanier, left, and football coach Joe Paterno chat before a game against Iowa on Oct. 8, 2011, in State College, Pa.

Paterno “could have made that phone call without so much as getting his hands dirty,” Boccabella said. “Why he didn’t is beyond me.”

Eleven days after the Freeh report was released, the NCAA announced sanctions. It levied a fine of $60 million against Penn State, banned the team from postseason play for four years and reduced its football scholarships for that span. It also vacated all of Penn State’s football victories from 1998 to 2011, costing Paterno 111 wins, and put the program on probation for five years.

However, the NCAA retreated from the sanctions in 2015 after a judge questioned whether it had the authority to impose them. Paterno’s wins were restored, making him again the all-time leader in major college football. The entire $60 million would be spent in Pennsylvania on programs to treat and prevent child sexual abuse, and the scholarship limits and ban on bowl games were rescinded.

Penn State and the NCAA instituted reforms to fight child abuse, sexual misconduct and unethical actions. Today, university officials stress the progress Penn State has made in improving safety, reporting expectations, background checks, and ethics and compliance. The board of trustees instituted a code of conduct that anyone remotely connected with athletics must follow.

“It’s not talked about as frequently now, but it’s not as though everything is healed now, either.”

“The code of conduct applies to all coaches, managers and student-athletes of NCAA-sanctioned Division I intercollegiate athletics teams; university employees directly involved with intercollegiate athletics teams; the university board of trustees; the president of the university; and all members of the athletic director’s executive committee,” Penn State spokesman Lawrence Lokman said.

The Penn State football program has rebounded from the Sandusky scandal, although it has yet to be chosen for the College Football Playoff. Coach James Franklin, in his eighth season at Penn State, led the Nittany Lions to the 2016 Big Ten Conference title and had the team ranked as high as No. 4 in this season’s Associated Press poll. The board of trustees voted this year to spend $48 million on renovations to the football building.

But Penn State’s continued success, leading to packed houses at Beaver Stadium and appearances on national television, might add to the pain of the boys — now men — Sandusky abused, particularly if they still live in central Pennsylvania, where coverage of the Nittany Lions is ubiquitous.

“Healing is a long-term process, and when life is back to normal for everyone else but your life is still in upheaval, it can be really hard,” said Anne Ard, executive director of Centre Safe in State College, which provides counseling and advocacy to victims of sexual and domestic violence.

Those Sandusky preyed on already faced a struggle because of the coach’s celebrity in the region, Ard said.

“This guy was a prominent member of the community, a beloved coach in this famous football program,” she said. “A victim might say, ‘Who’s going to believe me?’ You bet Jerry Sandusky used that to his advantage.”

The architect of Penn State’s vaunted defense for more than 20 years, a man who helped the team win two national championships and acquire the nickname “Linebacker U,” today resides in a cell at State Correctional Institution — Laurel Highlands outside Somerset, Pa., about 85 miles southwest of the university campus. He is Inmate KT2386, 77 years old and not eligible for parole for about 21 more years.

Former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky arrives at the Centre County Courthouse on Nov. 22, 2019, for resentencing on his 45-count child sexual abuse conviction.

The damage Sandusky caused from his crimes is incalculable, starting with an unknown number of boys whose innocence he stole. Penn State, his alma mater and employer for three decades, suffered a terrible blow to its reputation and has paid out over $100 million to more than 30 victims. In addition, the decision to fire Paterno caused deep divisions in the Penn State community.

“It changed how we see the world and how we view authority and how we take care of each other,” Belculfine said of herself and her classmates. “When I think about that time, what stands out is the importance of putting people who need help first.”

Sandusky’s crimes, along with the scandals at other universities since then, have made more people attuned to the issue of sexual abuse of young people. That is certainly the case in Centre County, Ard said.

“Could we say categorically that something like [the Sandusky scandal] isn’t happening right now at another university? I don’t think we can say that.”

University of San Francisco vice president of operations Donald Heller

“I believe that we’re a much wiser community now,” she said. “We’ve probably trained 10,000 people on looking for the signs of and preventing child sex abuse, and that training continues. But we have to realize that there are still sexual predators out there and we have to be vigilant.”

Donald Heller, vice president of operations and a professor of education at the University of San Francisco, taught at Penn State in 2011 and has consulted on higher education policy issues with university systems around the country.

Like virtually everyone else at Penn State, Heller was stunned by the allegations against Sandusky — and the university’s lack of an immediate response.

“It was a systematic failure in the university,” he said. “As someone who had worked with the leadership of the university on a number of issues, it was disappointing. We wanted to see the leadership step up and comment in support of the victims and they did not.”

