I was a frum innocent little girl just like your daughter

http://mypureneshama.tumblr.com/

 I really want this blog to be a healing happy place for myself and whoever is reading which is why I am hesistant to post what this woman wrote but I want to give myself a voice and a chance to fight back against society’s perception of what I went through. So I am going to post what this woman wrote and I know it is a painful thing to read. I got so angry and sad when I read it. I just have to remember that she is saying this stuff from a naive, uneducated and lucky place. I don’t think she is intentionally being cruel. I’m sorry if this is going to cause anyone undue pain.

Leah’s words -“What I said is, A Weberman type WOULD NOT BE ALLOWED ACCESS to my child. If I took my child to a therapist, it would be a WOMAN (and as you well know, women are very unlikely to sexually molest young girls), I would attend sessions with my daughter/wait outside, etc. Therefore, I don’t think THIS TYPE OF ABUSE would happen to my family. Plus I have told my daughter about sickos and she knows to tell me if an adult, even a teacher, does something inappropriate. I think the parents here made many mistakes, and bear responsibility for putting their child in danger. And no, I don’t believe that Satmar-type communities are filled with dopes. I suspect that there was something very wrong/off with this particular family, and that is one reason Weberman preyed on the kid.”

Everything you said is the exact reason how so many children are getting abused. I hope you said what you did because of a lack of knowledge not of sensitivity. Everybody thinks that a ‘weberman’ has no access to their child. I can’t even describe to you the pain I feel upon reading that. You are condemning all parents of abused children. You can’t imagine the grief, self-blame and blinding pain that parents of abused children go through. I want to clarify so you can be aware and have a clearer picture of how the majority of abuse in the frum community actually happens. I also want to clarify so that people who think the way you presently do can understand how the parents of abused children love, care and protect their children just as much as you do if not more. They are not bad parents. Quite the opposite.

I was a frum innocent little girl. Just like your daughter. I was the oldest in my family. I was adored. I said Modeh Ani every morning twice. Once when I woke up and once in school. I was that happy to be awake every day. My teachers loved me I had friends and I was always happy. My parents were the center of my existence. They adored me. I was their pride and joy. And if you love something, you protect it with your life. If you would have asked my mother years ago she would have definitely agreed with you and maybe have even be more condemning of the parents of ‘Off The Derech’ children. Whispering questions like how could their parents have let this happen while shooting dark glances in their direction. She was and still is the pinnacle of a concerned and slightly overprotective mother.

 I got countless speeches about the sick people in the world and how I should come right to my mother if anyone says or does anything remotely inappropriate. She defined clearly from a very young age how important it is to be open and honest with her about these things. She was crazy protective. She never let me go to my friends houses unless she knew the family extremely well. I remember throwing tantrums about how everyone is having a sleepover by a certain girls house and my mother refused to let me go because something about the girls older brother was weird. My mother insisted on walking me to and from my bus stop everyday even when I was old enough to be embarrassed by it. She stayed in the doctors room by my yearly checkups even when I was begging her to leave.

 Every time we went shopping she would grip my hand the entire time and not let go until I was back in the car. Once I got distracted by something pretty in a shop we were in and let go of her hand to get a better look at it. When I found her two minutes later (not more) she was speaking to the security guard with tears in her eyes about shutting down the store until I was found. I was like ‘Ma what are you doing? I’m ten years old – I was right behind you’ and she just hugged me for way too long. I remember being so embarrassed because I was way too old to be seen hugging my mother in public. I was never allowed around any males alone, EVER. Not even my cousins. I used to think she was paranoid but now I know I would do the same for my daughter.

I was sexually abused. Badly, for many years. It was by a female. My babysitter.

 We knew the family really well. This is why I didn’t tell my mother. One night before all this started I walked passed my parents room and I heard my mother crying so I stopped and listened in the way that little girls do, she was on the phone to a friend of hers and she was crying because there was a playgroup that was found out to have been molesting children for years and another one of her close friends sons had went there years before. I so badly wanted to protect her from any sort of pain like she always did for me so when it happened the first time I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. I loved her that much. After that I had already been victimized and predators know how to keep their victims under their control.

Read up on the psychology behind it. It is a rare phenomenon when a victim breaks the cycle. My head was put in a bath tub and held there until I nearly drowned and when it was taken out I was told that if I ever told anyone then she would do that to my little brother but she would keep his head in. I was old enough to understand the term ‘drown your baby brother and make it look like a mistake’. And yes I thought it might be a possibility that my parents could save me. But it wasn’t worth the risk. I loved my baby brother too much. To this day I wonder if she would’ve drowned him had I show any hesitation. I was just an eight year old girl protecting her family from a nightmare that was too painful to share. It wasn’t worth it.

