This is another case of the government and Big Pharma trying to control how we raise our children,said Yankel’s dad, Moshe Crackpot TaylorWitz, and Sam Kaminetzky MD (Master of Deception) who moonlights as a pediatrician...

• Anti-vaccer literally can't even, continues odding

Vaccines | By Doktor Spudd 
 

Anti-vaccer loses fourth child to vaccine preventable disease, thanks God they all avoided autism

Lakewood, NJ – Local anti-vaccine mother of four, Yental TaylorWitz, has lost her fourth child in as many years to a vaccine preventable illness. This time it was whooping cough. Over the past three years, the TaylorWitzss have had to say goodbye to Matthew, 3, Penny, 6, and Henry, 9. Two of the children died from complications of Rotavirus, while the third passed away due to Tetanus.None of this has swayed Yental TaylorWitz from her anti-vaccine stance.

“It is always tragic when a child dies, of course, but my babies are up in heaven now having lived their whole life naturally and autism-free,” said Yental. “The fact that all four of my children went through life free from toxins, GMOs, gluten, and most importantly autism, is solace enough for me.”

Child Protective Services has been called into investigate the situation, creating outrage among the anti-vaccine community. Shmuel Kaminetzky and Jenny McCarthy, however, threw another unscheduled Agudah Convention!

“This is another case of the government and Big Pharma trying to control how we raise our children, our property” said Yankel's dad, Moshe Crackpot TaylorWitz, and Sam Kaminetzky MD (Master of Deception) who moonlights as a pediatrician. “Yes her children all died of diseases that there are vaccines for, but you know what? None of her children were vaccine injured which close to 90% of kids who get vaccines are.”

Amazingly, despite not having had any vaccinations, Mrs. TaylorWitz submitted all four deaths to VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System) in hopes of getting some monetary compensation.

“Just because they didn’t have vaccines, doesn’t mean I can’t blame their deaths on vaccines,” explained TaylorWitz from Lakewood, New Joisy.

http://thespudd.com/anti-vaccer-loses-fourth-child-to-vaccine-preventable-disease-thanks-god-they-all-avoided-autism/

These gurus are a symptom of a sick age, where people are so detached from truth and reality that they will latch onto anything or anyone. Moreover, their obsession with superstition show that they are as influenced by culture as those they ridicule....

Beware The “Guru” Rabbis.

Rabbinic ordination is not a license to say what you want. Nor is it a free ride to spout nonsense and lies, or exhibit baseless hatred for other Jews. When a known rav distorts Torah concepts, it only magnifies the Chillul Hashem, which in turn necessitates an even stronger response. Unfortunately, since authentic chochma is rare today, as is the public’s ability to discern it, the masses rarely appreciate genuine talmidei chachomim. Instead of heeding the call of Pirkei Avot and designating for themselves a rav, many choose for themselves flawed men who bottom feed on the ignorant.

Too many Jews seek out the latest guru rabbis who periodically pop out of the rotten woodwork. Some years back, one Sephardic “rabbi” became popular with his patented shtick: playing on the emotional appeal of women who were having trouble conceiving. During his lectures, he promised secular women in the audience that if they agreed to start covering their hair, they would eventually conceive. The cultish, pagan spectacle of choosing this one obligation above all else, and using it as a fertility rite in a public forum, screams of distortions of Jewish thought, and presents a disturbingly immodest scene. This particular guru remains popular today. Such an individual is a symptom of an ignorant age, where Torah is plagued with superstition. In a learned society, such a man would be exposed, despite the trappings of his garb and “simanim” which add to the supposed authenticity.

Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi is the latest “wonder rabbi” on the magical kiruv circuit, and his popular videos inundate the internet. Like all Jewish gurus, he specializes in glib, general statements pertaining to some of the most intricate concepts in Judaism. Mizrachi believes that he knows it all, and he presents complicated issues to simple-minded people as if they were aleph bet. He focuses on controversial, halachically problematic ideas, such as the popular distorted perception of Kabbalah as magic, the purported actions of alleged kabbalists, belief in reincarnation, etc. Gilgul is particularly critical in his magical world-view, since it forms the spine of his approach to s’char v’onesh. He is popular in chareidi Sephardi circles, but has broad based support among English speaking Ashkenazim in the frum world.

More importantly, his teachings are reprehensible. It is not just about the recent outcry over his obscene holocaust statements, where he reported that the Nazis murdered fewer than one million halachic Jews. A diligent study of his career shows a history of dangerous teachings, which should have made him a pariah long ago. He has earned our unrelenting ire.

In the first video of his that I ever subjected myself to, he was lecturing the audience about a supposed critical issue in Judaism, the concept of gilgul, better known as reincarnation, which appears nowhere in Tanach, Talmud, or Midrash, yet the superstitious treat it as a fundamental belief. His arrogance was apparent when he denigrated those who quote Saadya Gaon as a proof against the belief, since Rasag rejected the idea as stupidity in his classic treatise, “Beliefs and Opinions”. What was even more frightening was Mizrachi’s supposed proof for the existence of gilgul. He cited an example of an innocent baby dying, and saw this as proof of gilgul, since G-d’s justice would never allow such a thing. The sheer arrogance of someone who creates a ridiculous “proof” to explain the age-old question of tsaddik v’ra lo which the greatest gaonim, rishonim, and acharonim could not answer. Somehow, Mizrachi discovered an answer to this greatest of perplexities by resorting to gilgul, which very likely was taken from pagan culture! It seems unlikely that Saadya Gaon would have been unaware of the concept if it existed or was fundamental to Jewish belief. To suggest otherwise is an absurdity.

Most people are aware of the recent outcry, when video footage surfaced where Mizrachi questioned the fact that 6 million Jews died in the holocaust, and asserted that fewer than 1 million Jews were murdered. Not only did he disgrace the legacy of 6 ½ million kedoshim murdered by Amalek, in doing so, he empowered the holocaust deniers of the world with evidence of a “rabbi’s” holocaust denial. His foolish estimate was based on his distorted, non-scholarly unfounded estimates of assimilation in Europe which he surmised meant that most of the 6 million would not have ben halachically Jewish. No academic study, no documentation has ever claimed likewise. No normal Jew, religious or otherwise would ever utter such perversity. To engage with this non-scholar would be akin to arguing with the holocaust denying David Irving.

How to Recognize a Guru
There are signs to identify a “guru.”

• The existence of a cult following comprised of the unlearned, and the psychologically troubled who know little if anything of Torah.
• The complex network enabling the mass distribution and marketing of the guru’s lectures in the form of videos, audio. Websites featuring an impossible number of lectures expose the guru’s unrelenting speaking tours to disseminate his message.
• The guru’s lectures invariably focus on questionable problematic notions that have become popular in Judaism, such as gilgul (reincarnation), magical segulos, demons, etc. The guru shares childish notions about complex Jewish subjects and makes outrageous generalizations that have no basic in Torah thought.
• Beneath the veneer of the sacred, one notices an obsession with sexuality, and one hears crude statements that no genuine man of Torah would utter. Many of these self-appointed prophets of morality in “the Torah camp” are obsessed with “Jewish sanctity” are obsessed by sex. The irony is that in their pursuit of the sacred, their sexual obsession exposes a sex-preoccupied personality. The most private issues and human challenges are delivered with frankness and simplicity that are undignified. Things best discussed with one’s rabbi or religious mentor are thrown in our faces, in all their crudeness. It begs the question: Who are the perverts?
• The guru often displays a callous nature, and makes sweeping generalizations, which purport to understand all nuances of Divine justice. The sins (real or imagined) of the secular are emphasized, whereas outrages that occur in frum society (of which there are no dearth of) are ignored.