In 2016, an investigation by the Indianapolis Star led to a physician from Michigan State who had long worked for USA gymnastics, Larry Nassar, being implicated in sexual assaults of girls and young women going back decades. Some of Nassar’s victims said that they had reported his abuse to Michigan State officials and trainers over the years and the university had not investigated.

“My reaction [to the Nassar scandal] was one of horror, because of the allegations and the sheer number of women who were victimized,” Heller said.

Since then, sexual abuse scandals have emerged at other major universities, including in the athletic departments at Ohio State and San Jose State. Earlier this year, USC agreed to pay more than $1 billion to former patients who accused campus gynecologist George Tyndall of sexual abuse. At UCLA, sexual abuse allegations against gynecologist James Heaps led to a $73 million settlement that will be divided among thousands of women.

“Could we say categorically that something like [the Sandusky scandal] isn’t happening right now at another university?” Heller said. “I don’t think we can say that.”

---

https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2021-11-05/what-penn-state-learned-from-jerry-sandusky-10-years-later?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits

 

Convicted sex offender & filthy human garbage rabbi Eliezer Berland entered prison on Thursday to serve out a fresh sentence for fraud, after he swindled his sick and elderly followers out of millions of shekels.

 

Sex offender rabbi Berland begins fraud sentence as followers mass outside jail

The disease of blind faith in sub-humans on full display!

 

Shuvu Bonim leader goes to prison for selling fake cures to desperate members of community; supporters hold all-night prayer session

 

Police guard followers of Rabbi Eliezer Berland waiting for his arrival at the Nitzan Prison in Ramle, on October 28, 2021

Convicted sex offender Rabbi Eliezer Berland entered prison on Thursday to serve out a fresh sentence for fraud, after he swindled his sick and elderly followers out of millions of shekels.

Around a thousand of his supporters gathered outside the prison from Wednesday evening to protest his conviction.

Berland and his extremist Shuvu Bonim sect returned to the spotlight this month with a number of arrests in connection with the suspected murder of a teenage boy and the unsolved murder of a man in the 1980s and 1990s.

Berland started his jail term on Thursday after he was convicted of fraud in June, in a plea deal that saw him sentenced to 18 months. The sentence will include time already served as Berland spent a year in jail before being released to house arrest in February of this year.

Berland was arrested in February 2020, after hundreds of people filed police complaints saying that he had sold prayers and pills to desperate members of his community, promised families of individuals with disabilities that their loved ones would be able to walk, and told families of convicted felons that their relatives would be freed from prison.

In the arrest raid, dozens of boxes of powders and pills were found at Berland’s home that were given to supplicants as “wonder drugs.” Laboratory checks revealed them to be over-the-counter pain medication and candy, including Mentos.

Rabbi Eliezer Berland arrives for a hearing at the Jerusalem District court on February 28, 2020. 

 

At the time of his sentencing, the judge ruled that Berland’s offenses were “committed systematically and out of greed, taking advantage of the complainants at their most difficult time during periods of crisis.”

Berland’s supporters gathered outside the Nitzan Prison in Ramle on Wednesday evening, where they held a protest and all-night study and prayer session, surrounded by heavy police presence.

Supporters and followers of Rabbi Eliezer Berland protest outside Nitzan Prison in Ramle, on October 27, 2021

The supporters will additionally set up a protest tent near the jail, while Berland’s lawyers have said they will request that he be quickly released for good behavior and cooperation, the Walla news site reported.

Berland is starting his sentence as police make apparent progress in the investigation into the suspected murder of a teenage boy and the unsolved murder of a man connected to his sect, with the arrest of eight suspects, reportedly including the son of a former senior cabinet minister.

Supporters of Rabbi Eliezer Berland protest outside Nitzan Prison in Ramle, on October 27, 2021

 

According to the Kan public broadcaster, law enforcement are probing whether Berland was personally involved in the disappearance and suspected murder of 17-year-old Nissim Shitrit and the murder of 41-year-old Avi Edri.

Shitrit was allegedly beaten by the sect’s “religious police” four months before he was last seen in January 1986. In a documentary released by Kan in 2020, one of Berland’s former disciples said that the religious police murdered the boy, dismembered him and buried his body in Eshtaol Forest near Beit Shemesh. His remains were never found and the case was never solved.

The second murder reportedly connected to the arrested suspects was of Edri, who was found beaten to death in Ramot Forest in the north of Jerusalem in 1990. Kan reported that Edri’s murder was tied to Shuvu Bonim by former disciples. It too has remained unsolved for over 30 years.

Nissim Shitrit (L) and Avi Edri in undated photos (Courtesy)

The cult-like Shuvu Bonim offshoot of the Bratslav Hasidic sect has had repeated run-ins with the law, including attacking witnesses.