I have tears streaming down my face as I write this. I can’t remember the last time I cried like this. I’m sobbing over this laptop. I have never ever spoken of any of this outside of therapy. Reading you proscribe my parents as bad parents has been singularly painful for me. There was nothing ‘wrong’ or ‘off’ about my family. Me and my younger siblings were the prettiest, best dressed, happiest little children you have ever seen. If you saw us on the street you would probably glance enviously at my perfect little family, with our bright blond hair, little dimples and bright blue eyes. My young parents were everyone’s idea of perfect. My father learned my Chumash homework with me every night. For years. Point is that people rarely have parents as good as mine are. Leah, If there is such a thing as a Parent Award, you, Leah would be the first to give it to them.

I’m not saying that it didn’t change anything, my perfect childhood outside of the abuse probably gave me the strength to get through this all. When as a teenager I finally told my parents what had happened it broke them as people, but as parents they pulled themselves together and have been here ever since helping me pick up the pieces of my shattered soul. I can honestly say if it wasn’t for their strength I, the little girl who once was exactly like your own little girl would be lying in a grave with the whole world wondering what had happened. Leah I truly hope you never need to know the inhumane amounts of courage and strength it takes people to accept and love their children despite all the anger, drugs, boys etc. I hope you never need to find out how identical you are as a mother to mine and how similar I once was to your own little girl.

Hasidic counselor, Nechemya Weberman, suspected of sexual assault will testify

The 54-year-old is accused by the teenager of forcing her to perform oral sex and reenact porn during three years of spiritual counseling that started when she was 12.

Nechemya Weberman aka THE ANIMAL

A once-respected Hasidic counselor accused of sexually assaulting a Brooklyn girl is expected to take the stand in his own defense Wednesday .

Tuesday’s witnesses represented the torturous journey of the alleged victim — who turns 18 Wednesday — from a student who rebelled against the strict modesty rules at her Satmar school to a “depressed” teen who reported the purported abuse. In December 2010, social worker Sarah Fried testified in Brooklyn Supreme Court, the “very anxious” girl recounted her “trauma.”

“At the end of the session, she uttered the words ‘I was molested,’” Fried testified, “then ran out of the office.”

It wasn’t until February 2011 that the girl named Weberman - an accusation the defense contends was motivated by revenge upon learning the counselor set up her boyfriend to be arrested.

The teen ended up at Weberman’s home office in 2007 after having trouble at her school, where the thickness of her tights was constantly examined.

“Her modesty was not like the other girls’,” said Benzion Feuerwerger, the principal of the girls school at United Talmudic Academy in Williamsburg.

He added that the school demanded the girl’s parents pay $12,800, mostly as an upfront fee for Weberman’s services, if they wanted their daughter to stay enrolled.

The principal, who said he had no secondary education beyond yeshivas, was also asked if he knows about Va’ad Hatznius, a Hasidic squad that enforces modesty rules and to which prosecutors say Weberman belongs.

“It doesn’t exist, as far as I know,” Feuerwerger said, to gasps in the packed courtroom. The modesty patrol is a well-known presence in the Satmar community.

Having Weberman take the stand is tactic that’s not without risks. During pretrial hearings last summer, prosecutors claimed six other women have made allegations against the defendant, but none agreed to press charges, which barred them from addressing the jury.

Under exceptional circumstances, court insiders said, Weberman's testimony might open the door to allow other alleged victims to be heard.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/weberman-suspected-sexual-assault-testify-article-1.1213602#ixzz2E9BR3rg7

If she stopped seeing her alleged abuser, she would have been expelled from school!

Mom: I had to pay 12G to this ‘sex fiend!’



Nechemya Weberman aka THE ANIMAL

The mother of a teenage Brooklyn girl who was allegedly sexually abused by a prominent Hasidic leader testified yesterday that she was forced by her daughter’s yeshiva to send the girl to the man for counseling — and even had to pay for the dubious privilege.
Nechemya Weberman, 54, allegedly abused the girl during their frequent counseling sessions beginning when she was just 12 years old, prosecutors charge.

“The school gave her a hard time and said she was ‘apikoros,’ ” a Hebrew and Greek word that means heretic, the mother testified in Brooklyn Supreme Court.

When asked the repercussion of not sending her youngest daughter to Weberman, she answered in halting English, “They wouldn’t accept her. They wouldn’t allow her to go to school.”

United Talmudical Academy administrators even required the family to pay Weberman $12,800 in advance — before the teen started eighth grade, the mother testified.

“They wanted to make sure that I would send [her] to Weberman,” said the 53-year-old mother of seven, who covers her hair per Orthodox requirements and has worked as a Mary Kay cosmetician for 21 years.