Mizrachi meets many of these criteria. One hears the frequent claims of his mass kiruv efforts to justify his legitimacy; claims which fall deaf on my ears. Kiruv? If a thousand pogo-ing mantra-spouting nutcases claim that a certain individual turned them into baalei teshuvah, I consider them AS religious as any group of inmates in an asylum. A kipah is hardly indicative of frumkeit. The same pertains to their teacher. This is not Jewish outreach. This is simply another version of being “off the derech.”

These gurus are a symptom of a sick age, where people are so detached from torah that they will latch onto anything. Magic men wear the cloak of Torah, but they are detached from chochmah. Moreover, their obsession with superstition show that they are as influenced by goyish culture as those they ridicule.

Mizrachis videos are a treasure chest of filth, including such outrageous statements as the following. Fortunately, many people are downloading and saving these videos, before they are removed from the internet. One could spend years dissecting the filth, but some of the more repugnant ones include the following:

• His now infamous claim that the Nazis (yemach shmo) murdered fewer than 1 million halachic Jews.
• His comparing “non-virgin women” to an opened bottle of coke. What Rabbi speaks this way?
• His disgraceful claim that Down syndrome children as well as those with autism are reincarnated spirits receiving punishment for a previous life.
• His perverse claim that religious woman hid their nakedness moments before the Nazis sent them to the furnaces, whereas the irreligious were immodest in the moment before their extermination. (When I saw this video, I nearly lost my mind.) What sick mind could see these terrible photos and even contemplate, let alone articulate, such a lunatic theory? When I saw this footage, it crystalized for me the need to write an article.

Aseh l’chah rav. Chazal maintained that any reasonably intelligent, rational person with some knowledge of Torah had the ability to choose for himself a proper Rav. One who epitomizes Torah and chesed. The diligent Jew should ensure that they have a proper teacher of torah rather than a showman pop star who appeals to simpletons. Moreover, if one’s rabbi is obsessed with sex, sheidim, reincarnated spirits, or the supposed immodesty of Jewish korbanot ready to be gassed to death, find another rabbi. If the first thing your chosen rav finds imperative to articulate to the secular is not the knowledge of Hashem, ahavat yisroel, or chesed, but rather a hair covering (whose side benefit magically assists infertile women!) something is wrong with him. Any goyish shaman can do likewise with the same degree of success. The placebo effect works the same for all pagans.

In the case of Mizrachi, thanks to YouTube, Facebook, and the general popularity of social media, his perverse teachings will outlast all of us. The essence of Chillul Hashem personified; since his lectures are now eternally archived in MP4 format. There is no way to undo his damage, save for an unrelenting campaign to expose him and others who share similar beliefs.
In closing, I post one final video, which I just watched today. Outrageous and unbelievable. I watched the video from a Facebook page called “Exposing “Rabbi” Yosef Mizrachi.” Several of the links above connect to the corresponding YouTube channel. In this particular video, Mizrachi states that “secular” Israeli soldiers who die in combat have no share in the world to come. Moreover, he cites halachically prohibited séances as a proof! Evidently, he is unaware of the Halacha that a Jew who is murdered for being a Jew dies Al Kiddush Hashem. Not to mention that one who dies protecting Jews (even for a flawed army run by men who are far from Torah) is engaged in one of the greatest mitzvoth. The Chazon Ish stated clearly that most of the unaffiliated Jews of our times clearly fall under the category of “captured babies” rather than willful sinners. Yet Mizrachi in his arrogant hatred sees fit to damn them all to his goyish notion of hell.

I have a message for Mizrachi’s apologists who insist that his words were taken out of context. There is no context to justify his pernicious views. His teachings are sick, and they expose a damaged soul. Those who defend such a man, whether overtly, or with the “devil’s advocate” method of apologetics and the undeserved “benefit of the doubt” say much about themselves. Let them do their research, and it will become evident that he really is THAT bad. In fact, he is worse. The fact that I need to write these things is perhaps the most tragic thing of all.

About the Author: Donny Fuchs made aliyah in 2006 from Long Island to the Negev, where he resides with his family. He has a keen passion for the flora and fauna of Israel and enjoys hiking the Negev desert. His religious perspective is deeply grounded in the Rambam's rational approach to Judaism.

http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/columns/fuchs-focus/beware-the-guru-rabbis/2016/01/17/

The Thieves & Frauds Never Ending Quest For Idiots and Fools (and finding them everywhere)!!!

The World’s Leading Kabbalist, Guru to Billionaires, Is Going to Jail

Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto was once the powerful head of a multimillion-dollar empire and spiritual adviser to the likes of LeBron James. Now he’s going to prison for bribery.

Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto is a celebrity in Israel and among financial and real estate elites in New York. A sage whose followers include the leaders of Israel’s business elite, Pinto is the descendant of Moroccan Jewish saints, a Sephardic hero, and a master of Kabbalah, the ancient tradition of Jewish mysticism and magic. His net worth has been estimated at $19 million, not including the vast sums under the control of his various nonprofit organizations.

He is also a felon, convicted of bribing an Israeli police general. This week, after exhausting what is probably his last appeal—a last-ditch effort to avoid jail for health reasons—it appears he is finally headed for prison.

Adding insult to injury, a $30 million defamation suit the rabbi’s organization filed against a reporter was dismissed by a New York court this week for lack of jurisdiction.

How does a Kabbalist, who by all accounts is indeed a devout man who practices what he preaches, become a multimillionaire?

It’s the network. In New York, Pinto’s close followers include leading Jewish real estate magnates like Ofer Yardeni and Charlie Kushner, politicians like Anthony Weiner and Eric Cantor, Jewish leaders including celebrity rabbi Marc Schneier and Malcolm Hoenlein (the head of the Conference of Presidents of American Jewish Organizations), and even LeBron James.

Followers believe that Pinto has supernormal powers. Many said he can read minds. Others say he has the ability to bless everything from business ventures to political careers—and to curse enemies as well. Like other Kabbalists, Pinto speaks only Hebrew, is soft spoken, and keeps his eyes partly closed, the better to detach from worldly concerns. He dispenses advice, blessings, and amulets. He is the descendant both of the famous Moroccan mystic Rabbi Yisrael Abuhatzeira, also known as the Baba Sali, and of Rabbi Haim Pinto, one of Morocco’s most powerful rabbis. And he welcomes everyone: religious, secular, Jewish, non-Jewish.

But for a holy man, Pinto is surrounded by shady criminal elements, including outright crooks. In Israel, these include Yossi Harari, the head of the Ramat Amidar underworld gang, and mobster Shalom Domrani.

MORE:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/01/07/the-world-s-leading-kabbalist-guru-to-billionaires-is-going-to-jail.html?via=desktop&source=facebook

Paul Mendlowitz FRAUD ALERT

 The hilula (yahrtzeit) of the holy

BABA SALI, RAV YISRAEL ABUCHATZEIRA zt”l, is Thursday.

DUE TO NUMEROUS REQUESTS, YAD L’ACHIM HAS ARRANGED FOR TALMIDEI CHACHAMIM, INCLUDING GRANDSONS OF BABA SALI TO DAVEN AT BABA SALI’S KEVER ON THE DAY OF HIS YAHRTZEIT – TEFILLOS CAN BE FORSHIDDUCHIM, PARNASSAH, HEALTH, CHILDREN AND ALL PERSONAL REQUESTS

The Baba Sali zt”l was very close to Yad L’Achim and encouraged us in our work every step of the way. Shortly before his passing, he penned a letter of great inspiration and encouraging Klal Yisrael to support Yad L’Achim. He included a bracha (blessing) to all who support Yad L’Achim – from the letter -

"הנה בא לפני גודל המעשים של ארגון יד לאחים. . וה’ הטוב יביא ברכת טוב על כל המחזיקים ידם"

… and Hashem, who is kind, will bring good blessings to all who support their (Yad L’Achim’s) hand”

Don’t miss this once in a lifetime opportunity & fulfill the great mitzvah of Pidyon Shvuyim (redeeming of captives) rescuing Jewish women & children trapped in villages.
 