Berland, its leader, fled Israel in 2013 amid allegations that he had sexually assaulted several female followers.

After evading arrest for three years and slipping through various countries, Berland returned to Israel and was sentenced to 18 months in prison in November 2016, on two counts of indecent acts and one case of assault, as part of a plea deal that included seven months of time served. He was freed just five months later, in part due to his ill health.

 

https://www.timesofisrael.com/followers-mass-outside-prison-as-sex-offender-rabbi-set-to-start-sentence/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2021-10-28&utm_medium=email

וואָס וועט זיין מיט די קינדער?There is simply not an acceptable number of child deaths when such effective and safe preventive treatments are available. So, for the same reason pediatricians recommend seatbelts and car seats, we are recommending vaccines for Covid-19.

 

Yes, You’ll Want to Vaccinate Your Kids Against Covid. An Expert Explains Why.

 

Vaccines to protect young children from Covid-19 are likely soon on their way. An advisory panel for the Food and Drug Administration voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to recommend that the agency authorize the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for those ages 5 to 11.

Why do we need to vaccinate young children against Covid-19? It’s an understandable question. While many parents have anxiously awaited the opportunity to get their children vaccinated, others are hesitant. There are questions about side effects, as with any drug, especially considering the lower risk of severe disease for children with Covid-19 compared with that of adults.

But just because Covid-19 is sickening and killing fewer children than adults does not mean that children are or have been free from risk.

In the United States, more than six million children have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, and more than 23,500 were hospitalized from it. Over 600 children ages 18 and under have died from the disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That’s in large part because the coronavirus has spread so widely in the United States. Vaccine uptake among American adults has been lower than desired; combined with the highly contagious Delta variant and a decrease in mitigation measures like mask wearing in many parts of the country, it has taken a toll.

Opinion Conversation Questions surrounding the Covid-19 vaccine and its rollout.

• Should pregnant women get the vaccine?
  Gil Mor, a reproductive immunologist, explains why old science has led to conflicting advice.
• As more vaccine mandates arrive, how will we handle verification?
  Tom Frieden, a former director of the C.D.C., describes how a safe and secure system could work.
• Are vaccine mandates a problem for civil liberties?
  Two writers from the A.C.L.U. argue that actually, it’s quite the opposite.
• How many people have died because of undervaccination?
  Comparing different areas of the U.S. suggests there have been many preventable deaths.

Some experts even suggest that the pandemic may not end without a child vaccine campaign: Vaccinating children will help slow the spread of the disease to the unvaccinated and to more at-risk adults, reducing its toll on everyone.

There is simply not an acceptable number of child deaths when such effective and safe preventive treatments are available. So, for the same reason pediatricians recommend seatbelts and car seats, we are recommending vaccines for Covid-19.

Parents should feel assured that when the vaccines are authorized for children, it means they are considered extremely effective and side effects are rare. The question I am most often asked is about the risk of myocarditis after the vaccine. Myocarditis is an inflammation of the muscle of the heart which can occur from many different causes and can range in severity. It occurs very rarely after getting an mRNA Covid-19 vaccine (like the ones made by Moderna and Pfizer) and is more common after the second shot and in young men.

When I chose to vaccinate my teenage son, there were two things that were important to my decision-making. First, the risk of developing myocarditis after a Covid-19 infection is much higher than the risk of developing myocarditis after the vaccine. Second, almost all the cases of myocarditis after the vaccine are mild, and people generally get better quickly. Vaccinating my children was an easy choice knowing that the risk of Covid-19 to children is far greater than the risk of the vaccines.

The expanded availability of vaccines should bring peace of mind to many families of elementary-school-age students that their children are safer in classrooms and activities outside of school, and that they are doing their part to expedite a full return to routines and activities.

Studies show that layers of protection — including improving ventilation and wearing masks — have effectively stopped or slowed the Covid-19 virus from spreading in camps and schools that consistently enforced these measures. While these continue to be important precautions to help keep young children safe, vaccination is the most effective layer there is, and the sooner it can be safely available to all children, the better.

The pandemic has also deepened an existing mental health crisis among young people. Over 140,000 American children have lost a caregiver to Covid-19. Pediatricians across the United States have seen a rise in young patients with eating disorders, depression and suicidal thoughts. That’s why the American Academy of Pediatrics and other children’s groups recently declared a national state of emergency for children’s mental health. Educational gaps are also widening, with reports suggesting American students are behind in math and reading. These consequences are all magnified for low-income families and families of color.

While no response to Covid-19 has been perfect, other countries tried to prioritize schools in ways the United States largely did not, and put in place precautions that would allow children to be safer, like masks and testing.

