In Lakewood Abuse Cases, A ‘Parallel Justice System’

Lakewood, in Ocean County, N.J., is home to some 40,000 Orthodox Jews. Court testimony offers rare public glimpse into religious tribunals’ handling of child sex abuse allegations; no reporting to police.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Hella Winston - Special To The Jewish Week

Last spring in a New Jersey courtroom, a prosecutor and defense attorney battled it out in a series of seemingly routine pre-trial hearings. At issue was a narrow point of law: whether or not a social worker who had evaluated an alleged child molester would be allowed to testify at his trial.

Amid the legal wrangling, however, facts emerged that were anything but ordinary — ones perhaps amplified by the recent revelations about alleged sexual abuse scandals at Penn State and Syracuse universities.

The social worker’s evaluation had not been conducted on behalf of the courts or police. Instead, it was commissioned by a Lakewood, N.J., beit din, a Jewish religious tribunal operating as a kind of shadow justice system, adjudicating sexual abuse cases without the involvement of law enforcement.

Witnesses spoke of a world in which abuse allegations are typically “investigated” not by the secular authorities, but by rabbis lacking supervision by the criminal justice system. It is a world where victims and perpetrators alike are subjected to threats of social ostracism and, in some cases, physical harm for non-compliance with the “system.”

To anyone following the unfolding story of child sexual abuse in the haredi world, that these communities have a history of handling abuse allegations internally is hardly news. The longstanding and harshly enforced communal taboo against “informing” on another Jew to the secular authorities plays a key role in blocking victims from reporting abuse allegations to police and pressing charges.

In the past few years, aided by the Internet and blogs, a number of advocacy organizations founded by members, or former members, of these communities has emerged. Much of their work, centered mostly in Brooklyn, has focused on combating this taboo and providing support to abuse victims.

In addition, advocates have worked to shine a spotlight on many of the major social and political institutions in those communities, including yeshivas, social service agencies and even Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes. (Hynes’ office launched a hotline to report haredi abuse cases in 2009, seemingly in response to criticism that his office has a history of “going easy” on haredi child molesters.)

The climate is different in Lakewood, acknowledged as the seat of non-chasidic haredi Judaism in the United States. Home to one of the largest and most prominent yeshivas in the world, Beth Medrash Govoha (BMG), and a community of close to 40,000 Orthodox Jews, Lakewood has not been spared the problem of child sexual abuse — an ill that plagues all communities, religious and secular alike.

However, there are no public advocacy groups in Lakewood helping victims and agitating for change. Further, unlike Brooklyn, which is home to myriad haredi groups with no centralized “governing” body, the Lakewood community, dominated by BMG — which boasts over 6,000 students and an annual operating budget approaching $25 million — is something of a company town, residents and observers say. Indeed, the brothers who run BMG, Rabbi Aryeh Malkiel Kotler and Rabbi Aaron Kotler, exert considerable control over daily life within the community, with the bylaws of the Lakewood Jewish Community Council stating that the “community is centered around [BMG] … and [the council] functions at the pleasure of [the yeshiva heads] as represented by R. Malkiel Kotler.”

This control — bolstered by the geographically bounded and insular nature of the community — means that it can be even harder for Lakewood residents to overcome the communal taboo and report abuse to the authorities than it is for their counterparts in Brooklyn.

“Most victims of abuse and parents in Lakewood are afraid to speak up because [they fear being threatened by rabbis],” Debbie Rudin, a victim of childhood sexual abuse who now lives in Lakewood, told The Jewish Week.

“There are many Jewish communities that are controlled by the rabbonim [rabbis] of their towns that set certain standards, whether in regards to businesses, giving kosher supervision or allowing schools to open,” said Harold (Hershel) Hershkowitz, a Lakewood businessman who ran (and lost) for the Lakewood Township Committee on an anti-cronyism platform against the BMG-backed candidate. “But all of these are controlled in an open manner well understood by all that live there,” he said. “Lakewood, on the other hand, has a cabal that controls most Jewish publications, websites and of course the political arena, in order to exert full influence whenever it is necessary in order to keep their position of influence.”

Rubin and Hershkowitz are two of numerous Lakewood residents, therapists, educators, social workers and community activists, as well as seven abuse victims interviewed by The Jewish Week in the course of a months-long investigation into the abuse situation there and how it is being handled. An interest in maintaining communal control, they say, is a major factor in the rabbinic and lay leadership’s desire to deal with abuse in ways that do not involve law enforcement.

Indeed, the court testimony described above affords a rare public glimpse into what New Jersey Superior Court Judge Francis R. Hodgson characterized as Lakewood’s “parallel justice system.”

The testimony itself comes from the only sexual abuse case in memory from the Lakewood haredi community to be prosecuted — something that came about because a family flouted, at great personal cost, communal norms and pressed charges against an alleged child molester, Yosef Kolko, in 2009.

The testimony raises many questions, especially in light of the Penn State and Syracuse situations, which have advocates across the country calling for tougher mandatory reporting laws. Prominent among them is whether the rabbis and others in the Lakewood community who participate in this parallel justice system are violating New Jersey’s mandated reporting law — not to mention alleged victims’ civil rights — and, if so, what is being done about it. The law requires “all persons” (including clergy) who have “reasonable cause to believe” that a child has been abused to make a report “immediately” to the Division of Youth and Family Services. (A knowing violation of this law could result in a fine and/or jail time.)

According to Marci Hamilton, Paul R. Verkuil chair in public law at Cardozo and a leading church-state scholar, “The prosecutors in [situations] like this are doing the religious community no favors. Without enforcing the mandatory reporting laws, the poisonous abuse stays within the community, the perpetrator gets more opportunities to abuse and the victims continue to suffer.”

♦

According to court papers and interviews with people close to the family of the boy allegedly abused by Kolko, a 34-year-old former teacher at Yeshiva Orchos Chaim in Lakewood who also worked as a camp counselor, the family decided to go to the authorities only after they had exhausted the options within the community and found no relief. Before doing so, they sought assistance from a community activist, Doniel Bernstein, and several prominent Lakewood rabbis, including Rabbi Mattisyahu Salomon, the “mashgiach,” or spiritual adviser, at BMG, and the “go-to” rabbi for all manner of communal issues in Lakewood, sources say.

Rabbi Salomon, along with Rabbi Shmuel Blech, served for a time on a formal beit din, created by Salomon several years ago specifically to hear sexual abuse allegations.

After hearing the allegations about Kolko, Bernstein, on behalf of the rabbis, commissioned a paid psychological evaluation of Kolko by a social worker, Gavriel Fagin. Fagin, who at one time worked in the sex offender treatment program at OHEL Children’s Home and Family Services in Brooklyn, now maintains a private practice in which he specializes, among other areas, “in the evaluation and treatment of sexual deviance.”

Fagin testified in New Jersey Superior Court that he was contacted by “The [Beis] Din … in charge of following up on allegations of inappropriate sexual contact between individuals in the community” and asked to “evaluate an individual for their purposes to be able to determine how to proceed further.” Fagin stated in court that he saw Kolko five times to administer computer-based tests and that he did not “have much knowledge of the situation” that brought Kolko to the beit din in the first place. Fagin did not interview the alleged victim.

The mere act of commissioning an evaluation — which was apparently damning enough for the prosecution to argue (successfully) for Fagin’s ability to testify at trial — would seem to indicate at least a reasonable cause to suspect abuse. Even so, none of those made privy to these allegations reported them to the authorities.

After Kolko was arrested, the victim’s family was threatened and the alleged victim was denied admission to schools.

After the arrest, a widely distributed proclamation signed by nine Lakewood rabbis, including Chaim Ginsberg and Shmuel Katz, both employed by BMG, warned that “no one … may … bring any accusations to the secular authorities” and that “it is prohibited [for anyone] to assist and participate with the secular authorities in their efforts to persecute a Jewish person.”

Rabbis outside Lakewood sought to apply pressure as well. Yisroel Belsky, a prominent Brooklyn-based rabbi and yeshiva head who has also served in a senior position with the Orthodox Union for over 20 years, sent a letter to Lakewood residents. In it, he wrote of the “horrific news that one of your fellow residents in town informed upon a fellow Jew to the secular authorities.” He added that “all who have the ability to influence the informers to retract their terrible deeds should do so.”

Shortly after the Rabbi Belsky letter was sent, a 31-year-old Lakewood resident named Shaul Luban allegedly sent out text messages urging residents of Lakewood to try to pressure the victim’s father into not testifying.

The Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office has charged Luban with witness tampering. The nine Lakewood rabbis and Rabbi Belsky have not been charged with any crime.

The victim’s family has since left Lakewood, but has not backed down and the prosecution is moving forward.