A film crew from a well-known, national news outlet is looking to interview 3-4 survivors of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. Filming will take place in the Los Angeles area.

Paul -- A film crew from a well-known, national news outlet is looking to interview 3-4 survivors of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. They are looking for a variety of ages and experiences and want to focus on people who were abused by priests, as opposed to nuns, employees, etc. (Sorry about that) This is a great opportunity for anyone who wants to tell their story to an audience who may not be familiar with the crisis (or who may be too young to really remember the 2002 scandals). Filming will take place in the Los Angeles area. If you are interested, contact Joelle Casteix at jcasteix@gmail.com Barbara Dorris http://www.snapnetwork.org/

SNAP · PO Box 6416, Chicago, IL 60680-6416, United States

What Pope Benedict Knew About Abuse in the Catholic Church

Pope Benedict XVI, in 2007, with his brother Georg Ratzinger, who, from 1964 to 1994, was the director of a Catholic boys’ choir that is the subject of a recent sex-abuse investigation. Credit PHOTOGRAPH BY VINCENZO PINTO / AFP / GETTY

The election of Pope Francis, in 2013, had the effect, among other things, of displacing the painful story of priestly sexual abuse that had dominated public awareness of the Church during much of the eight-year papacy of his predecessor. The sense that the Church, both during the last years of Benedict and under Francis, had begun to deal more forcefully with the issue created a desire in many, inside and outside the Church, to move on. But recent events suggest that we take another careful look at this chapter of Church history before turning the page.

During the past week, a German lawyer charged with investigating the abuse of minors in a famous Catholic boys’ choir in Bavaria revealed that two hundred and thirty-one children had been victimized over a period of decades. The attorney, Ulrich Weber, who was commissioned by the Diocese of Regensburg to conduct the inquiry, said that there were fifty credible cases of sexual abuse, along with a larger number of cases of other forms of physical abuse, from beatings to food deprivation.

The news received widespread attention not only because of its disturbing content but because the director of the Regensburg boys’ choir from 1964 to 1994 was Georg Ratzinger, the older brother of Joseph Ratzinger, who became Benedict XVI. Joseph Ratzinger was the Archbishop of Munich from 1977 until 1981, when he went to head up the powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which establishes theological orthodoxy and was also one of the branches of the Church that dealt with priestly sexual abuse.

The developments in Germany raised the question of what the two Ratzinger brothers knew about the abuse in the Regensburg choir. Most of the sexual abuse took place, apparently, at a boarding school for elementary-grade students connected to the choir. The chief culprit, according to Weber, was Johann Meier, the boarding school’s director from 1953 until 1992. The composer Franz Wittenbrink, a graduate of the school, told Der Spiegel magazine, in 2010, when the abuse scandal became public, that there was “a system of sadistic punishments connected to sexual pleasure.”

At that time, Georg Ratzinger, who was on the three-person supervisory board of the elementary school, acknowledged that some choirboys had complained about the punishments they received at the school. “But I did not have the feeling at the time that I should do something about it,” he told the Passauer Neue Presse, in 2010. “Had I known with what exaggerated fierceness he was acting, I would have said something.”

In fact, accusations of abuse surfaced and were investigated in 1987, but no one saw fit to remove Meier from his post until the year of his death. When asked at his press conference last week whether Georg Ratzinger had been aware of the abuse, Weber replied, “Based on my research, I must assume so.” He estimated that a third of the students in the choir had suffered some form of abuse. Georg Ratzinger has said that he routinely slapped choirboys when their performance was not up to snuff, standard treatment until Germany banned corporal punishment, in the early eighties. So far, the Regensburg diocese has offered compensation of twenty-five hundred euros for each victim.

In the early nineties, a monk who worked at the Vatican told me, “You wouldn’t believe the amounts of money the church is spending to settle these priestly sexual-abuse cases.” He was not exaggerating. By 1992, Catholic dioceses in the U.S. had paid out four hundred million dollars to settle hundreds of molestation cases. These financial settlements were reached largely to keep the victims quiet: in almost all cases, the documents were sealed and the victims signed a non-disclosure agreement. Given the enormous amounts of money involved, the men running the Vatican were well aware of the problem.

The basic outlines of the sex-abuse scandal were already evident that year when Jason Berry, an American journalist, published his first book, “Lead Us Not Into Temptation.” (While the “Spotlight” team at the Boston Globe is rightly getting its moment of glory, praise is also due to Berry, whose pioneering work on the subject, a decade earlier, was done with far less institutional support.) As Berry reported, Ray Mouton, a lawyer whom the Church hired in 1985 to defend a pedophile priest in Louisiana, warned that, if the Church did not adopt a policy for helping victims and removing pedophiles from the ministry, it could face a billion dollars in losses from financial settlements and damage awards in the next decade. It turned out that Mouton had actually underestimated the financial cost of the crisis. By 2006, the Church had spent $2.6 billion settling sexual-abuse cases, as Berry wrote in the 2010 edition of “Vows of Silence,” his second book on the pedophile crisis, which he co-authored with fellow-journalist Gerald Renner.

Most cases of abuse were handled (or not handled) by local bishops and archbishops, but some were adjudicated by Cardinal Ratzinger’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The most prominent of these cases was that of Father Marcial Maciel, a favorite of Pope John Paul II and the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, a powerful Mexican religious order that, at its pinnacle, included eight hundred priests, fifteen universities, and a hundred and fifty prep schools, as well as a lay movement with a reported seventy thousand followers.

In the seventies and eighties, former members of the Legionaries reported that, as young boys, they had been sexually abused by Maciel. As the Church later acknowledged, the complainants were highly credible and had no ulterior motives: they were not seeking monetary compensation or notoriety. They followed Church procedures by filing formal charges through ecclesiastical courts in Rome, but nothing was done. In fact, Pope John Paul II called on Maciel to accompany him on papal visits to Mexico in 1979, 1990, and 1993.

When one of the former Legionaries expressed his frustration, in the lawsuit, about the Church’s inaction, Berry and Renner reported in their book, the Legionaries’ own canon lawyer, Martha Wegan, who made no secret that her first loyalty was to the Church, replied, “It is better for eight innocent men to suffer than for millions to lose their faith.”

Cardinal Ratzinger reopened the case against Father Maciel in 2004, and, when he became Pope, in 2006, he acknowledged the validity of the claims, forbidding Maciel to continue his ministry and limiting him to a “life of prayer and penitence.” The Vatican found Maciel guilty of “very serious and objectively immoral acts . . . confirmed by incontrovertible testimonies” that represent “true crimes and manifest a life without scruples or authentic religious sentiment.”

Though the sexual-abuse crisis reached its peak in the public sphere during Benedict XVI’s papacy, the single figure most responsible for ignoring this extraordinary accumulation of depravity is the sainted John Paul II. In the context of his predecessor’s deplorable neglect, Pope Benedict gets slightly higher marks than most. In 2001, he acted to give his office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, jurisdiction over all sexual-abuse cases, and soon he began to push the Maciel investigation, despite considerable Vatican opposition. After ascending the throne of St. Peter, he became the first Pope to kick predator priests out of the Church: in 2011 and 2012, the last two full years of his papacy, the Church defrocked three hundred and eighty-four offending priests.