More than 18 months later, the United States still lags in adult immunization rates and access to rapid at-home tests compared with many other countries — both of which can support a safer return to school and activities. But the Covid-19 vaccine offers a tangible opportunity for children to return to a more normal daily life.

Parents and other family members can also protect their children by getting vaccinated themselves. If you haven’t gotten a vaccine yet, please do so as soon as you can.

The impact of the pandemic on this generation, I fear, will be deep and long lasting unless policymakers act now and invest in children and families. Even though a Covid-19 vaccine is coming for young children, there’s still work to do. Some children will need more intensive help to overcome the challenges they encountered during the pandemic. Communities and schools that have been historically underresourced will need even greater investment.

Children are resilient, but they need stability, hope and confidence in the adults who care for them. While the brutal toll of the pandemic will reverberate for years to come, let’s make the choice to finally put children first.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/26/opinion/covid-vaccine-kids.html

 

The blood that is pumped out of a man’s heart is the exact same blood that returns to that heart. We have reached a crisis point because we have spent too much time going to the wrong addresses when the most important address is right at our doorstep.

 

 Garbage In Garbage Out!

 

Jonathan Sacks, morality and Facebook algorithms 

 

Before blaming a company for fomenting partisan hate, the late rabbi's teachings would have us take a good look at yourselves in the mirror 

 

 

 

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”
–Pogo, Walt Kelly

Facebook whistleblower Francis Haugen probably thought she’d driven her message home when she recently recommended the removal of algorithms on Facebook, telling the US Congress it was “because I think we don’t want computers deciding what we focus on!” When it comes to computers telling people what to do, whose blood would not boil?

Of course, as with most such reductionist lines, Haugen was able to appeal to our emotions through oversimplification. But computers don’t decide, we do. And even if we allow computers to steer us, those computers (more precisely, algorithms) were all designed by human beings who are ultimately no different from us.

The problem with Haugen’s claims goes beyond the misleading nature of her line about computers making decisions for us. Her more substantive position – “I’m a strong proponent of chronological ranking, ordering by time” instead of by algorithm – is like suggesting that television remove its visual component and that its programs only be heard and not seen.

I know. I tried it. Although the default on the Facebook timeline is what the algorithms calculate you “most want to see,” up until very recently there was an icon on the sidebar that allowed you to see everything posted by your contacts chronologically. If you are anything like me, you would have lasted less than two minutes! Do you really want to see what someone you barely know is having for breakfast? Or whether anybody can help with their carpool in Minneapolis?

True, there are many ways that algorithms can determine what you want to see, some of which might be more manipulative than others. And I am not saying that there is no room for more responsibility from the companies that use algorithms, and that government has no role to play in regulating them. But there is an important part of the equation that never seems to get mentioned here.

The cries for more responsibility are all aimed at government or industry. Yet as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (whose first yahrzeit we are now marking) repeatedly pointed out, in a liberal state, these institutions are not primarily designed to promote morality or to enforce it. Of course, they have a role to play: Industry should understand that the legitimate desire for profits does not make everything legitimate; and government needs to support whatever basic moral consensus still exists. But as Sacks wrote in his last aptly titled major book, Morality, morality’s home is primarily in the third sector – voluntary communities that are formed around tighter and more rigorous definitions of what we should be doing to maximize who we are as human beings.

Accordingly, one of Sacks’s most valiant crusades was the call for individuals and communities to step up and take responsibility for the moral state of society. He argued that we have reached a crisis point because we have spent too much time going to the wrong addresses when the most important address is right at our doorstep.

The issue becomes clearer with a Biblical metaphor, as explained by the famous 19th-century rabbi and commentator, Malbim (Rabbi Meir Leibush Wisser). After telling us that, “He who tends a fig tree will enjoy its fruit, and he who cares for his master will be honored,“ the Bible tells us that, “As in water, face answers to face, so the heart of man to man” (Proverbs 27:18-19). The metaphor is based on the mirror image of our face that we see when we look at water. So too, claims the Bible, is the response of a person’s heart. Malbim understands this quite literally. For him, it is saying that the blood that is pumped out of a man’s heart is the exact same blood that returns to that heart. As for the teaching, he expands it broadly, telling us that what happens to us is often a direct reflection of how we act in a wide variety of contexts.

Does this not sound a little (a lot!) like algorithms. These programs don’t make up anything on their own. Their output – like the reflection of our face in the water – is completely responsive to our input. In this respect, then, the blame society is aiming at social media algorithms is like throwing a rock at the water reflecting the ugliness of your own face.

The result is that we turn to forces outside and tell them, “Show me a prettier face.” In the short term, that may happen. Algorithms can be adjusted to appeal to our better sides or, at least, to mitigate some of the more significant negative outcomes. However, as Facebook has already anticipated, that will lead to less user time, meaning less business. And that may lead to other companies finding a way to fill the vacuum and supply us with what we seem to want.