♦

In addition to information directly relevant to the Kolko case, testimony from the hearings indicates that there have been other abuse allegations apparently deemed credible by rabbis, but that nonetheless went unreported to the police.

In testimony in New Jersey Superior Court given in May of this year, Lakewood rabbi and activist Micky Rottenberg alludes to such a case, which The Jewish Week has learned involved allegations against the husband of a woman who ran a local children’s playgroup. The beit din found the allegations to be credible and publicized them, effectively shutting down the playgroup. However, the authorities were never notified and the accused remains in the community today.

In his testimony, Rabbi Rottenberg also sheds light on the beit din’s inner workings.

According to him, “[The Secretary] of the beis din [would contact] the victims … [and the] alleged perpetrator, discuss with them … beg them to do certain things. And if they don’t do it, [the secretary would say] ‘I’m going to report [to the beit din] that you don’t listen to us, and then we are going to … Take away your job. Send away your kids from schools.’ Whatever measures they would feel they have power to be able for the person to submit and accept the verdict of the beis din.”

Rabbi Rottenberg also testified that he felt the beit din favored the accusers and was in fact involved in disbanding it at the behest of Rabbi Malkiel Kotler for this reason. Rabbi Kotler, through his brother, denied making any such request.

In arguments at a court hearing, Kolko’s attorney, Michael Wilbert, refers to a Rabbi Shmuel Vogel who, he claims, was “charged with a violation” by Bernstein and “required to go to a social worker in New York ... Mr. Sternstein.” Sternstein is Hillel Sternstein, coordinator of trauma services at OHEL, and a social worker with a private practice in Long Island.

Even those who do not attempt to report to police, but seek to publicize allegations within the Lakewood community, are often intimidated. A 2009 article in the Asbury Park Press described how the home of Rivka Finkelstein, the mother of a sexual abuse survivor who died of a drug overdose, was burned down after a letter written by her son excoriating the Orthodox community for its failure to deal with the problem of sexual abuse was made public online after his death. (According to the story, which cited several other examples of such intimidation, police believed arson was the likely cause of the fire.)

Of the 32 people on the New Jersey Sex Offender Registry living in Lakewood, there appears to be only one member of the Orthodox community, convicted of endangering the welfare of a child. According to a therapist in Lakewood with knowledge of the situation, “he was arrested in another township [for exposing himself to non-Jewish children], which is why [he was prosecuted and] made it onto the list.”

Calls Doniel Bernstein were not returned. Attempts to reach Rabbi Blech and Rabbi Salomon were unsuccessful.

A source close to Rabbi Salomon’s beit din who consulted with its members on behalf of this reporter told The Jewish Week that they would not speak to the paper out of concern that “the ‘forces’ that led to the disbanding [of the beit din] are still ever present. They expressed fear that speaking about these forces will lead to personal reprisal.” The source acknowledged Rottenberg as one of these so-called “forces.” A call to Rottenberg was not returned.

An e-mail to Rabbi Aaron Kotler seeking comment on Rabbi Salomon’s beit din resulted in a reply from Rabbi Moshe Zev Weisberg, president of the Lakewood Community Service Corp.

While Rabbi Salomon is employed by BMG, Rabbi Weisberg said he was responding because “[these questions relate] to Orthodox community issues and not [BMG].” He told The Jewish Week that “The Lakewood community leadership has zero tolerance for any sexual abuse and is actively committed to following the law. Our community policy, which is in full compliance with applicable law and our [halachic] guidelines, is to report any reasonable suspicion of abuse to the proper law enforcement authorities.”

When asked whether the community has a process for determining what constitutes “reasonable suspicion,” Rabbi Weisberg replied, “I guess a common sense evaluation of the evidence determines reasonableness.” To the question of whether or not those who have a reasonable suspicion of abuse must first take their concerns to a rabbi, Rabbi Weisberg told The Jewish Week that “individuals are encouraged to follow the law.”

♦n

To be sure, the idea of using rabbis or a formal beit din to vet sexual abuse allegations has its defenders, among them Agudath Israel, which takes the position that all allegations of sexual abuse must first be reported to a rabbi. The president of the Rabbinical Council of America, Rabbi Moshe Kletenick, has noted that religious courts can be used to investigate allegations, screening out false ones and referring those with “substance” to the secular authorities.....

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE - CLICK ON LINK BELOW:
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new_york/lakewood_abuse_cases_parallel_justice_system

....And in related news today: Blago gets 14 years in the slammer - Sandusky re-arrested for child-abuse as two new victims come forward:








The Role of Institutions in Reporting Child Sex Abuse

Published: December 8, 2011 - The New York Times

As “Reporting Abuse” (editorial, Nov. 29) underscores, it is far too easy for powerful institutions to cover up incidents of child and adolescent sexual abuse at the hands of people in positions of trust. There is a marked contrast, however, between the respective states’ response to the Pennsylvania State University and Syracuse University scandals.

The State of Pennsylvania has powerful tools to investigate aggressively and criminally charge those responsible for covering up abuses. New York does not. Since 2003, I have introduced legislation that makes it a felony for mandated reporters to systematically fail to report abuse.

It is also clear that the list of those mandated to report abuse needs to be significantly expanded. Sadly, recent incidents once again raise the question: How many abuse scandals will be tolerated before the New York State Legislature gets serious about the issue and passes meaningful legislation?

THOMAS K. DUANE
State Senator, 29th District
New York, Nov. 29, 2011

To the Editor:

Your editorial sends a critical message about institutions and their response to child sexual abuse: it must be treated as a crime and reported immediately to outside authorities, including the police. Delay is risky for the well-being of the child and allows the perpetrator continuing opportunities to victimize others.

If protecting children — and not reputations — is the highest priority, administrators and boards will have no doubt where their duty and interest lie.

Child rape is a hideous crime. Reporting the crime is the single most effective and proactive first step that institutions can take in the aftermath of child sexual abuse. The very best step institutions can take is to create a culture where abuse and crimes against children and youth cannot occur.

MARYLOU SUDDERS
President and Chief Executive
Massachusetts Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children
Boston, Nov. 29, 2011

Nation's 10-Year-Old Boys: 'If You See Someone Raping Us, Please Call The Police'

'Doesn't Matter Who, Doesn't Matter Where,' Children Say - Unless Your Families are Under the Influence of Agudath Israel Rabbis and the Rapist is Circumcized and Wears Tzitzis and a Black Hat.



UNIVERSITY PARK, PA — In the wake of the sex abuse scandal that rocked Penn State earlier this month, a coalition of 10-year-old boys from across the nation held a press conference Saturday outside Beaver Stadium, home of college football's Nittany Lions, to remind Americans that if they see someone raping a prepubescent boy, they should contact the police immediately.

"Considering that the monstrous acts perpetrated by Jerry Sandusky went unreported for years, even after a fellow coach saw him raping a 10-year-old boy inside the facility behind me, we feel perhaps not everyone is totally clear on what to do if one witnesses such a thing," said spokesperson Joshua Pearson, who was flanked by several of his fifth-grade colleagues. "Many of you will no doubt be relieved to know the proper course of action is really quite simple: Just contact the police. Call 911, go to your local precinct, stop an officer on the street—the bottom line is, if you see one of us getting raped, notify the police, and do so as quickly as possible."

"It doesn't matter who the boy being raped is, and it doesn't matter who is doing the raping, just please, please alert law enforcement," Pearson added as the 10-year-old boys surrounding him nodded soberly. "And by the way, under no circumstances is it ever okay for an adult to rape a 10-year-old boy, so you really can't go wrong by calling the police when something like that happens."

This man was spotted raping a 10-year-old boy on Mar. 1, 2002. So the police should have been called on Mar. 1, 2002. Understand?

Pearson fielded several questions from reporters, such as whether it is okay, when one sees a boy being raped, to wait until after lunch before contacting police, or if it is acceptable to simply inform the rapist in a firm tone that what he is doing is wrong and then leave it at that. The 10-year-old confirmed neither course of action was adequate.

Additionally, Pearson attempted to clear up any confusion as to whether an individual should contact the police even if he or she has been personally acquainted with the rapist for many years.

"We understand the delicacy of the situation when the person committing the rape is a coworker or otherwise someone you know quite well, but as 10-year-old boys with very few ways of protecting ourselves, we still have to insist that you go to the police," Pearson said. "While we appreciate your reporting such acts to a supervisor at work or a trusted clergy member, unfortunately that may not be enough, and it is not the most responsible course of action. As the sad events at Penn State have taught us, there is no way to guarantee the highly important boy-raping information will reach the proper authorities unless you deliver it yourself."

"So, to reiterate: If you ever see a 10-year-old boy being raped—by anyone, at any time, even if it's a Sunday afternoon—it is very, very important that you go directly to the police and clearly explain what you saw, remembering to identify the person who was doing the raping," Pearson continued.