That said, it was too little, too late. As the second-most-powerful man in John Paul II’s pontificate, Ratzinger had more ability to know and to act than almost anyone. The actions he finally did take were largely dictated by a series of embarrassing scandals: his move to take control of pedophilia cases in 2001 closely followed scandals in the U.S., Ireland, and Australia, and staggering financial settlements for American plaintiffs. The decision to reopen the case against Maciel would almost certainly not have happened without the courageous reporting of Berry and Renner. And the zero-tolerance policy that led to the systematic defrocking of abusive priests happened only after the annus horribilis of 2010, in which a new sexual-abuse scandal seemed to explode every week and loyal parishioners left the Church in droves.

Ratzinger understood better than most, if late, that priestly abuse was the negation of everything the Church was supposed to stand for. But, for much of his career, his focus and priorities were elsewhere. During most of his tenure, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was too busy disciplining anyone who dared step out of line with Church teachings on personal sexuality and family planning to bother with the thousands of priests molesting children. In 2009, a nun named Margaret McBride sat on the ethics committee of a San Diego hospital that had to decide the case of a pregnant woman whose doctors believed that she (and her fetus) would die if they did not terminate her pregnancy. The committee voted to allow an abortion, and the woman’s life was saved. Almost immediately, McBride’s bishop informed her of her excommunication. It took multiple decades and thousands of cases of predatory behavior to begin defrocking priests, but not much more than twenty-four hours to excommunicate a nun trying to save a human life. In 2011, also under Pope Benedict, the Vatican lifted its excommunication of McBride.

A reëxamination of the sexual-abuse scandal may help the Church reconsider the standoff between traditionalists and progressives during Francis’s papacy. The traditionalists, who oppose changes such as offering communion to remarried couples, bemoan the good old days when papal authority was unquestioned, civil authorities treated the Church with extreme deference, and parishioners obeyed without objection. They have forgotten that those good old days were also a time when children were slapped, beaten, and often sexually abused, and priests, bishops, parents, and police looked away.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-pope-benedict-knew-about-abuse-in-the-catholic-church

The physical act of rape ruins a woman’s life, Offer says. “She feels like her life has been taken away from her. One thing we have to do with therapy is give a woman back her life.” Teenagers who have been abused often lose their self-confidence, become either abstinent or completely permissive, use drugs and develop eating disorders....

What Israel’s spate of high-profile sex scandals says about its culture

Therapist Beth Offer, who counsels rape victims, discusses the flurry of recent accusations by women

Related Topics

• rape
• sexual harassment
• Haredim
•  

Yaniv Nahman was a well-known figure in Tel Aviv’s nightlife scene. Multiple women described meeting the handsome investment manager at a club, then waking up in his bed the next morning without any recollection of how they got there. Police suspected he was using the date rape drug GHB but couldn’t prove it because by the time women filed a police complaint, it was no longer detectable in their bloodstream. Nahman agreed to a plea bargain in which he admitted to one instance of rape, and on December 27 he was sentenced to 6 months of community service.

 The judge cited several reasons for the light sentence: first, he did not use a lot of force and second, the shaming he experienced on social media during the trial had done irreparable damage to his reputation. 

The decision had women’s groups in Israel up in arms, including the Counseling Center for Women. 

“In this case, in which there was no physical evidence and only the word of the complainants against the word of the defendant,” says Beth Zaslow Offer, a counselor at the CCW, “judges chose to side with the defendant rather than the complainants, because they did not place equal value on the emotional toll of both having been raped, and having to come forward.”

According to Offer, people underestimate the courage it takes for women to come forward, as society still often shames and blames the victim. That’s why she sees the recent spate of rape and sexual harassment scandals in Israel as a healthy thing.

In November, Jewish Home Knesset member Yinon Magal resigned after several women accused him of sexual harassment. In December, interior minister Silvan Shalom stepped down from public life after 11 women came forward with accusations of assault. And last week, Ashkelon mayor Itamar Shimoni was arrested on rape and corruption allegations.

There have also been a string of sexual harassment scandals in the upper echelons of the Israel Police as well as a social media storm surrounding alleged misbehavior by former celebrity rabbi Marc Gafni.

Offer says that rape and harassment are nothing new. In fact, they’re grossly under-reported. What’s new is people’s willingness to talk about it.

“I think social media is helping. More and more people are saying this is not okay, what you women went through.”

According to Offer, Israel has come a long way. When she began working as a social worker in 1989, there was no law against wife-beating.

“I would visit a home and see a woman crying hysterically, with two huge black eyes. Two policeman were standing there and they said, ‘Don’t get too upset about this, honey. This happens all the time. She won’t put in a complaint so there’s nothing we can do.”

But in 1992, Israel passed a law where even if the abused partner doesn’t file a complaint, the alleged attacker will at least get questioned. In 1998, Israel passed its first sexual harassment law. Offer sees the current spate of scandals as part of Israel’s maturation process on these issues.

Woman holds sign saying, “I was raped” at Jerusalem Tendler SlutWalk, May 29, 2015.

She also credits the rise of women’s organizations, such as the Counseling Center for Women where she works, for raising awareness.

The center was founded in 1988 by new immigrants from the United States and England who were inspired by the feminist movement and wanted to bring those messages to Israel. It has 24 therapists in Jerusalem and Ramat Gan who handle issues related to sexual assault and trauma.

According to the Women’s Security Index, a survey by several feminist NGOs in Israel, 61 percent of Jewish women in Israel fear that someone will force them into sexual contact against their will, 38.4% fear that a family member will humiliate, attack or abuse them, and 65.9% fear being attacked on a dark street. Among Israeli Arab women, 66.7% fear being forced into sexual contact, 67.5% fear abuse from a family member, and 74.3% fear an attack on a dark street.

The survey also asked Jewish women how many had experienced sexual harassment (34.3%), but among Russian-speaking women it was 50%; 26.4% of Jewish women said they experienced rape by a known or unknown person, while 45.5% of Russian-speakers said this.

People demonstrate in front of the Alenby 40 club in Tel Aviv demanding that it close after a video was released showing a group of men having sex with a young girl, which stirred a controversy around whether the incident was rape or not, October 6, 2015.

Beth Offer says she also sees a lot of abuse in the ultra-Orthodox community. A typical scenario involves a young girl or woman visiting a friend, when her friend’s father does anything from harass to rape her. Sometimes, the community will tell her to shut up and not talk about it. On other occasions, even if she tells her family and they believe her, the rest of the community does not.

“This girl needs therapy. Often she comes to us because we are outside her community.”

What sexual abuse does to the psyche:

 

  The physical act of rape ruins a woman’s life, Offer says. “She feels like her life has been taken away from her. One thing we have to do with therapy is give a woman back her life.”

Teenagers who have been abused often lose their self-confidence, become either abstinent or completely permissive, use drugs and develop eating disorders.

Sexual harassment, says Offer, lies on a continuum, with catcalls and whistling at one end and assault and rape at the other.

She is happy that we’re in a cultural moment when men are being called out and shamed for harassment, as this will make them think twice about their behavior.

Does this mean that if a man and woman are on a date, the man should ask the woman every time he makes a move? She says it’s possible for the man and woman to transmit nonverbal cues to each other, but when in doubt, they should “use their words.”

“Keep your hands to yourself until you know it’s okay. In a way, shomrei negia [those who generally abstain from physical contact with a person they are not married to] are better about this, because they need to talk about it at each stage.”