For if we are allowing ourselves to wallow in partisan hate and never looking at the other side, it means that on some level this is what we prefer. If we are willing to read things the reliability of which is questionable, it means that this is what we want. If we let ourselves be drawn to the bizarre, the silly and the sexually enticing, this too is what we are ultimately choosing. As in real life, knowing that any of these practices is not optimal is not the same as deciding to live otherwise. No doubt, others, including Mark Zuckerberg, have a part in the blame. But what about yourselves?

A more serious and introspective society would understand that there is a deeper problem that goes beyond Facebook and the lack of government regulation.

 As Rabbi Sacks never got tired of reminding us, the home of that problem is within ourselves. 

 https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/jonathan-sacks-morality-and-facebook-algorithms/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2021-10-25&utm_medium=email

 

Keeping Kids Safe!

 

Rahel Bayar will speak to Schechter parents about boundaries and abuse

Rahel Bayar runs workshops on sexual abuse and how to recognize it.

 

On Tuesday, October 26, the Solomon Schechter Day School of Bergen County in New Milford will host a webinar for its parent volunteers with Rahel Bayar, a former sex crimes prosecutor who grew up in Milburn. She’s a lawyer who now offers training to schools, camps, and other institutions on how to prevent and respond to abuse and misconduct.

The Zoom session will teach about boundaries and abuse.

The workshop for parents follows one that Ms. Bayar ran for SSDS faculty in August about boundaries and how abusers pursue their victims, and another, last week, teaching faculty members about sexual harassment.

“Anyone interfacing with any of our students should have these workshops about our healthy boundaries,” Dr. Ilana Kustanowitz, SSDS’s psychologist, said.

On Wednesday, October 27, Ms. Bayar also is scheduled to run workshops with SSDS middle school students on cyberbullying, internet safety, and sexting. In the spring, she is scheduled to return to talk with lower school students on safe and unsafe touching.

“Parents have asked for us to have these sorts of lessons for these kids,” Dr. Kustanowitz said. “She’s an incredible presenter.”

Ms. Bayar earned a law degree at Seton Hall University after studying at Rutgers as an undergraduate. In 2009 she started working in the Bronx D.A.’s office, prosecuting sex crimes. After almost seven years there, she went to work for an investigative firm, T&M Protection Resources, in Manhattan; she was in the division that investigated sexual misconduct allegations, both current and historical.

“All of us in that division were former sex crime prosecutors, so we knew what it means to conduct those investigations from a trauma-informed lens,” she said. “There were a lot of investigations where there was a current allegation of something that couldn’t be handled by law enforcement because there was no allegation of a crime, but it was concerning in a school setting. A school would bring us in to conduct an investigation.”

She opened her own practice, the Bayar Group, last November, to share her expertise in preventing abuse. Ms. Bayar said that her work is split between Jewish and non-Jewish institutions; among the other local Jewish schools that she has worked with are the Moriah School in Englewood, Yeshiva Ben Porat Yosef and the Frisch School in Paramus, and Ma’ayanot Yeshiva High School for Girls in Teaneck.

“It’s wonderful to see so many schools taking a proactive approach” to preventing abuse, she said.

Questions of child abuse have come to the fore in the Jewish community in recent years, with high-profile journalistic exposes of abuse within Jewish schools and Jewish organizations helping to lead to laws in New York and New Jersey that temporarily extended the statute of limitation for lawsuits alleging childhood sexual abuse.

Ms. Bayar said that parents concerned about their children’s safety — and which parent isn’t? — should be looking at what their school’s policies are. But first, “even before you’re asking a school about their policies, you want to feel comfortable asking a school whether they have policies,” she said. “Make sure the response isn’t defensive or negative. Transparency is important.”

So what are the best practice child safety policies?

To start with, Ms. Bayar said, there should be a mandated reporting policy that spells out what faculty and staff are supposed to do. It has to reflect state law. It has to spell out the different types of possible abuse: physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect or maltreatment. It has to clearly state the requirement to report to the appropriate state or local authority, and to “make it very clear that there is a requirement to report externally.

“The second piece you want to look at are what we call boundary guidelines,” she said. “Boundary guidelines are about protecting students, as well as creating a dividing line” between behaviors that are totally acceptable in the school community and those “that one would consider grooming behaviors and are really red flag behaviors with students.”

Grooming, Ms. Bayar said, is “a slow and steady seduction of a child that involves a breaking down of boundaries between that adult and that child, so that that child learns to trust that adult. It looks like an adult identifying a vulnerability in that kid. So that when that adult does something bad, touches the child or has the child touch them, or exposes them to something sexual,” the child most likely will not disclose the abuse.