According to Pearson, even if one merely suspects he or she has seen a 10-year-old boy being raped, but is not absolutely certain, it is still a good idea to play it safe and allow police investigators to sort out the situation.

"Wouldn't you be left with egg on your face if that little boy was actually being raped and you didn't tell the police!" said Pearson, drawing a big laugh from the gathered crowd.

The nation's 10-year-olds unanimously echoed Pearson's sentiments, imploring people to contact police not only when they see prepubescent boys being raped, but, in fact, when they see anyone at all being raped, in any context.

"Certainly, if you were to see me being raped, I would want you to call the police—I'm a 10-year-old boy who couldn't possibly give my consent, or even fully grasp the horror of what was happening to me," Sioux Falls, SD resident Nick Kealey, 10, said between games of Mario Kart DS. "What's really at issue here is the act of rape itself. So, yes, if you see a 10-year-old boy like me being raped, by all means, call the police. But don't just walk on by if you see, say, a teenage girl being raped in a locker room, or even a full-grown man being raped in an alleyway. These are also situations in which you should definitely call the police, and right away."

"Seeing any person get raped at any time, even just once, is more than enough reason to contact the police," Kealey added. "I can't stress that enough."

Following Saturday's announcement, police stations around the country reported a flood of incoming phone calls.


http://www.theonion.com/articles/nations-10yearold-boys-if-you-see-someone-raping-u,26724/#

Victims Advocate Dennis Brown from Adkan - Enough is Enough!

DENNIS BROWN, MA, NCACII, RAS, CSAT
Executive Director, SUBSTANCE ABUSE PROFESSIONAL (SAP)
The Ness Counseling Center, INC.8512 Whitworth Dr.Los Angeles, CA 90035 --- Organizationdbrown@thenesscenter.org

I have been working in the field of addictions Addictive Behavior for over thirty-five years, twenty of which I worked in The Chabad Residential Treatment Center. I am now Director of an Outpatient Center, The Ness Counseling Center, Inc. in West Los Angeles. A note to our readers, addictions are real and these addictions do not discriminate between, race, religion, rich or poor, male or female, they are pathologies of human behavior which none of us can claim immunity from in our subconscious or conscious state and none of us are invincible when it comes to inner workings of our daily life.

As an Addictive Specialist/Counselor with over 35 years of experience I can tell you that there are many addictions: we have substance abuse addictions, consumer addictions, physical addictions, sexual addictions and emotional addictions. They are all self reward addictions directly linked to the Reward Systems in the brain, they all in one way or another lead us to a synthetic feeling of well being.

While working in the field, I remember one mom in particular; when upon being told that her son was an alcoholic she said “thank G-D, he could have been a drug addict”. This unfortunately, is a common misconception in the Frum/secular community; the idea that one addiction is better than the other, or that one is more ‘socially’ acceptable. This thinking opens the doors for vast ill “social norms” amongst the masses, When applied to the frum community the bar is raised even higher, leading to ‘optimal denial’.

The religious community creates a vacuum of privacy and unspoken social shames that are hidden, at all cost, under the illusion that ‘addictions’ and their pathologies are problem of the secular, non-Jewish world and just don’t occur in the frum world. This denial perpetuates the cycle of abuse, forcing the victims to remain silent all in the name of avoiding an idea that when you remove all the veils of our individual scared religious communities, you are left with the belief that frum Jews walk on water? In the end, you have human beings susceptible to human behavior.

In short, suffice it to say that our community suffers from the worst symptom of any addiction, DENIAL. It is the myth that someone who gives Tzedakah and wears Tzitzit is somehow a holy individual in the community that could never do wrong, never abuse his wife or children and never sexually abuse one in the community! It is as if to say that the religious community does not ‘suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune: that somehow, we as religious Jews do not suffer from the same addictions, diseases as the secular world, that G-d made us different.

It is a hypocritical and cynical attempt to maintain a facade of perfection, when in fact that when the day is done and we close our doors we are human beings susceptible to the same thoughts and desires as the rest of the population. One of the things we seem to overlook and forget is that our religious leaders are not perfect, do not ‘walk on water’ and are prey to the same human desires as the “outside world.”

I remember when a Rebbe was caught here in California for molesting students in school, at the school meeting there was a mother who had the audacity to say that the children should be punished for ruining this Rebbe’s career. even when he clearly admitted the crime! He spent a year in jail and was supposed to register as a Sexual Offender, however he did not as there several people in the community who raised money and helped him to flee the country.

What do we say to those children, victims of these abusers, whose innocence and lives have been scared forever, to what end do we continue this synthetic cycle, if it does not put to shame those in the religious community who live a life of faith and goodness, it in fact separates the religion from the man.

Several years ago I worked with a Chabad Shaliach who was one of this same Rebbe’s victims when he had been a young student in a yeshivah in Brooklyn, New York. There were questions about him (the Rebbe) then, however all we managed to do was move him around, there was never a healthy resolution for this victim or others. So do we continue to count one life more valuable than that of another? I say not, in the world that we live inside and outside of the borders of our religious communities we have an obligation to walk the walk and talk the talk.

Even in the Sheva Mitzvot Bnei Noach the 4th commandment Prohibition of Sexual Immorality, do we not shame our very own breath of life to not see the truth of behaviors. The times are changing, the world becomes more integrated as each day passes, it is our duty to our very own belief of T’shuvah that we get out of Denial. We must embrace the sincerity of addiction so as we may find the path to recovery.

Around twenty years ago I remember a woman who had reached out to all of the agencies within reach in the Los Angeles area with he plea for help as she proclaimed that her husband was abusing her, she was told “go back home and we will investigate”. Failing to listen or protect her, her husband beat her to death. We failed her and her children.

I see the denial happening time and time again as an Addiction Specialist. As we continue to fail to meet our social responsibilities, and our human responsibilities . We neglect our most precious possessions, our children. We must stop looking at the uniforms and costumes/masks that we go through life with, we must stop looking/worrying about how we will be seen by others and must start looking at how our shameful secrets affect our children, (their neshamah’s and Yiddishkiet)

Mitzvah, you shall not worship an idol…


Mitzvah you shall pay money for any loss you cause anyone to suffer…

Mitzvah you shall have to appear before a Judge to determine your innocence…

Mitzvah you shall not lie to protect a wicked man or woman…


Mitzvah you shall not join a majority, multitude or mob to do evil…

Mitzvah you shall not corrupt justice…

Mitzvah you shall treat a stranger humanely…

We must come out of the dark, we must take our religious teaching and bring them to life…all of them…we must come to the reality that we are all human beings.

When do we say enough is enough?

Caring For Survivors of Boyhood Sexual Abuse Is The Next Step In The Penn State Case

“Penn State: A Familiar Dark Cloud, a Silver Lining”
By Richard B. Gartner, PhD

Childhood sexual abuse has a long history, going back long before Penn State, even before the Catholic Church scandals which forced the sexual betrayal of children by adults into our national conversation. Many, especially those who treat survivors of abuse, know that sexual abuse was widespread well before it was talked about. What seems to be new today, and might prove the silver lining in the dark Penn State cloud, is the possibility that due to some new found openness we will finally value children more highly than the needs of institutions, however difficult that may be; only then will we truly be addressing the nightmares of childhood sexual trauma.

The statistics are horrifying: In the United States by the age of sixteen one in six boys and one in three girls have had unwanted sexual contact with an adult or more powerful minor involving touch or penetration. That means when you watch a local little league game the chances are that someone on the field has been, or is being, sexually abused by an adult. Like Mickey Mantle, it might even be the preternaturally gifted athlete gracing the game.

Let’s look more closely at the horrendous scandals of the last decade: the Catholic Church. The Boy Scouts. Boarding schools, yeshivas, public schools.

In virtually every case the situation unfolded similarly: The shocking news leaked out. The institution denied knowledge and culpability. The abuser, a beloved member of the community, had his or her supporters and detractors. Demonstrations, sometimes leading to violence, took place supporting the alleged abuser and attacking the victims, or speaking up for victims’ rights and attacking the alleged abusers. Many pooh-poohed the significance of the abuse. Victims’ suffering, especially the suffering of male victims, was nearly always ignored, or at best dealt with as an afterthought.

An important step towards recognizing the prevalence of male sexual victimization took place when the Catholic Church scandals forced our public discourse to include the sexual abuse of boys. Until then, I met with disbelieving comments and rolling of eyes, even from mental health professionals, when I spoke out about boyhood sexual abuse. I do not get those looks any more. Mental health professionals, the public, and the media have finally caught on to the reality that male children can be sexually victimized.