Offer is all too aware of the Hollywood idea of the man being a little daring and taking control, which is fine, she says, as long as “he looked in her eyes and saw it was okay. If she moves back he won’t go in for the kiss. If he sees her leaning towards him then he will.”

In general, Offer says, it’s not a bad thing that in light of all the scandals, men today are more nervous about how they speak and act around women.

“We need smarter men. Mothers need to educate their sons. I have three adult boys and none would dare make a move on a woman without asking her first. Their father was the same and we’ve been married for over 30 years.”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/what-israels-spate-of-high-profile-sex-scandals-says-about-its-culture/?ut

“Because you’re our daughter and that comes first.”

Daughter, lost and found

 

We could see our Bais Yaakov educated teenage daughter slipping away from Orthodox Judaism. It was more like watching a freight train lumber along than a high-speed rail. It pained us and tore the family fabric. We yelled, we talked, we pleaded, we changed her school, but we were losing her. On the Passover eve, the fight was so intense I lost control and she threw chometz potato chips around. That was the crescendo.

Our family morphed from Modern Orthodox to Haredi-light. We kept the television, but sent the children to “black” yeshivas and girls’ schools. As adults, they now tell us they chafed at school rules and regulations, imposed to cloister them (and protect them) from the poisonous secular world. 

By mid-teens, our daughter “went out” Friday nights. She made new friends, alienated from their families. 

We needed therapy. My wife and I went, while our daughter clammed up, seething with resentment.

The therapist made it clear. We stood to lose her completely or we accept her lifestyle as it is. Maybe one day she will come back, so keep communicating. God knows we tried. We laid in wait one night, and when she crept into the house in the wee hours, we squirted her with water guns. The three of us roared with laughter. Eventually she moved out, supporting herself with two daytime waitressing jobs and later as a bartender.

There is an oeuvre of books, articles, interviews, Facebook rants, and documentaries detailing a genre of religious rebellion, ugsome personal attacks, excommunication and rejection. Even the minister’s daughter of the fundamentalist Westboro Baptist Church recently left her cloistered community and is exposing its family secrets in the media.

Ex-pats from Hasidism and Orthodox Judaism recount their alienation from family, friends, and community. They are alone in a new world. They have few survival skills, because they got little secular education, no job training, and no one to moor them. The new world is frightening and lonely place. Some turn to drugs or commit suicide. Others have a mission to expose, retaliate, and condemn their rabbis, families and communities in the most dark and vile expressions.

A wistfully written new book by Chaya Deitsch, HERE AND THERE: LEAVING HASIDISM, KEEPING MY FAMILY (New York: Schocken Books 2015) is a refreshing change on the same theme, one to which we can relate. Hers was a Lubavitch family totally immersed in Jewish Law and commitment to the Rebbe. 

Chaya’s story gives insight into the emotional stress our daughter must have experienced, yearning for what the larger world has to offer while holding on for dear life to her parents, siblings, and friends still living in the old world. We made the choice, like Deitsch’s parents, to keep the front door open, and eventually we learn to accept what we cannot control.

Deitsch musters the courage, at the urging of her publisher, to tell her parents about her “ease in crossing over into sin” before her memoir is published. She sits with her parents back home again. You feel the nervous tension. Deitsch proclaims, “I’m no longer frum.” Momma says, “You think we didn’t know? That’s why I don’t call you at home on Friday before Shabbos. I don’t want to make you lie to me.” And from her father, “You chose a different life. Of course we knew about it.” Even I breathed a sigh of relief, with tears welling, having been there myself.

A Hasidic Rebbe once confided to my wife and me, when we sought solace and a blessing, with a deep sigh, he has a brother off the derech (the path of strict religious practices). The brother became Modern Orthodox. It was all I could do to keep from busting out laughing.

Chaya recounts the small awakenings, like how impressed as a youngster she was with her Modern Orthodox relatives seemingly so comfortable in their religious skins. Each transgression takes her deeper into the secular world: wearing pants (a very cute story about fit and style), having coffee in a non-kosher shop, forsaking the kosher cafeteria in college, first for breakfast and then for other meals.

Deitsch grew up a voracious reader and keen observer of the world outside her bubble. Her parents worked with her recognizing early that Chaya was different. They did not go nuts when she wanted to apply for college, but negotiated with her. I think it is why she is healthy, a survivor, and productive citizen. She loves her Manhattan life and visiting her family in the old neighborhood.

And so is our daughter. She has a successful career and wonderful friends living in a tony urban community. She began phoning us, coming for Friday night dinners, wedging her way back into trembling arms. In our house, she was respectful of our religious practices. Outside was her world. My pet-fearful wife agreed to watch the dog when our daughter worked. That way, our daughter had to stop by twice a day.

She once asked me why we let her back home when the parents of her friends tell them not to come around (they will negatively influence the other children and hurt marriage prospects)? I shuddered, but without hesitation said, “Because you’re our daughter and that comes first.”

Chaya is “one of a smother of aunts, with nieces and nephews to indulge.” She loves her brothers and sisters and they her. Our daughter too is close with her siblings, some Orthodox and others not at all, and they did as much to help her grow as her parents contributed.

This is a story about people trying to reconcile spiritual absoluteness with mundane daily life. I ran into her one day at the gym. She pulled me over introducing me to a woman working out on the treadmill in skimpy workout wear. My daughter said, “Dad, she was a Bais Yaakov girl too,” and they both laughed.

Dr. Harold Goldmeier
January 2016
harold.goldmeier@gmail.com

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/daughter-lost-and-found/

THE UOJ ANNUAL STATE OF THE JEWISH UNION ADDRESS!

THE UOJ CLASSICS - FIRST POSTED JANUARY 2007

Do any of you really stop and think what this gedolim thing is all about? Does anybody ever stop and think; when did our Mesorah stop? Are the proclamations now rendered by the group of stand-up comics known as the Moetzes Gedolei Torah (they all agree that they are gedolim), part of our Mesorah? Will our great grandchildren consider Pinchos Scheinberg's penetrating psak, Mesorah? Is it part of our Mesorah for hassidic rebbes to permit their followers, nay, encourage and urge their followers to destroy each other in the name of who is the rightful heir to the dynasty, actually a milchemet mitzvah or holy war? Can any human fathom the sanctioned destruction of their souls in the name of Judaism?

Can you believe that THOUSANDS of people are actually waiting for the Lubavitcher Rebbe to dust himself off and get on a white donkey for his announcement that he's Moshiach? Thousands of faxes to his tomb weekly are believed to be read and answered by him? ARE YOU NUTS?

There are NO gedolim, only people. Some people are very wise, some are not so wise, and some are downright evil and ignorant.

Somebody dies and a son takes over the family business, have we hatched a gadol?

Somebody else is a charismatic speaker with some Torah knowledge, have we a gadol?

Is not a gadol suppose to be a giant, a legend, a titan, an icon, a tzaddik, an extremely wise man, a baal machshava, so embedded with truth and Torah, that it becomes inseparable from their being? Torah and truth must be intertwined, inseparable, or there is no Torah! The Torah is truth; if it becomes distorted it is not Torah! These imposters that we have today are just that, phony fraudulent imposters and rabbi-impersonators. Gedolim? How many of you saw a real live gadol? Spent time with a gadol? Learned at the feet of a gadol? How many of you ever saw a human being so developed with their tziddkus that they would rather die than utter a sheker or intentionally hurt another human in any manner, by action or inaction?

How many of you ever saw a human that would actually bawl after hearing the pain of a fellow Jew that was a complete stranger to them? How many? Who among you can actually, really feel pain, unable to eat, lose weight, cry, when you find out another Jewish child was molested by a rebbe who was suppose to teach him Torah? How many? Look at yourselves! You go around with your daily business just wondering where you're going for Pesach and if the tea room will be open 24 hours!