“When you set the red line, it protects everybody. It protects faculty and staff from creating an appearance of impropriety. It protects students from someone who may be interested in grooming them.

“There are a lot of different types of boundaries. You have your physical boundaries, you have your emotional boundaries, you have your behavior boundaries, you have the boundaries on one-on-one interactions with students, both in person and in Zoom. You have social media and electronic communication boundaries.”

These boundaries involve questions of “navigating conversations with students and not talking about personal information,” as well as “issues of bathrooms and overnight trips and athletics and coaching and your home and students’ homes, especially in a community where you may live in the same community and share Shabbat meals,” she said.

The third piece is a sexual harassment policy detailing how staff should interact with each other.

Along with these policies, “you need to ensure the school is actually training effectively in the policies,” Ms. Bayar said. “That does not mean a video or a check-the-box approach or someone reading down a list of all the things you can’t do. The training has to be able to bring the faculty and staff into the why behind the guidelines, the why behind the mandated reporting, the why when it comes to all the different child safety practices.”

And then there are the policies that apply to the students.

“You want to make very clear what behavior is acceptable or not,” Ms. Bayar said. “Are there effective anti-harassment, anti-bullying, and anti-hazing policies? If a student sends an inappropriate picture to another student, or sexually assaults them, what is the policy of the school?

“Every state is different in terms of what their expectations are, and every insurance company is different in terms of their expectations. But we shouldn’t be doing this just based on the standard expectation. We should be rising above that and saying how we should create a safe community.

“As a parent, I would want to know if there is an allegation made about boundary crossing behavior, or an allegation made about a form of abuse that doesn’t fall under mandated reporting, that it’s still going to be reported and there’s also transparency,” she continued.

When you think about people who might sexually abuse kids, “a lot of times you think about the scary, creepy person you see on ‘Law and Order SVU,’” she said. But — surprise! — television does not accurately reflect reality.

“Ninety-one percent of kids who are abused are abused by someone they or their family knows,” Ms. Bayar said. “In order to sexually abuse a child, you can’t be a creepy, scary person, because no one would leave you alone with their kids. It means to sexually abuse a child, you have to be good with kids. It means a predator has to fly under the radar and connect with a child in a way that doesn’t seem to be creepy or scary to anyone else.

“A lot of people who abuse kids find themselves in child-facing organizations, in schools and in camps, because that’s where inhibitions are down and people have more access to kids,” she said.

“Effective training requires an understanding of how grooming works, why it is effective, and how to counteract it. That’s part of what training in a school needs. You don’t want to have people in your community ignoring red flags.

“That’s why every school should have boundaries guidelines. How should we interact to help a vulnerable kid, and what’s not appropriate? What is grooming and what is allowed?” she said.

For example: “Best practice is a teacher should not drive a student alone in a car. The truth is no teacher should be driving students, period. Now, let’s say a teacher decides, ‘I’m fine, I’m not a danger so it’s fine for me to drive kids.’ Parents see that and perceive that either a teacher is doing something nice or this is something that’s allowed.

“In a school that says this is allowed, a predator sees he can use his car as a way to groom a child. No one will think twice about it because teachers A, B, and C drive kids alone in a car. It lets a predator see that this school is not a tough target.

“If you have guidelines and draw the line that no one gets to drive a kid to school alone, it means that when you have a predator in the mix, they realize this school is a tough target and that this may not be the best place for them to have access to kids. That’s the importance of rules and guidelines. It sets a tone.”

What are Ms. Bayar’s recommendations for a school dealing with a case of a very old allegation surfacing under the Child Victims Act?

“One of the most important things is transparency with the school community,” she said.

“When you’re talking a Child Victim Act case, you’re talking about something that will be in litigation for a period of time. You’re also talking about an alleged victim who has been willing to go on record identifying horribly detailed invasive pieces of things that happened to them. It’s important to recognize that kids do not disclose right away. Things come out decades later.

“There shouldn’t be anybody opining on the validity of the allegations in terms of it not having happened. If you are in a situation where you decide to conduct an investigation of a fact-finding nature, there should be no determination made without people who are specially trained and trauma-informed. Who they are should be public. There should be an opportunity for parents and students — the community — to bring forward to outside investigators any information that is concerning. The investigators should be speaking to the person who made the allegations. It all should be transparent. And the goal always needs to be protecting the kids.”

Ms. Bayar doesn’t think it is appropriate to keep someone on a school’s staff in the wake of such allegations.

“If you have an allegation that someone molested a child, it doesn’t matter where or when, would you bring that person into your home to hang out with your kid one on one?