The events at Penn State initially sounded familiar. Children were known to have been assaulted; reports were made to authorities (but not the police); authorities did not do their moral duty. Time went by. There was a media leak and then a rush of media coverage. Attention concentrated on the possible fall of a sports idol and its effects on a great institution. As usual, male children’s suffering initially got little notice.

But then something different happened. The current scandal took another step towards recognizing the sexual betrayal of boys by adults. It occurred when, within a week of the disclosure of sexual assault and cover-up in its athletic program, Penn State did the right thing. The Board stepped in and fired the idol: Joe Paterno was out. Plus, they fired the University President. No more cover-up. It was as though the Church fired the Pope.

While the story itself is horrifying, with events unfolding in one sickening detail after another — and we do not yet know what full disclosure will reveal — we know we will learn about it because the Penn State Board did the right thing.

Penn State did not react perfectly, but its Trustees acknowledged the problem and swiftly handled it in a creditable way. This is in marked contrast to how the Catholic Church, several Orthodox Jewish yeshivas, the Boy Scouts, and numerous boarding schools, public schools, orphanages, and other institutions have reacted when it became clear that male children were abused under their care. Their stonewalling continued for years and in some cases even for decades.

These two forward-moving steps — the public disclosure of male sexual victimization and an institution adopting a stance of openness rather than stonewalling — result from incremental changes in our perception of childhood sexual abuse, especially the abuse of boys. As with other social changes involving race, gender, sexual orientation, the status of women, and abortion, change happens slowly, then all of a sudden we realize we are living in a different social world than before. It is no longer a given that races should be segregated, or women underpaid or unable to determine what happens to their bodies, or gays be closeted. Similarly, it is no longer a given that victims of sexual abuse are liars, or that they are female, or that sexually abused boys are whining sissies who just need to get over it.

But more change is still needed. Even though it is not anywhere near as sensational and it requires us all to appreciate the darkness of the human heart, the media needs to pay full attention to abused children’s trauma rather than focusing on the motives of predators, on the people who cover for them, and on the institutions that try so desperately to protect their reputations. These children’s needs are great, as are the needs of the men they become. But one thing is clear: they deserve to be believed, understood, and helped.

It is difficult for any of us to think clearly about a young child being anally raped in a public shower by an adult he trusted, maybe even revered. I know it is difficult for me to do so and such thoughts are thoughts I encounter daily in my work. It is equally difficult to focus on such aftereffects of betrayals as flashbacks, depression, anxiety, sexual dysfunction, addiction and compulsion, and painful interpersonal relationships.

And so, as in recent days, the media and the public often look away from these boys’ pain. We’re human, how could we do otherwise than want to look away?

But even though it requires us to encounter difficult-to-think-about pain and trauma, the needs of children need to be valued more highly than either the needs of institutions or the demands of social comfort. Only then, when the children come first, will we truly have started to address the nightmare of childhood sexual trauma.

Guest Blogger Bio:
Richard Gartner is Training and Supervising Analyst and Founding Director of the Sexual Abuse Service at the William Alanson White Psychoanalytic Institute; the author of Beyond Betrayal: Taking Charge of Your Life after Boyhood Sexual Abuse and Betrayed as Boys: Psychodynamic Treatment of Sexually Abused Men. He is Past-President of MaleSurvivor.org, the National Organization against Male Sexual Victimization and has been quoted widely in print, broadcast, and online media.

"A leader was told he was abusing kids and did not report it"

Lawsuit claims church knew of sex abuse
Full Word leader didn't report crime, lawyer says

Leaders of a North Charleston church knew its pastor, convicted child molester Tyrone Moore, was sexually abusing children but failed to report it to authorities, a new lawsuit against the church alleges.

The lawsuit is the third filed in Charleston County against Full Word Ministries.

Moore was a charismatic preacher who built a loyal following in his church, even though he pleaded guilty in 1989 and 1991 to sexually abusing young girls at his grandfather's church.

In 2006, Moore was accused of molesting or assaulting eight young males at the church or in his home between 2002 and 2006. In 2009, a judge sentenced him to 30 years in prison.

The latest lawsuit alleges that church officials knew Moore was molesting the child.

"A leader was told he was abusing kids and did not report it," said Scott Beard, an attorney for the child, identified in the lawsuit as Joshua Doe.

The lawsuit cited state laws that require people in positions of authority, including teachers and members of the clergy, to report cases of abuse.

A woman who answered the phone at the church declined to comment on the lawsuit. A lawyer handling the church's other lawsuits did not immediately return a phone call.

The lawsuit alleges that Moore sexually abused the child numerous times at Moore's home and the church at 2730 Gordon St.


http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2011/nov/23/lawsuit-church-knew-of-abuse/

......And now the Chosen Folk --- the Jews:



Go Down Moses Lyrics

Verse 1
When Israel was in Egypt's land
Let my people go
Oppressed so hard they could not stand
Let my people go

(Chorus)
Go down (go down)
Moses (do down Moses)
Way down in Egypt's land
Tell old, Pharoh
Let my people go!

Verse 2
Thus saith the Lord, bold Moses said
Let my people go
If not, I'll smite your first born dead
Let my people go

(repeat chorus)

Verse 3
No more shall they in bondage toil
Let my people go
Let them come out with Egypt's spoil
Let my people go

Breaking the silence!

The Brooklyn DA arrested an astounding 89 Orthodox men on charges of child sex abuse — forcing open a community that sometimes covers up such crimes.

By MICHAEL LESHER

Last Updated: November 27, 2011

The numbers are startling — in the past two years, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes’ office says it has arrested and charged 89 Orthodox Jewish men with child sex abuse.

It’s horrific and shocking, though in terms of effective law enforcement and honest dealings with the public, finally a good thing.

Some background: The Brooklyn DA has been accused for years by child advocates of handling the insular, image-conscious Orthodox Jewish community with kid gloves over sex-abuse scandals. Those familiar with abuse survivors from within that community — myself included — have complained that Hynes is too fearful of retaliation from a politically powerful religious bloc to hold its sex abuse perpetrators to the same standard applied elsewhere in Brooklyn.

Hynes, who denies this, claimed in 2009 to have arrested 26 Orthodox Jewish men for sex abuse over a two-year period — a claim that drew some praise at the time, but also some skepticism for being just too good to be true. But now the DA is double-daring (or triple-daring) his doubters, claiming that since October 2009, the rate of sex-abuse arrests within that community has more than tripled, all the way up to 89.

Still, from the quiet way Hynes broke the news, one senses some reticence behind the bravado. There was no fanfare, no typical press release; Hynes’ spokesperson Jerry Schmetterer offered the numbers in an unheralded exchange with the Jewish newspaper Forward over two weeks ago, and left it at that.

But the unprecedented claim can’t possibly remain a whisper. With the child-abuse cover-up at Penn State on everyone’s lips, any report of such a whopping crackdown in a community notorious for resisting public reports of the crime is bound to have significant results.

True, the lack of detail about the arrests — the Brooklyn DA has declined to give names, charging information or current case status for any of the suspects, or even how far back these cases date — is cause for legitimate concern. I’m not surprised that child advocates within Orthodox Brooklyn have publicly cast doubt on the DA’s numbers. No one knows better than I how hard it can be to pry the facts about such cases out of Hynes’ office. To name just one instance: my four-year effort to obtain records of the abortive attempt to extradite Avrohom Mondrowitz, indicted on 13 child sex-abuse counts in 1985 and still at large in Israel, has led all the way to New York’s highest court, where I will be arguing the Freedom of Information Law case against the DA’s Office this winter.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/breaking_the_si_ence_fowlLEBaFdRumDAfT2gc0J?mid=53

On the Eve of the Annual Agudath Israel Convention

"Please believe me when I say that this is not a story about Penn State or some other corrupt organization. Characterizing what happened in State College, particularly the failures of so many adults to report the abuse, as the product of some morally bankrupt institution is a way of convincing ourselves that we are outsiders to these sinister forces. It is no different from calling Sandusky a “monster.” That is soothing, I realize. But it also lets us off the hook too easily, allowing us to avoid asking hard questions about what happens, or can happen, in our own backyards. The Penn State cover-up could have, and undoubtedly has, happened at many other institutions, including those you most care about. Don’t content yourself with demanding something of Penn State, or big-time college sports. While that might make you feel better, it won’t prevent the next tragedy."

The Cruel Lesson of Penn State

How what happened in State College forced me to confront my own abuse.
By Professor Mark P. McKenna
November 18, 2011

A student raised his hand in my torts class last week and asked whether Joe Paterno might be exposed to liability for failing to tell the police about Jerry Sandusky’s alleged sexual assault of a young boy in the Penn State locker room. It was a perfectly legitimate question—we had been studying tort law’s general reluctance to impose liability for omitting to act. And it didn’t come as a surprise—I have always encouraged students to bring current events to class, and the Penn State situation was nearly impossible to avoid last week. Still, I had prayed no one would ask about it because I was not sure I could make it through any sort of answer. As I’d feared, the question stopped me cold.