Do you care? DO YOU CARE? Does anyone care?

I have met, learned by, spent considerable time with, and spoken to different generations of giants, I know what a gadol is; there are no more gedolim. What we have today are a pathetic group of ignorant, uneducated, unsophisticated, boorish, selfish, money driven, losers! From the U.S.A. to the "Holy Land" each person that is considered a gadol by the masses, falls into one of these categories, some fall into every category. I despise them; every single one of them for destroying "emunas chachomim", a little bit at a time. When you know the real thing, how can you live with these pitiful morons? When you experienced the awe of great Jews, when you are blessed with the ability to comprehend greatness, you can't accept in any way, what are posing today as rabbis. These people are giants/gedolim of utter destruction!

I am amused with the example that the Agudah sets as "achakolo b'chol yom sheyavo", "we await daily the arrival of Moshiach", while they book Madison Square Garden seven and one half years in advance for their version of "American Idol", called siyum hashas. Some emunah! Of course, they will tell you, that's in the event He does not come. I say BULL-CHOLENT! They have an agenda that does not include your welfare. Remember, Lipa Margulies led the gathering in saying tehillim, can you imagine that? Frankly, I would have rather have had Jimmy Carter lead the crowd with tehillim and the reading of his Jew-hate-filled book. With Carter, at least, there's no ambiguity as to who the enemy is.

Rabosai; we are in a generational war. We will win, no doubt. But it will take energy, participation, and fortitude. The Taliban-like rabbis and their supporters must be defeated. There is no room in our civilized society for "halacha" sanctioned evil. The Internet is as evil as a gun. You can use the Internet to protect yourself and your family with it, by learning, studying, researching, increasing your income, providing parnassah, and you can kill yourself with it, spiritually. Did you ever see a gun on trial? There is a person behind the gun/computer that must be educated and taught responsibile behavior with this great "weapon". You can fend off robbers in the middle of the night with a gun, or you can kill family members, Rachmana l'tzlan. Money can be used for good and evil, do you think these cavemen would consider meeting over a fire on the issue of banning money? Let's ban women while we're banning, women have caused men so much grief, pain, suffering and sin since Adam lost his tail bone:-). Especially now, they're wearing denim, now is the time!

THEY want to make these decisions for you, HA! They're in the Stone-Age. Who are they, the Nickelsburger Rebbe, the Dollarsburger Rebbe, the Drekburger Rebbe,the Carlos-bomber Rebbe, and the gang of terrorists that met on asareh b'Teves? What are their qualifications that they have rights to issue you 60 pages of fatwa manifesto directives on banning the use of the Internet? How do they earn a living? Off public assistance, that's how. This Internet issue is merely symbolic of the fear that they have. Too much information will ruin their business. Their ignorance and their inability to reconcile Torah and science makes them scared silly. You have the ability to access information that frightens them; they DO NOT want you to know anything other than what they tell you. This is not about porn sites, this is about their inability to control your thought process. Their death knell!

If you are convinced that rabbis and rebbes are no more closer to God than you are, they're out of business. If their brachas are worthless, why stand in line until the wee hours of the morning begging them to take your money? The more they take, the better they make you feel. JUST LIKE DRUGS! Do they care about you? Or are you only as good as your last check, or cash under the table to the gabbai-doorkeeper-zookeeper? What a freak show! What circus did they perform at before moving to Boro Park?

To paraphrase the verbiage of the great thinker, scientist/philosopher Carl Sagan; "their posturing, their imagined self-importance, their belief that they are somehow in a position of privilege in the universe, is unfathomable."

And these eternal words of wisdom of Sagan on the psychology of humans;(paraphrase) " the thought that you may have dedicated your life to a lie, that you may have accepted a conventional wisdom that no longer, if ever, corresponds to an external reality, is a very painful realization. A person will go to any lengths to prevent themselves from seeing that inadequate worldview that they dedicated their lives to."

My views and opinions may be the minority view for now in Orthodox Judaism, but since when does the majority view make it the correct view? Did not the majority of Jews in the time of Rabbi Akiva accept Bar-Kochba as the Messiah? Did not the vast majority of Jews in the time of Shabbtai Tzvi accept him as the Saviour of the Jews? Are not the followers of Jesus and Mohammed the majority religions of the world?

Very recently there was a psak from a world renown posek that would have adversely affected all commerce of Orthodox Jews. If not for one concerned Jew, the entire Orthodox world risked losing revenues perhaps in the hundreds of millions of dollars, because of the reckless conduct of this known posek.

Did Moshe Heinemann from Baltimore take the time and effort required to render a psak of this magnitude, that would have shut down all e-commerce sites of Orthodox Jews on Shabbos? Did he do the required verification by industry experts exactly how "virtual" transactions are transacted on weekends? Or did Moshe Heinemann stop off at his local bank and ask the bank teller about Saturday transactions, on his way to China to sign up a toy manufacturer with the Star K, in case an Orthodox child licked a Chinese produced toy? And when he did find out that he was dead wrong, how long did it take him to retract that idiot psak, as Yiddishe gelt was torched on fire?

It took him six very long months; he had to figure out how he was going to look politically and to ascertain that his business does not go up in smoke.

Did he care about your welfare?

Rabosai, have faith in yourselves. Grab yourself by the collar, pull yourself out of the doldrums you find yourself in. You've been duped, but it's not too late. Trust yourself to make appropriate decisions for yourself and your family, the Hats can not, will not, care not, and most certainly, should not!

Did one word of that 60 page fatwa include what to do with sexual predators posing as rebbes in our yeshivas? Is there one word about what to do with guys like Margulies, Belsky, Perlow, Fishman and the rest of these molester-enablers?

The state of our union is better than it was one year ago. We now know what all of these guys are about. Knowledge is extremely important and is power. We don't have the lame excuse anymore that we didn't know. We now know definitely that these are criminals in bed with each other. Are they going to make decisions for our welfare, or theirs?

The state of our union is now up to each and every individual that considers themselves a member of klal Yisroel. There's a huge hole in our "boat", if you don't fix it quickly, you and your children will drown. Fix the hole, or replace the boat for Heaven's sake, or perish!!

Let’s drop these artificial legal technicalities for sex assault, regardless of the age of the victim. Where there is evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, the prosecutors will be able to do their jobs and stop these perpetrators in their tracks....

Sex Abuse Statute of Limitations Reform 2015 Year in Review: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

 

The movement to eliminate and revive expired statutes of limitations (SOLs) for child sex abuse made significant progress in 2015. It also inspired a new and related SOL reform movement for all rape victims, young and old, as the SOLs became a major factor in the dozens of out-of-statute allegations against Bill Cosby, as I discuss here. Finally, there is a decided trend in SOL reform that needs to be stemmed and reversed before our children will be safe: legislators’ willingness to let institutions off the hook.

The SOL reform movement is also increasingly global. There is a growing global movement to extend or eliminate the SOLs in many countries, and particularly in Australia, where the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has conducted searching inquiries into many arenas of abuse, from churches to schools to sports.

The movement also hit the big screen with the release of the award-winning motion picture, Spotlight, which chronicles the Boston Globe journalists’ path to breaking the story of the Catholic hierarchy covering up priest abuse and illustrates how the SOLs blocked justice. It also educates the public on the dynamic of sex abuse cover up—it takes a connected set of adults to ignore the serial victimization of children while powerful men protect their positions of power. Like the Cosby revelations, Spotlight educates the public about the costs of abuse and the perils of blocking justice for the deserving.