“If you have someone who is under investigation for fraud and embezzlement, and you are an accounting firm, would you keep them working with clients, or say, for the time being, you need to step out: You have been accused of embezzling funds and our clients need to be protected. You’re not going to say, we’re still going to have you work with our clients but we’ll make sure you’re not the only one who has the passwords. You would wait to see what actually happens in that suit, and how it comes out in the end. Why don’t we apply that same standard to our kids?”

Can an investigation come back and say that the alleged molester is in fact kosher?

“How can an internal investigation do that if there is a pending lawsuit?” Ms. Bayar said. “There’s going to be a discovery stage. There will potentially be depositions. You would have to spend time interviewing the victim, vetting their discovery and information. You can’t opine on something being ‘kosher’ without speaking to the victim.

“More than that: We know that when it comes to sexual abuse, delayed disclosures means there will be pieces people may not remember, and information that might seem relevant or not. Wait to see what actually happens in that lawsuit, and how it comes out in the end.”

https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/keeping-kids-safe/

Why Take The Booster? - Part Two

 

Israeli research shows 50-fold jump in antibodies after third shot

 

50 times more neutralizing antibodies were found in healthcare workers who received their booster shot eight months after their second.

An Israeli is seen receiving the third COVID-19 booster shot at a Clalit clinic in Jerusalem

 

A third dose of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine led to 50 times more neutralizing antibodies in healthcare workers who received the shot eight months after their second dose, a new study has shown.

 

The report, published recently in Lancet Microbe by Dr. Esther Saiag, deputy director for information and operations at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, and her colleague Dr. David Bomze, examined the effect of the third dose on 346 healthy hospital employees.

 

“Healthcare workers are very unique,” Saiag told The Jerusalem Post.

 

She said that these workers tend to be healthier and more active than average citizens, and that because of the role they have played in the pandemic, they were among the first to take the vaccines.

 

Most of these workers received their second shot eight months before their third shot. Israel started its vaccination campaign on December 20, and medical personnel were among the first group to be vaccinated.

 

When the country opened up third doses to elderly people in August, Saiag asked if any of the older staff would be screened to check their level of antibodies before getting the shot. Some 346 people between the ages of 64 and 73 (215 women) complied.

 

The test found that in August their median baseline level of antibodies was only 3.67.

 

While antibodies do not tell the whole immunity story, as cellular memory is also important, Saiag said this number was very low.

 

Those who were screened before the shot returned 10 days after their third dose to get tested again. Almost all of them (95.7%) had a surge in antibodies more than 150.

 

Anti-spike protein concentrations were established with the ADVIA Centaur SARS-CoV-2 IgG assay, which provides an index value up to 150, the Lancet article explained. An index equal to or greater than one is considered reactive.

 

“We saw that very soon after having enough of the population getting the third booster that the fourth wave subsided,” Saiag said. “Now we see what was happening behind the scenes. We have this surge in antibodies. Maybe we all expected to find this, but now we have the data to prove it.”

 

Only two subjects did not respond at all and the level of antibodies in their blood remained negative. Nine additional subjects responded with only a moderate increase in the level of antibodies, despite the booster dose.

 

A follow-up study is now planned to trace possible causes for lack of response or non-maximal response among these subjects.

 

This is the largest study of its kind to examine the effect of the booster dose among healthcare workers.

Saiag said the plans are to continue to follow this group and re-screen them at various intervals to see what happens with their antibody levels. They will also check in with the staff to see if any of them contract COVID and, if so, if they have symptomatic or asymptomatic cases.

 

The results could help governments, including the Israeli government, make decisions about whether a fourth dose is needed, she said.

 

https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/coronavirus/israeli-research-shows-50-fold-jump-in-antibodies-after-third-shot-682601?_ga=2.30408447.1116449043.1634580035-1969581575.1579377799&utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=We+are+in+a+5G+cold+war&utm_campaign=October+20%2C+2021+Night&vgo_ee=Jn367jKILnpErXAAhCpdDovy7T5YEJ8ohjC9vauJg30%3D

Why The Booster?

 

If the chickenpox vaccine lasts 20 years, why not the COVID-19 shot?

 

Will the third booster shot be our last? Israeli doctors explain the science behind it.

Health worker prepares a Covid-19 vaccine at a temporary Clalit health care center in Jerusalem

 

 

The measles vaccine lasts forever. The chickenpox vaccine is good for as long as 20 years. The DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis) requires five doses before the age of seven, but then it offers protection for at least 10 years.

 

So why do we assume that we will have to get a shot of the coronavirus vaccine every six months or year?

 

There are reasons why individuals might need a COVID booster at least every year, but also some reasons why the third shot may, in fact, be our last.