I have spent the better part of my life working to cover wounds from my own childhood abuse, about which I have never spoken publicly. In fact, I’ve hardly talked about it at all; I can count on two hands the number of people who know anything about it. Some of my siblings will learn of it from this article.

The cascade of emotions that washed over me as I stood before my torts class and tried to muster a coherent response would be impossible to describe here. After many years of hard work, and with a lot of help, I no longer think every single day about that terrible winter night. There are still plenty of reminders, to be sure, and there are some things that will never be normal for me. But most days, the wound is insulated by lots of scar tissue. Not this week, though. The story hit me at a bad time, during a year that was already very difficult. And the similarities were too hard to ignore.

The perpetrator at Penn State was a coach, as was mine. The abuse happened on the periphery of a major college football program, and I was a walk-on college football player when the weight of my childhood abuse became too much for me and I finally sought help. Most significantly, I have a son who is about as old as the boys Sandusky allegedly assaulted, and nearly the same age I was when I was victimized. He is so young.

I cried uncontrollably at least three separate times last week. This is part of what makes abuse so wretched—it strips you of control, not only of your body in those moments of abuse, but of your mind long after. Sometimes emotions just sneak up on you. And even when you know difficult conversations are going to arise and you try to steel yourself, sometimes there’s nothing you can do. The emotions come, and you can’t make them go away. Then you hate yourself for feeling so weak and exposed. You are sure everyone is looking at you, and you know that no one would look at you the same way if they knew your story. They’d see you as damaged goods. Or they’d pity you. It’s hard to know which is worse.

All this rushed through me when the student asked his question. I can never recall my classroom having been so quiet. Mercifully, no one followed up on my answer; perhaps they could sense my discomfort. So I moved on, knowing I had probably shortchanged the class with my half-answer.

But as the story has remained in the headlines and the uncomfortable conversations have continued, I haven’t been able to shake an overwhelming feeling that I failed Sandusky’s victims and, by extension, far too many other boys. Abuse thrives on silence. In some cases, as the Penn State situation makes clear, the silence of third parties gives perpetrators license. But victims’ silence also plays a huge role. This is true in the immediate aftermath of the abuse, where victims’ inability to speak out puts them (and others) at further risk. It’s also true much more generally. Several of my friends, for example, were shocked when Rick Reilly reported that, according to a 1998 study on child sexual abuse by Boston University Medical School, one in six boys in America will be abused by age 16. For girls, it's one in four by the age of 14. They were shocked, no doubt, because concrete examples of abuse are not as available to them as the statistics suggest. Most people don’t think they know any abuse victims.

But they do know victims. They just don’t realize it, because so many of us have been unable to reveal ourselves. This breeds a false sense of security, with too many adults believing abuse is someone else’s problem.

This reality that the silence of victims creates opportunities for evil is a particularly cruel one, especially when you know it to be true and still haven’t been able to reveal your own abuse. It is another reason abuse is so insidious. Perpetrators procure their victims’ silence by causing such deep shame that private torment seems tolerable by comparison. But it is precisely this silence that helps create the conditions for abuse. This is what has been on continuous replay in my head in the days since my torts class. I can’t shake the feeling that I failed those boys. I failed them by hiding. You cannot imagine how devastating that feeling has been.

When I told this to my friend, the psychologist to whom I disclosed my abuse in college and whose counsel I have relied on for the last 16 years, he told me all the reasons I couldn’t have expected more of myself. Intellectually, I know he is right. But this isn’t primarily about what I didn’t do long ago—it’s about what I wasn’t doing last week. So here it is: I am a victim of sexual abuse.

I say this now, at age 36, in the hopes it can make a small difference to those currently suffering in silence. You know them, I promise. They are your neighbors, your friends, your co-workers, and, painfully, your children. Be a safe place for these people. If you are one of them, I am sorry. Know you are not alone. You did nothing wrong, and you are lovable. It can get better.

I am also moved to say this publicly to counter two aspects of the public reaction to the Penn State situation, both of which reflect our collective attempt to distance ourselves from the reality of abuse. First, it is a mistake to characterize Jerry Sandusky as some kind of subhuman monster. The inclination to do so is entirely understandable, for his behavior was unequivocally monstrous. But to describe him as a monster shields us from the reality that human beings have the capacity for tremendous evil. This recognition is critically important. Predators do not look like monsters; they look like your neighborhood basketball coach or the guy running a children’s charity. They look like people you know, because they are. This is so important for parents to realize: If you allow yourself to think of these predators as “monsters,” you will convince yourself that they are rare, and you will not be as vigilant as you need to be. This recognition is also important for your kids, because if you teach them that they should be on the lookout for monsters, they will be confused by the inappropriate behavior of adults who don’t fit that profile.

This is particularly true with respect to adults who have parents’ implicit trust: friends, family members, and coaches. Sadly, the statistics tell us that most perpetrators are in this group. Focus on behavior—teach your kids that adults are never entitled to touch their bodies, and that no one is entitled to touch their bodies without their permission.

Second, many have painted this story as one fundamentally about Penn State or college athletics. At the Sports Law Blog, for example, Alan Milstein asked whether, were the perpetrator an assistant professor of biology and the witness a graduate student, there was “any doubt the perpetrator, if aware he had been seen, would immediately stop, the witness would intervene, the cops would be called, the professor would be put away, and the university and its president would not be implicated in the least?” In Milstein’s mind, there was no doubt: The big money in college football is the reason Jerry Sandusky’s abuse was not reported.

This is wrong. There is absolutely a doubt about what a graduate student would do in these circumstances. Graduate students are as highly dependent on faculty advisers for their futures as graduate assistant coaches (like Mike McQueary) are on their superiors. For the same reason, I have significant doubts about what an associate at a law firm (or a junior person at Goldman Sachs, or an intern in Congress) would do if he witnessed a sexual assault. Because this is not about a problem at some other institution; it’s a reflection of a universal human tendency to look out for oneself, and to preserve hierarchical institutions about which one cares and upon which one is dependent. It’s also a reflection of the nearly boundless capacity to ignore inconvenient facts and to make excuses for those within our own circle. Think about the Catholic Church. Predators flourished in parishes for years, not simply (and probably not even primarily) because higher-ups worried about financial exposure. They flourished because many otherwise good people could not bring themselves to believe or to act upon information that their priest was a rapist.

Please believe me when I say that this is not a story about Penn State or some other corrupt organization. Characterizing what happened in State College, particularly the failures of so many adults to report the abuse, as the product of some morally bankrupt institution is a way of convincing ourselves that we are outsiders to these sinister forces. It is no different from calling Sandusky a “monster.” That is soothing, I realize. But it also lets us off the hook too easily, allowing us to avoid asking hard questions about what happens, or can happen, in our own backyards. The Penn State cover-up could have, and undoubtedly has, happened at many other institutions, including those you most care about. Don’t content yourself with demanding something of Penn State, or big-time college sports. While that might make you feel better, it won’t prevent the next tragedy.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2011/11/penn_state_scandal_how_what_happened_in_state_college_forced_me_to_confront_my_own_abuse_.single.html

The Vatican said "The ad was damaging to not only to dignity of the pope and the Catholic Church but also to the feelings of believers.”

What about the lives and dignity of the untold thousands of kids you destroyed?



By Joe Palazzolo

The Vatican is promising legal action to stop the distribution of a photo of Pope Benedict kissing an imam on the mouth. The photo is fake, by the way, and is part of a shock-factor advertising campaign by Italian fashion company Benetton that features world leaders getting fresh.

Benedict’s inamorata in the photo is Ahmed Tayeb, leader of Al Azhar in Cairo, Sunni Islam’s most influential institution. Another ad shows President Obama kissing Chinese President Hu Jintao.

The new campaign, as well as the UNHATE Foundation, a new Benetton think tank aimed at, um, communicating love, are part of the company’s social responsibility strategy. Click here for the foundation website and here for slideshow of the ads. WSJ’s Heard on the Runway has more here, and the Journal has a story on the ad campaign here.

The Vatican, however, isn’t feeling the unhate. It said in a statement Thursday its lawyers in Italy and around the world had been instructed to “take the proper legal measures” to stop the use of the photo, even in the media, Reuters reported. And Here‘s a link to the statement in Italian, for what it’s worth. (Prego.)

The statement said the ad was “damaging to not only to dignity of the pope and the Catholic Church but also to the feelings of believers.” It wasn’t clear whether the Vatican intended to sue Benetton directly.

Benetton had said on Wednesday night it was withdrawing the advertisement. But apparently not quickly enough.