The Good: Steps Forward in SOL Reform for Child Sex Abuse Victims

Following the trends of recent years, over a dozen states considered serious SOL reform in 2015, and a number of them made significant progress. As I discussed in my half-year review, here, Georgia took the most remarkable leap forward, while Pennsylvania and New York continue to be controlled by the viselike grip of the Catholic bishops, or, in other words, stalled. For a snapshot of all of the states in 2015, look here.

Other states continued to make incremental improvements as Florida eliminated its criminal SOL for 16- to 18-year-olds; Indiana extended its criminal SOL to age 31; and Utah eliminated the civil SOL against the perpetrator. While each of these reforms left much to do in each state, they were good developments for child protection and will identify hidden predators in the future.

In addition, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Utah) introduced a federal bill, S. 2397, to incentivize the states to eliminate their child sex abuse SOLs. It operates by increasing funding under the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act if a state extends or eliminates unexpired civil or criminal SOLs. For the vast majority of victims in the worst states—Alabama, Michigan, Mississippi, and New York—it is weak tea, as it leaves locked out millions of victims whose claims expired long before they could get to court, but it is still a good idea.

This is also a first step toward creating some consistency across the United States. Right now, whether a victim has a shot at justice depends on the law of the state in which the abuse occurred. Again, the victim is at a serious disadvantage due to factors beyond her or his control.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court released a landmark opinion upholding the constitutionality of reviving expired civil child sex abuse SOLs. The Connecticut Supreme Court had issued a similarly strong opinion upholding the retroactive SOL earlier in 2015. There is little question that this is the legal trend, and that the arguments against constitutionality simply don’t hold water, as I explained in an amicus brief on behalf of children’s groups in the Massachusetts case.

Minnesota worked through its second year under its three-year window, which will close on May 25, 2016. And Hawaii’s survivors had another year under the 2 + 2-year window, which opened in 2012 and expires in April 2016.

In both states, my concern continues to be that Catholic victims seem to have gotten the message that they need to step forward before they are shut out again, but many other victims from other arenas remain silent. That is especially true of female victims.

It is actually ironic that so many of the cases revealed by revival, or retroactive, civil SOLs have centered on male victims. Yet, girls are at greater risk of being abused, and there are decidedly more female victims. These are just facts. This means that we need better education and support for female child sex abuse victims at the time that SOLs are revived or eliminated. It is my view that we have heard from only the tip of the iceberg of claims by girls who were abused by coaches, teachers, family, and others.

A significant number of states currently have opportunities for justice for victims whose civil SOL expired, including Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Minnesota, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. These states are doing the most to defrost the iceberg of information on hidden child predators. They are also proving that reviving expired SOLs for child sex abuse does not result in an avalanche of cases clogging the courts. Far from it. At the same time, hidden predators are being revealed to the benefit of parents and communities. The University of Georgia has taken justice one step further, as it has started the first child sex abuse clinic, which will assist survivors who might otherwise not be able to sue and publicly identify their perpetrator, because they don’t have significant damages or only seek injunctive relief.

The Bad and the Ugly: The Trend That Must Stop for Children to Be Safe and Hidden Predators to Be Identified: Protecting Institutions that Shield Pedophiles

There is a fact at the core of this movement: sex assault survivors are disabled from coming from forward by the power and threats of their perpetrators, wrapped up in humiliation and shame. That means they need time, and short SOLs benefit the defendants. There are frequently two types of defendants: individual perpetrators and the institutions whose failed or nonexistent policies aid and abet them. As the logic of SOL reform ineluctably has spread, it has become increasingly easier to make the case for revived or no SOLs against the perpetrators. Pedophiles do not have their own lobbies. That has opened the door to legislators’ willingness to eliminate and revive the SOLs against the individual perpetrator.

This development should not be underestimated, because even ten years ago many Americans believed that there are few perpetrators and that children frequently make up stories about abuse, and, therefore, the SOLs need to be short to protect adults. Both of these assumptions are false. There are many perpetrators, many victims, and children rarely concoct sex abuse stories and, therefore, eliminating and reviving SOLs against the perpetrator is a necessary step to real justice and child protection.

In contrast to the individual pedophiles, the institutions—who routinely put image and finances ahead of child safety—do have powerful lobbyists, and they deploy them to keep victims out of court. Child protection will not be achieved until all institutions are incentivized to protect children first and their reputations and finances second. That only happens one way in the United States: the legal system. If they are liable, they straighten up and fly right. If they are immune, they continue to muddle around with “winning” the public relations campaign at the expense of the child sex abuse victims they created and children in the future.

Insurance lobbyists often form legislative bonds with these child-endangering institutions because they like paying on the premiums they collect about as much as a newt needs kneecaps.

 Therefore, these powerful institutions, from the state Conferences of Catholic Bishops, to Agudath Israel, to the Chambers of Commerce (yes) to the teachers’ unions and the insurance lobbies in each state will cut a deal: revive expired SOLs against the perpetrators but not against us. 

That is why in Massachusetts, the state revived the civil SOL against perpetrators until the victim is age 53 but enacted a more crabbed revival against institutions (discovery plus seven years, which not accidentally protected the Catholic bishops in most cases) and in Georgia, the two-year window is open against the perpetrators and individual aiders and abettors but the “extension” against institutions was a measly new rule: discovery plus two years. In Utah, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints managed to avoid all liability by only “permitting” the SOL to be reformed against the individual perpetrators.

The result in Georgia, where the SOL until 2015 was a pathetic 23 years of age, has been that institutions have been largely clueless about child protection.

Right now, a victim abused at any time can sue a perpetrator and those who aided and abetted the abuse, but cannot sue the institution responsible unless the abuse happened on or after July 1, 2015. When a church was named in a Georgia lawsuit this year the response read like a script written by the Catholic bishops from ten years ago. They have yet to figure out that victim-blaming and doubting undermines their credibility. Georgia legislators need to revisit the issue, because the institutions obviously have not been held to account and are demonstrating the need to make them accountable.

The culture of abuse in Georgia is ingrained after decades of ridiculously short SOLs, and only the courts can clear the way for the institutional reforms needed to make children safe. As of July 2017, the state returns to age 23 in all cases, and the doors of silence will slam once again on the victims unless state legislators return to the issue.

It’s really simple: child safety depends on legislators holding institutions—not just individual perpetrators—to account for child safety. As long as these institutions can keep their secrets, they will protect active pedophiles and demonize victims to protect their interests. The institutional lobbyists against SOL reform are the hidden predators’ best friend.

The Charges Against Bill Cosby Make the Case for SOL Reform Regardless of Age

The recent criminal charges against Bill Cosby have revived the national discussion about statutes of limitations in sex assault cases. He had slipped past over 50 women’s allegations due to expired criminal (and civil) SOLs, but finally a prosecutor took the side of the female victim against this entertainment titan, with less than 2 weeks to spare before the criminal SOL would have expired, as I discuss here. Justice has not been served for all but one of his victims, and what is the reasoning that protects him while endangering the next victim? It is the logic of male privilege and power. The same faulty logic that has kept children at risk for centuries.

Let’s drop these artificial legal technicalities for sex assault, regardless of the age of the victim.

Where there is evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, the prosecutors will be able to do their jobs and stop these perpetrators in their tracks. And in the civil arena, the costs of the abuse, which are steep, can be shifted from the victims to those who caused the abuse. That’s called justice.