 

The first reason we might need a fourth (or fifth or sixth) shot is because of the decay of our own antibodies and immune response, explained Dr. Oren Kobiler of Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine.

 

Recent studies have shown that the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine wanes after four to six months, making individuals more prone to infection. A booster dose does exactly what its name implies: It boosts our antibodies, offering greater protection against the virus.

 

Another reason we might need repeated shots is due to variants, or what is known in scientific terms as “antigenic drift.” If the virus is always changing, then our vaccines will need to be updated to protect against the latest threat.

 

Some viruses, such as polio, measles and mumps, do not change a lot, hence the vaccines continue to be effective. In contrast, influenza changes every year, so people receive a new flu vaccine to protect against it.

 

“The vaccine is the protection,” said Prof. Meital Gal Tanamy, head of the Molecular Virology Lab at Bar-Ilan University’s Faculty of Medicine. “The period of protection is dependent on the vaccine and the virus.”

 

“A variant is a virus that contains mutations, and if it has evolutionary advantages, it can take over in the population,” she said, adding that this is what happened with the Delta variant. “The other question is how effective against these variants the vaccines we have will be.”

 

Coronavirus is an RNA virus, which means it changes. However, its mutation rate is three to four times less compared with the influenza virus, which is good news for vaccine makers, Gal Tanamy said.

Another thing to consider is how good the immune response really is that is induced by the vaccine.

 

(Novel AY4.2 COVD Delta variant identified in 11-year-old Israeli)

The "Delta Plus" strand has been on the rise in the UK, with British authorities reporting 6% of the positive cases on Tuesday belonging to the AY4.2 strand, according to a Maariv report.

 https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/novel-ay42-covd-delta-variant-identified-in-11-year-old-israeli-682503?_ga=2.33030014.1116449043.1634580035-1969581575.1579377799&utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Novel+AY4+2+COVD+Delta+variant+identified+in+11-year-old+Israeli&utm_campaign=October+19%2C+2021+Night&vgo_ee=Jn367jKILnpErXAAhCpdDovy7T5YEJ8ohjC9vauJg30%3D)

 

 

 

“If the purpose of a vaccine is to prevent infection, then it needs to lead to the creation of a good memory cell response – B cells and T cells that are cells induced by the vaccine but that stay in our body,” Gal Tanamy said. “If a person becomes infected, these cells are activated and can create a fast and good response against the pathogen, which is why we do not get sick if we are vaccinated.”

 

The question then is whether or not we get a good memory response with the vaccines that we have.

Recent papers have shown that even as neutralizing antibodies wane, the vaccine still has a good memory response.

 

So, why take the booster then?

 

Because, Kobiler said, the booster is not only stopping serious disease, it is also aimed at halting infection – a high bar for a vaccine.

 

“Most vaccines are used to prevent serious infection and not any infection,” he said. “Here we are asking the vaccine to prevent any and all disease, to prevent the infection from spreading.

 

“Most people in the world don’t need the booster shot to prevent them from getting serious disease, but they do need it to prevent them from getting corona and spreading it to other people.”

 

Gal Tanamy stressed that even people with two shots are “still very much protected from severe disease” because of their memory cells.

 

But there are also reasons to believe that this third shot could be the last.

 

Many childhood vaccines are taken three times and no more, such as the polio vaccine and the HPV vaccine against the papilloma virus. The latter, for example, if taken after the age of 15, needs three doses, one month and six months after the first dose, and then it lasts a lifetime, as far as scientists currently know.

 

Another idea is that the administration regime could be altered to make the vaccines more effective.

Several recent papers suggest, for example, that the Pfizer vaccine creates a more robust immunity if the first and second shots are given eight or even 12 weeks apart instead of three, Kobiler said.

 

“Now, with the third dose being given at six months [after the second dose], I am not sure we will ever need another booster,” he said.

 

There are also scientists who believe that like previous coronaviruses, the pandemic will eventually become endemic and less severe, and the need to vaccinate will soon become unnecessary, Kobiler added.

 

“I am more inclined to that point of view because of what we know of other coronaviruses,” he said. 

 

“Usually, they are caught at a young age and cause very mild disease. And those that are exposed to them at a young age tend not to suffer from severe disease when they are older.”

 

Finally, each booster sparks a better immune response, both in terms of quantity and quality of antibodies than the one before, Gal Tanamy said. The immune response becomes “more specific” and the antibodies “more efficient,” she said.

 

So, will we or won’t we need to vaccinate against COVID for life?

 

“Only time will tell,” Kobiler said.

 

https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/coronavirus/if-the-chickenpox-vaccine-lasts-20-years-why-not-the-covid-19-shot-682382