Photo: Tiziana Fabi/AFP

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/11/17/vatican-calls-in-the-lawyers-to-snuff-out-kiss-campaign/?mod=djemlawblog_t

Dovid Cohen, Israel Belsky, David Mandel RESIGN!

Penn State, Second Mile Not the First to be Embroiled in a Sex Abuse Scandal
By Perry Chiaramonte
Published November 15, 2011






Allegations that former Penn State defensive football coach Jerry Sandusky sexually molested young boys and that university administrators did not adequately report the accusations against him have tarnished the once-shiny image of both Sandusky’s Second Mile charity and the university’s stellar Nittany Lions athletics program.

But it’s hardly the first time a charity group or sports organization has dealt with charges of sexual molestation.

“As much as the Penn State situation has shocked the nation, the more shocking fact is that the veil of secrecy is more commonplace than we probably realize,” said Justin Leto, a Miami-based civil trial attorney who has handled numerous sex abuse cases.

This month, Lon Harvey Kennard Sr., co-founder of the Utah-based nonprofit group Village of Hope, was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison after he pleaded guilty to 43 counts of sex abuse and exploitation.

Kennard, who started Village of Hope to help women and children in Third World villages, had been charged with molesting six Ethiopian children he had adopted. He was arrested last year after one of the children told police that she and one of her sisters had been abused between 1995 and 2002.

Another sexual predator is Douglas Perlitz, a Colorado man who founded a school for homeless children in Haiti. He was sent to prison last year when he was found guilty of abusing eight students.

Perlitz admitted to investigators that he committed illicit sexual conduct with students who attended his Project Pierre Toussaint School for Homeless Children in Cap-Haitien.

During Perlitz's trial, prosecutors said, he gave the children money, food, clothing and electronics equipment in an attempt to buy their silence, and that he threatened to take it all away and have them expelled if they told anyone what happened. Six of his victims were flown to Connecticut to testify at his trial in federal court.

The scandal led to the collapse of the school, forcing many of the students back into homelessness and despair on the streets of Haiti. Perlitz is serving a 20-year sentence.

Like the charities, Penn State’s football team is not the first sports program to be accused of covering up allegations of sexual abuse.

The Boston Red Sox faced a similar scandal in the early '70s and successfully kept the allegations from going public until 1991.

The team had a clubhouse manager, Donald Fitzpatrick, who during his 30 years with the team solicited sex from young boys he would hire to work during spring training.

Fitzpatrick’s accusers said it was common knowledge among the Red Sox that it was dangerous to have children around him, and one of his victims said players Jim Rice and Sammy Stewart warned the kids to steer clear of him.

In 1971, one of Fitzpatrick’s victims went to Red Sox management and blew the whistle on him, accusing him of being sexually inappropriate with many of the children in the clubhouse and at a hotel where the team stayed during spring training in Florida.

The Sox did not report the claims to authorities, and they fired the victims who came forward. Fitzpatrick suffered no penalties and was allowed to keep his job.

The claims did not resurface until 1991, when one of his accusers – sitting in the crowd at a nationally televised game between the Red Sox and Angels -- held up a sign that said, “Don Fitzgerald sexually abused me.” The Sox eventually paid the man a $100,000 settlement. In 2002, Fitzpatrick pleaded guilty to four counts of sexual battery on a child. In 2003, the team settled a $3.15 million lawsuit with seven victims in Florida.

“The thing these organizations all neglect to recognize is that eventually the truth will come out,” Leto said. “And when it does, the years they have spent protecting the predators and themselves will end in far greater consequences than if they would have done what is right from the start.

“The interest of the employer should never supersede the moral, ethical and legal obligation to ensure that no child is subject to this type of unthinkable abuse.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/11/15/penn-state-second-mile-not-first-to-be-embroiled-in-sex-abuse-scandal/?cmpid=NL_FNTopHeadlines_20111115#ixzz1dobWoXqb

Moetzes Agudath Israel RESIGN! - Part Three

"All of which gives rise to these questions: Those men and women who remained silent in the face of this evil -- are they truly good? Or are they cowards who were simply not willing to take a modest personal risk for the preservation of the one thing they supposedly valued most?"

Penn State's Cowardly Lions
By Michael Goodwin
Published November 14, 2011

It is a cliché to say that football is like life. At Penn State, it is also insufficient. For under Joe Paterno, football was life.

And now a glorious era is finished, demolished beyond redemption. The scandalous end of Paterno’s career has wiped out the university’s sterling reputation and shattered the trust of an entire sport. Riots by crackpot students and death threats punctuate the madness.

To Pennsylvanians and millions of football fans everywhere, the fall of the House of Paterno is like the collapse of an empire. It crashed without warning or mercy.

In truth, the core values rotted away over the years, the work done secretly in the dark, like that of termites and cancer. The end only seemed sudden.

It could be a long time before we know the full extent of the pedophilia horror allegedly perpetrated by a former coach and the outrageous silence of many, perhaps dozens, of people. But already the most important lesson is clear.

Civilizations, from single universities to national cultures, must be defended with relentless vigilance and courage, or they will not survive. Only the details of their demise will differ.

A sage, perhaps Edmund Burke, once said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

That describes the fate of Penn State. The brilliant days of sunshine, victory and integrity in Happy Valley were not a mirage. They were real for generations of players, parents, students, alums and fans who, over the 46-year tenure of Paterno, believed in the “grand experiment” -- of winning the right way, with honor.

But evil triumphed because of a fundamental failure by Paterno and others to uphold the principles the experiment represented. And so the whole enterprise lies in shambles, everyone associated with it tarnished and generations of adherents suffering an angry loss of faith.

I share that loss because I grew up in the shadow of Penn State, just 30 miles from the shining oasis he created. In my youth, Paterno and Penn State football were synonymous with the working-class values of the hardscrabble mountains of central Pennsylvania.

He was the pope of a secular religion that forged friendships and family bonds. Under his benevolent dictatorship, “old school” became a term of rectitude and integrity.

Uniforms were simple, the players were legitimate students and the code of sportsmanship meant something.

Paterno and his wife contributed $4 million to the university, some of it to enhance the teaching of classics.

The righteousness of the path was confirmed by the fact that Paterno won more games than any major-college coach in history.

Yet the rot was quietly hollowing out the foundation. The first report that respected coach Jerry Sandusky was a pedophile was quietly investigated, and dropped without explanation in 1998.

Other reports followed, with the most important one coming in 2002, when a young assistant said he spotted Sandusky, then retired, raping a child in a locker-room shower. The assistant told Paterno, who told his supervisors -- but nobody told the police.

So Sandusky, according to the shocking indictment against him, was allowed to continue his predations for nine more years.

The price for that shameful silence must be measured in tens of millions of dollars, reputations lost and lives ruined.

All of which gives rise to these questions: Those men and women who remained silent in the face of this evil -- are they truly good? Or are they cowards who were simply not willing to take a modest personal risk for the preservation of the one thing they supposedly valued most?

I believe they are cowards. Their goodness was found wanting when it was needed most, and so was shallow if it existed at all. They are sunshine patriots who could not be counted on when the stakes were highest.

In life, even more than in football, courage is required.

Michael Goodwin is a Fox News contributor and a New York Post columnist.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/11/14/lesson-penn-state-life-requires-courage/?cmpid=NL_BestofOpinion_20111114#ixzz1dj5l08EH

TORAH TRUE JUDAISM FROM BILL O'REILLY:

Moetzes Agudath Israel RESIGN! - Part Two - KOLKO IS YOUR LEGACY!

Don't Be an Enabler -- When a Child Is Abused, Here's What to Do
By Michael Reagan

Allegations of child sexual abuse by a former assistant football coach at Penn State University have dominated the news this week. On Wednesday legendary football coach Joe Paterno released a statement in which he said, "With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more." How lame is that, coach?

Would you have accepted that excuse from one of your players? "With the benefit of hindsight, coach, I wish I had run the route we rehearsed a thousand times in practice." See how stupid that sounds? It doesn't take "hindsight" to know that when some monster is raping children in your locker room, you call the police.

Coach, you knew back in 2002 that Jerry Sandusky had anally raped a ten-year-old boy in the Lasch Football Building. You handled the matter quietly with your athletic director, Tim Curley. You took away the rapist's keys and barred him from the facility—but you didn't call the police. You didn't lift a finger to help the victim. No hindsight needed, coach. You screwed up.

Yes, we all know about your 61-year career at Penn State. But when you allow children to be victimized right under your nose, you wipe out 61 years of achievement. The Jerry Sandusky scandal is your legacy now.

This scandal has also indelibly stained the reputation of The Second Mile, the charity Jerry Sandusky founded in 1977 as a foster-care program for at-risk kids. Turns out the kids were most at-risk from Sandusky himself.