Marci A. Hamilton is the Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, and the author of God vs. the Gavel: The Perils of Extreme Religious Liberty and Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children. She also runs two active websites covering her areas of expertise, the Religious Freedom Restoration Acts, www.RFRAperils.com, and statutes of limitations for child sex abuse, www.sol-reform.com. Professor Hamilton blogs at Hamilton and Griffin on Rights. Her email address is hamilton02@aol.com.

https://verdict.justia.com/2016/01/07/sex-abuse-statute-of-limitations-reform-2015-year-in-review

The Criminal "Orthodox" Jew That Got Away - And Started The Financial Crisis in 1999, That Brought The American & Global Economy To Its Knees...!

The "Man" That Got Away & Nothing Has Changed!

 

 

AN IMPORTANT MOVIE:

 

Subprime prosecutors hunt small game.

By Bethany McLean

Roland E. Arnall

Last week in Cleveland, nine former employees of a former subprime lender named Argent Mortgage Co. were indicted for their roles in making nearly $13 million of fraudulent residential mortgage loans. The Cuyahoga County Mortgage Fraud Task Force, which brought the charges (it operates under authority from the Ohio attorney general) alleged, among other things, that managers at Argent coached brokers on how to falsify loan documents—say, by lying about the borrower's income—so that the borrower would appear to meet the company's standards. Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason said that this was the first time in Ohio, and one of the few instances nationwide, that a mortgage fraud investigation led to criminal charges against the employees of a subprime lender. (Other cases have involved independent operators.)

Bethany McLean writes a weekly business column for Slate and is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair. She is the author (with Joe Nocera) of All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis and (with Peter Elkind) "The Smartest Guys In The Room."

In a way, this is great news:  At least some of those who are to blame for the crime spree that was subprime lending are paying the price. But it's also an example of what's wrong with the fallout from the financial crisis.  Those who are paying the price are the smallest of the small fry, while those who benefitted the most remain untouched. And in the case of Argent, it'll stay that way.

You may not have heard of Argent, and there's a reason for that.  Argent's founder was a man named Roland Arnall, and Roland Arnall always stayed in the shadows. But he was the father of subprime lending.  Within the industry, Argent was very well-known indeed.

Back in the late 1980s, Arnall founded a thrift called Long Beach Mortgage, which was at the vanguard of making mortgages to people with less than pristine credit.  By the end of the 1990s, Long Beach had been sold to Washington Mutual, and many of the people who worked there had gone on to help build other major players on the subprime lending scene, such as New Century. After the sale of Long Beach, Arnall founded another lender called Ameriquest, which by 2004 was the nation's largest subprime lender. ("Proud sponsor of the American dream" was the company's tag line.) Argent was a lesser-known division of Arnall's empire.

 Unlike Ameriquest, whose loan officers made mortgages directly, Argent was a so-called "wholesale" lender, meaning that it bought loans from mortgage brokers. (By 2001, 50 percent of mortgages were being made through independent brokers, who sold to wholesalers like Argent.) But Arnall's name was never on the door of any of his companies, and none of them sold shares to the public.  You never read about Roland Arnall in a glossy magazine; he was very private.

Early on, Argent began pushing subprime loans in Cleveland. Indeed, a lawsuit filed by the city of Cleveland in 2008 against a number of subprime lenders and Wall Street firms alleged that Argent accounted for more than one-quarter of all the subprime loans made in Cleveland from 2002 to 2006.  (The lawsuit was later dismissed.) "When Argent showed up, they immediately jumped out because of the volume of their activity," Tom Bier, a housing expert at Cleveland State University, who has been analyzing county records for 25 years, told me.  "They went after the weakest fish." According to Bier's analysis, by April 2007, 25 percent of the loans that Argent made in Cleveland had resulted in foreclosures.   So it was that Cleveland, where home prices never rose high enough to mask the problems with the mortgages, became a bellwether of the problems to come.

Within the industry, Arnall's companies developed a reputation for the hard sell, and for making any loan at any price. As in most of the industry, everyone was compensated based on loan volume, so in the branches, all that mattered was selling as many loans as possible, by any means necessary.  

"Push, push, push," one former loan officer told me. Managers were brutal to those who weren't closing loans, and it was an open secret that there were ways to get around the company's supposed controls.
 

The business made Roland Arnall a very wealthy man.  In 2002, Roland and his second wife, Dawn, bought Engelbert Humperdinck's $30 million, 10-acre compound in Holmby Hills, Calif. Two years later, they bought the second-most-expensive home in America, a 650-acre ranch in Aspen, Colo., with a 15,000 square-foot house  that had been owned by Peter Guber, for which Arnall paid $46 million. By 2004, Roland Arnall made the Forbes 400 list with a net worth of $2 billion; in 2005, he was No. 73, with a net worth of $3 billion.

In the summer of 2004, a group of state attorneys general began investigating Ameriquest. (The AGs had limited power over Argent because it didn't make its loans directly to consumers.) On Jan. 23, 2006, the AGs announced that Ameriquest had agreed to pay $325 million to settle allegations from 49 states that it had engaged in extensive consumer abuse. (Ameriquest didn't do business in Virginia because it requires extensive financial disclosure by the main shareholder of any company doing business there, something Arnall refused to provide.) But neither the news of the investigation nor a scathing expose of Ameriquest that ran in the Los Angeles Times in early 2005 had deterred President George W. Bush from nominating Arnall, who along with Dawn had raised more than $12 million for GOP causes and candidates between 2004 and 2008, according to the Times, to be the ambassador to the Netherlands. A month after the settlement was announced, Arnall was confirmed. Press reports at the time said that the payment "cleared the way" for Arnall's confirmation.

In 2007, what was left of Arnall's companies was sold to Citigroup.  The following spring, Arnall died abruptly: He had been suffering from esophageal cancer that had metastasized. Later that year, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency put together a document called "Worst Ten in the Worst Ten." It listed the 10 worst lenders in the 10 metropolitan areas with the highest rates of foreclosure. (The survey was based on the level of foreclosures for subprime and Alt A loans originated from 2005 to 2007.) Argent made the top 10 in all 10 cities and was No. 1 in Cleveland and Detroit. Long Beach Mortgage, which also featured prominently on the list, played a big role in the demise of Washington Mutual. Arnall's death at 68, while untimely and a terrible blow to those who loved him, enabled him to complete his life with his reputation relatively unscratched.

So here we are in 2011. Roland Arnall is, of course, beyond the reach of the law.  While the Cuyahoga County Mortgage Fraud Task Force wants to follow the old prosecutor's mandate of "start at the bottom"—get the junior people to rat out more senior people, and so on— it's not clear that they'll be able to reach any higher into Argent. Indeed, the indictment says that fraud was committed "without the knowledge of Argent." After all, prosecutors can't say that Argent encouraged the behavior without also going after someone more senior at Argent.

  And in truth, it's unlikely that anyone senior at Argent specifically encouraged the individual acts of fraud. Rather, the executives at Arnall's companies created a culture in which the junior people were rewarded for getting the loans made by any means possible while everyone else looked the other way. And there's no statute under which executives can be prosecuted for creating a culture in which criminality is encouraged.  Even had Arnall lived, prosecutors probably would have had a hard time making a legal case against him. 

Argent and Arnall may be an extreme version of what's happened in the wake of the crisis, but similar scenarios have been played out everywhere. A young salesman at Goldman Sachs, Fabrice Tourre, is the only individual who is facing charges from Goldman's notorious Abacus transaction. Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced a settlement with JPMorgan over the sale of securities tied to the housing market.  A man named Edward Steffelin, who headed the team at the outside firm that managed the portfolio of securities, was also charged.  Is it really Tourre and Steffelin alone who created the structure of these transactions and the culture in which such deals were routinely done, and who benefitted the most from it?  Give me a break!

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2011/06/the_man_that_got_away.single.html

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