The Second Mile was one of George Bush Sr.'s Thousand Points of Light and probably did some good work. But the grand jury says Sandusky met his victims through The Second Mile. So even if the program survives this scandal, it will always be remembered as Jerry Sandusky's private sandbox for recruiting rape victims.

As for the alleged child-rapist himself, you have to stand amazed at his gall. He actually had the brass to title his autobiography "Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story." What is that, the punch line of a sick joke?

I don't want to hear any more "benefit of hindsight" excuses. So let's be clear about what you should do if you learn that a child is being sexually abused. Print this out, post it on your bulletin board, and make sure everyone in your family, company, or organization knows how to respond to child sexual abuse.

1. If you see an act of child abuse in progress, step in and STOP IT. I have to wonder why the grad assistant who witnessed the rape felt he only had to report it to someone. Why didn't he jump in, knock Sandusky on his butt, and protect the child? If you see a child being raped by an adult, please have the guts and good sense to intervene.

2. If a child tells you he or she is being abused, don't panic, don't act shocked. Make sure the child feels supported and protected. Say, "You did the right thing in telling me."

3. Believe the child. Even if the offender is "good old Uncle Charlie," tell the child, "I believe you." It takes a courage for kids to speak up because they fear they won't be believed. Kids need to know you're on their side, and they almost never imagine sex acts unless they've experienced them.

4. Tell the child that he or she is not bad. Say, "He knew better; you didn't know. We'll make sure he can't touch you again."

5. Focus on the child's needs. Don't think about the reputation of any individual or organization. The moment you shift your focus off of what's best for the child, you're on the wrong side of the issue.

6. Don't confront the offender in front of the child. Keep adult discussions away from the child. Kids need to feel protected. They don't need to be upset, disturbed, and frightened.

7. Report the crime to the police. Law enforcement agencies in your area have trained investigators who will talk with you and the child, and who know exactly how best to handle the situation.

And don't you dare tell me that you don't have the heart to have "good old Uncle Charlie" arrested. If Uncle Charlie is molesting a child, protect that child!

I've heard too many horror stories of people who protected "good old Uncle Charlie" or "good old Coach Sandusky" instead of protecting children. You must have absolute moral clarity: Child molesters belong in jail where they can't hurt children. If you don't call the police, then you are an accomplice and no better than a molester yourself.

8. If the molester is a member of the clergy, DO NOT report the abuse to church officials. If the molester is a coach or teacher, DO NOT report the abuse to the school authorities. Some churches and organizations worry more about lawsuits and bad publicity than about kids. Just call the police.

9. Don't call Child Protective Services—investigating crimes is not the function of CPS. If the police determine that CPS should be involved, they will make that decision. Don't let the predator talk you out calling the police. Most predators are amazingly persuasive—that's how they entice their victims, and that's how they get people to cover for them instead of reporting them. Don't be taken in by a charming predator.

10. After you call the police, call the ChildHelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4ACHILD (1-800-422-4453). The ChildHelp counselor will listen to your concerns, answer your questions, and direct you to local support services for the child.

Finally, don't you ever use the "benefit of hindsight" excuse! I've armed you with the foresight to do the right thing to protect a child—and that child is counting on you.

The reason I tell you all this? Because, I was once that boy.

Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan. He is a political consultant, the founder and chairman of The Reagan Group, and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his website at www.reagan.com, and visit the Michael Reagan Center at Arrow Child & Family ministries. Portions of this column are adapted from his book "Twice Adopted."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/11/10/dont-be-enabler-when-child-is-abused-heres-what-to-do/#ixzz1dYnGPRXU

Moetzes Agudath Israel RESIGN!

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL - NOVEMBER 10, 2011

The Pennsylvania State University Board of Trustees made the only rational choice on Wednesday when it dismissed the football coach Joe Paterno for failing to pursue a horrific allegation of sexual assault of a child that was brought to his attention by a subordinate in 2002. Mr. Paterno, who failed to call the police, now concedes that he did not do enough to curb what prosecutors describe as a 15-year cycle of child rape and sexual assaults, perpetrated partly on university property, by Jerry Sandusky, Mr. Paterno’s former assistant coach.

Mr. Paterno seems to understand that his failure to act had tragic consequences for the child victims. He was not fired because he participated in or condoned the sickening acts described in a 23-page grand jury report. He was fired because he did not take steps that probably would have ended them. The university must now explain this truth to angry, misinformed students who rioted in the streets when they learned of Mr. Paterno’s dismissal.

The obvious place for the students to begin is with the grand jury report, a harrowing document that depicts Mr. Sandusky as luring young children with gifts and outings before going on to rape and assault. The Penn State student newspaper, The Daily Collegian, has put the report on its Web site for anyone who wants to read the testimony.

The person identified in the report as Victim 1 told the grand jury that he was 11 or 12 years old when he met Mr. Sandusky in 2005 or 2006 through a charity for underprivileged children. The child was taken on trips and given a computer, clothing and cash. He says he eventually began sleeping over at the Sandusky home, where the former coach would creep into his bed at night and perform oral sex on him.

After many sexual encounters, the victim says he managed to terminate contact with Mr. Sandusky in the spring of 2008. According to the report, Mr. Sandusky was barred from assisting as a coach in the child’s school district after his mother called the school to report the child’s allegation of sexual assault. That was in 2009, seven years after Mr. Paterno’s graduate assistant coach, Mike McQueary, claims he first witnessed Mr. Sandusky raping a young child in the Penn State football building.

No one connected to the university should feel anything but shame that the institutional leaders did so little to protect the children involved. The trustees seemed to acknowledge that on Wednesday. The sooner misinformed students understand the basic facts, the better.

CLICK ON LINK FOR GRAND JURY INDICTMENT:
http://www.freep.com/assets/freep/pdf/C4181508116.PDF

Parents Must Always Call The Police And Speak Out!

http://www.thepostgame.com/features/201111/mothers-alleged-sandusky-victims-speak-out

On Tuesday morning, the tide of momentum against the Penn State football program and head coach Joe Paterno became even more overwhelming. A ninth alleged sexual assault victim of former coach Jerry Sandusky has reportedly come forward. A press conference scheduled for 12:20 ET was canceled as a report surfaced in the New York Times about plans for Paterno's exit. And most importantly, an exclusive story in the Patriot-News gave voice to two mothers of alleged victims.

Their stories are specific, extensive, and chilling. And both mothers accuse Penn State officials of doing too little to prevent tragedy.

"I'm so upset," the mother of a 24-year-old, who authorities are calling Victim Six, told The Patriot-News exclusively. "My son is extremely distraught, and now to see how we were betrayed, words cannot tell you. To see that Graham Spanier is putting his unconditional support behind [former Penn State athletic director Tim] Curley and [resigned Vice President of Business and Finance Gary] Shultz when he should be putting his support behind the victims, it just makes them victims all over again."

***

For the mother of another former child, who is now being called Victim One, trouble started when Sandusky, a volunteer coach at the boy's Pennsylvania high school, wanted to help discipline him for bad behavior. The two had met through Sandusky's charity for needy children, Second Mile.

"I said, 'No way, he's my kid,'" the mother told the Patriot-News.

Soon after, her son, then 15, started asking about a database for "sex weirdos."

She called the high school principal and was told to come in "right away."

The principal was in tears. The boy, upon telling his mom what happened, also broke down.

Central Mountain High School officials contacted the authorities immediately.

The boy was "very afraid" of Sandusky, according to the mother. When told to say no to the coach, he told his mother he couldn't.

When asked why not, he said, "You just don't do that.

***

The story told by the mother of "Victim Six" is every bit as haunting, if not more so. After Sandusky gave her son a tour of the Penn State football locker room in 1998, the boy came home and told her, "If you're wondering why my hair is wet, we took a shower together."

He then ran to his room.

The boy later told his mom there was another child in the shower with him and the coach. That boy was 11.

The mother called police. An investigation started. The mother confronted Sandusky in his home, with the police listening in another room.

According to grand jury evidence, Sandusky told the mother of Victim One: "I understand. I was wrong. I wish I could get forgiveness. I know I won’t get it from you. I wish I were dead."

But Sandusky was cleared.

"And you're going to tell me that Spanier and Paterno weren't informed of something that was that huge that [the district attorney] was in on it but Spanier was kept in the dark?" the mother told the Patriot-News. "I’m just not that stupid. I’m so upset I just can’t believe it."

Sandusky's attorney, contacted by the Patriot-News, denies all charges. Scott Paterno, Joe's son, said Penn State lawyers assured him his father was never told about the 1998 report.

According to the grand jury presentment, Sandusky had eight alleged victims. Six shared showers in Lasch Building at Penn State, which houses the football program.

Both mothers suffered for several years, only to learn over the weekend that Penn State officials did not report the incidents to police.

"I'm infuriated that people would not report something like that," the mother of Victim One told the Patriot-News. "I still can’t believe it. I'm appalled. I'm shocked. I'm stunned. There's so many words. I'm very mad. They could have prevented this from happening."

“We felt we need to restore trust in the university” - So Simple - Shame on the Jews World Over!

The Wall Street Journal

In its fifth day, the metastasizing scandal at Pennsylvania State University ended the career of Joe Paterno—the longest-tenured coach in major-college football—and resulted in the ouster of the university’s president.

After an emergency meeting Wednesday evening, the school’s Board of Trustees announced at a news conference at 10 p.m. that they had dismissed Mr. Paterno and Graham Spanier, the school’s president for the past 16 years.

“We felt we need to restore trust in the university,” said John Surma, the board’s vice president.

An Old Gentile Knows When His Time Is Up!

The Washington Star, David Israel says, is “an insular world that protects its own, and operates outside of societal norms as long as victories and cash continue to flow bountifully.” Penn State rakes in $70 million a year from its football program. This is what Israel calls “the delusion that the ability to win football games indicates anything at all about your character or intelligence other than that you can win football games.”

...I’ve got to wonder how the 84-year-old coach feels when he thinks about all the children who look up to him; innocent, football-crazy boys like the one he was told about in March 2002, a child then Anthony’s age who was sexually assaulted in a shower in the football building by Jerry Sandusky, Paterno’s former defensive guru, according to charges leveled by the Pennsylvania attorney general.

Paterno was told about it the day after it happened by Mike McQueary, a graduate assistant coach who testified that he went into the locker room one Friday night and heard rhythmic slapping noises. He looked into the showers and saw a naked boy about 10 years old “with his hands up against the wall, being subjected to anal intercourse by a naked Sandusky,” according to the grand jury report.

It would appear to be the rare case of a pedophile caught in the act, and you’d think a graduate student would know enough to stop the rape and call the police. But McQueary, who was 28 years old at the time, was a serf in the powerfully paternal Paternoland. According to the report, he called his dad, went home and then the next day went to the coach’s house to tell him.

“I don’t even have words to talk about the betrayal that I feel,” the mother of one of Sandusky’s alleged victims told The Harrisburg Patriot-News, adding about McQueary: “He ran and called his daddy?”

Paterno, who has cast himself for 46 years as a moral compass teaching his “kids” values, testified that he did not call the police at the time either.

The family man who had faced difficult moments at Brown University as a poor Italian with a Brooklyn accent must have decided that his reputation was more important than justice.

The iconic coach waited another day, according to the report, and summoned Tim Curley, the Penn State athletic director who had been a quarterback for Paterno in the ’70s.

Curley did not call the university police, who had investigated an episode in 1998 in which Sandusky admitted he was wrong to shower with an 11-year-old boy and promised not to do it again. (Two years later, according to the grand jury report, a janitor saw Sandusky performing oral sex on a boy in the showers and told his supervisor, who did not report it.)

Curley waited another week and a half to see McQueary, who told the grand jury that he repeated his sodomy story for Curley and Gary Schultz, a university vice president who oversaw campus police.

Two more weeks passed before Curley contacted McQueary to let him know that Sandusky’s keys to the locker room had been taken away and the incident had been reported to The Second Mile, the charity Sandusky started in 1977.

Prosecutors suggest that the former coach, whose memoir is ironically titled “Touched,” founded the charity as a way to ensnare boys. They have charged Sandusky, now 67, with sexually assaulting eight boys he met there.

Despite knowing of the two similar rapes, The Second Mile did not do anything to keep Sandusky away from vulnerable children until 2008.

Curley said he told Sandusky he could no longer bring children onto the Penn State campus. In other words, Jer, if you want to violate kids who live in cow town where everything revolves around the idolatry of Penn State and Paterno, kindly take them off campus. The predator was still welcome on his own, though; he was spotted at the football team’s weight room working out last week.

Curley told the university president, Graham Spanier, about the matter, and it got buried. Paterno, Curley and Schultz disingenuously claim they were left with the impression that the contact might have been mere “horsing around,” as Curley put it. That’s grotesque.

Like the Roman Catholic Church, Penn State is an arrogant institution hiding behind its mystique. And sports, as my former fellow sports columnist at The Washington Star, David Israel says, is “an insular world that protects its own, and operates outside of societal norms as long as victories and cash continue to flow bountifully.” Penn State rakes in $70 million a year from its football program.

Paterno was still practicing for the game against Nebraska on Saturday, and supportive students were rallying at his house. This is what Israel calls “the delusion that the ability to win football games indicates anything at all about your character or intelligence other than that you can win football games.”

I can only hope that by the time Anthony’s parents work up their nerve to have what they call “the conversation” with him about his fallen idol, St. Joe and the other Penn scoundrels will have been ignominiously cast out of what turns out to be a not-so-Happy Valley.

CLICK ON LINK BELOW FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/opinion/dowd-personal-foul-at-penn.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

The Molester Next Door!

By FRANK BRUNI
Published: November 7, 2011

The longest, most exhaustively researched article I ever wrote for a newspaper or magazine was about a child molester who had sexually abused a little boy living down the street. The abuse went on for more than two years, beginning when the boy was 10.

This molester had a job. A house. A wife. Two kids of his own. And he gained access to his victim not through brute force but through patience, play and gifts: help with his homework, computer games, a new bike. To neighborhood observers, including the victim’s parents, the molester’s attentiveness passed for kindness, at least for a while. A molester’s behavior very often does.

The arrest on Saturday of a former Penn State University assistant football coach — who is accused of sexually abusing eight pre-adolescent, adolescent and teenage boys — brought this all back to me. I wonder if people who know the coach and saw him working with kids will comment on how genuinely nurturing he seemed and how this surely prevented or discouraged suspicions about him.

This is something that has come up repeatedly over decades — I wrote that article back in 1991, for The Detroit Free Press — but that remains tough to accept: the predator to watch out for is less likely to don a trench coat and lurk behind a bush than to wear a clerical collar and stand near the altar or to hold a stopwatch and walk the sidelines. And he (or, for that matter, she) works with children as a function of being drawn to them for reasons beyond their welfare.

The former Penn State assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, 67, founded and ran a charity program for disadvantaged boys. That’s one of the ways he got to know and interact so extensively with kids, some of whom received special favors related to his college-football connections. His alleged abuse of them is said to have occurred over a 15-year period ending in 2009.

He maintains his innocence of the charges against him. That’s important to note, because sexual abuse of children is a crime so rightly enraging that the specter of it has prompted unfair rushes to judgment in the past.

But true or not, the accusations against Sandusky, spelled out in great detail in a 23-page grand jury report, bring to mind many proven cases in which a molester occupied a position of trust, identified and gravitated to children who were especially vulnerable, made them feel special and was by all outward appearances their champion, which many molesters indeed believe themselves to be.

In their own minds these molesters aren’t predators. They’re people whose affinity for children just happens to have a sexual element, the satisfaction of which they’ve convinced themselves isn’t such a big, harmful deal.

Parents face a tricky challenge. They need to be watchful but not paranoid, because most clergy members, scout leaders, camp counselors and coaches aren’t abusers in waiting and are improving children’s lives. They deserve the opportunity to.

But parents should also remain conscious of an additional lesson suggested by the Penn State story. Institutions do an awful job of policing themselves.

That has been true of the Boy Scouts, which has paid out tens of million of dollars in response to lawsuits by former scouts molested by adults who continued to work in the organization despite complaints or questions about their behavior.

That has been true of the Roman Catholic Church, whose diocesan heads and bishops repeatedly transferred abusive priests from one parish to another rather than report them to law enforcement authorities. This cover-up spanned decades and went all the way up the hierarchy of the church.

Many factors explain it, including a fear of scandal and desire to protect the church’s image. The Boy Scouts, too, didn’t want messiness exposed.

Was that a dynamic at Penn State as well? Two university officials have been indicted for not contacting the police after being alerted many years ago to the possibility that Sandusky was abusing boys from his charity on university premises.

And there are lingering questions about whether the university’s renowned head football coach, Joe Paterno, was irresponsible.

According to an account in the indictment that he hasn’t disputed, a graduate assistant in 2002 told him of inappropriate activity in a university shower between a boy and Sandusky, who had already retired from his longtime job as the coordinator of the football team’s defense. Coach Paterno relayed that to a university official, then apparently moved on. And Sandusky continued to interact with troubled boys.

Paterno absolutely should have followed up. Maybe he just couldn’t envision someone like Sandusky — a distinguished professional, a seeming do-gooder — as a molester. But it’s important that we all do.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/opinion/the-molester-next-door.html