The South Williamsburg school referred questions to its attorney, who did not return requests for comment.

Now entering its second week, the Weberman trial has provided a rare glimpse into the clandestine world of ultra-Orthodox Judaism in general, and the Brooklyn Satmar sect in particular.

One story the mother told illustrated the power the school held over her daughter, now 17. When Weberman announced he was taking the teen on a daylong drive, her mother protested, citing “Yichud,” the religious rules that prevent unmarried men and women from being alone together.

But again, the school stepped in and ordered the family to go along with Weberman, she testified.

“I had no other choice,” said the mom, who explained that the school even made her write Weberman to say she was sorry for disagreeing with him. “I had to write him an apology letter.”

The teen’s mother also described the harassment her family faced after her daughter reported the alleged abuse.

“They would scream at him ‘moser, moser!” a Yiddish term for a Jew who reports another Jew to secular authorities, the teen’s mother said. Her 5-year-old granddaughter was also barred from beginning school.

Much of the Satmar community still stands behind Weberman. Rebbe Aaron Teitelbaum, one of the Satmar sect’s two top leaders, spoke out against the teen at a fundraiser this weekend.

“If you keep up with what’s happening in [Williamsburg], it is frightening. A Jewish daughter has sunk so low, it is terrible.” he said, according to sources who attended the fundraiser.



http://m.nypost.com/p/news/local/mom_had_to_pay_to_this_sex_fiend_M73CCGJs4ZGww1Gbbm5ZxJ?utm_medium=rss&utm_content=Local

Jewish Principal Convicted of 75 Sex Abuse Counts

Emanuel Yegutkin of Elite High School Targeted Boys

The principal of a private Jewish high school in Brooklyn was convicted of sexually abusing three boys over the course of a decade, authorities said.

Emanuel Yegutkin, 33, the principal of Elite High School in the Bensonhurst section, was found guilty of 75 counts of sex abuse.

He faces up to 25 years in prison on each of several counts when he is sentenced on December 17.

“This violent sexual predator faces the remainder of his life behind bars,” Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes said. “This should serve as a clear message that those who would sexually abuse children in this county will be punished severely.”

Yegutkin became a close friend of the victims’ family after attending the school where the victims’ father worked, and visited their home frequently. The victims did not attend Yegutkin’s school, the prosecutor’s office said.

From 1996 to 2005, Yegutkin sexually abused two of the boys when they were ages seven to 15-years-old, and in 2008, exposed the third boy to pornography. He forced them to perform sex acts including fondling and oral sex, authorities said.

 http://forward.com/articles/167180/jewish-principal-convicted-of--sex-abuse-counts/#ixzz2E2xygfo0

PSY GANGAM STYLE - PIDYON SHVUYIM - VER GAHARGET CONCERT!

BROOKLYN CRIMINAL COURT — Three Orthodox Jewish men who allegedly took photographs in court of a young woman who accused Rabbi Nechemya Weberman of sexually assaulting her were arraigned after the Sabbath began Friday evening.

Joseph Fried, Yona Weisman and Lemon Juice were arrested Thursday evening and charged with judicial contempt, a misdemeanor, after a court officer found pictures on their phones of the alleged victim testifying in the courtroom where Weberman has been on trial. Abraham Zupnick was arrested as well but the charges against him were dropped on Friday.

Weberman, 54, the head of a Satmar sect of Orthodox Jews, is accused of repeatedly sexually assaulting the young woman starting when she was 12 years old.

Prosecutors said the men accused of taking photos made the trial even more difficult for the alleged victim, who is now 17 years old.

"There was no other reason to do this except to intimidate and dissuade this witness and other potential witnesses from testifying in this highly public rape trial," Assistant District Attorney Joseph DiBenedetto said.

But lawyers for all three men said that while their clients may have taken photos outside of the courtroom in the hallway, they did not take any pictures of the young woman while she was testifying.

"If any pictures were taken, they were taken in the hallway," said Shekera Shahid, Fried's lawyer.

The defense lawyers said the photos of the alleged victim testifying must have been taken by someone else and sent to their clients' phones. The lawyers also said no one had witnessed their clients taking photos in the courtroom, although prosecutors said court officers observed Weisman with his phone out during the trial on Wednesday.

Lawyers for Fried and Weisman declined to say who their clients supported in the trial, but Leopold Gross, Juice's lawyer, said Juice attended the trial to support the victim, not intimidate her. Gross said Juice did not know he wasn't supposed to take pictures in court, and Gross denied prosecutors' claim that Juice had posted a picture of the young woman to Twitter.

Bail was set at $5,000 bond or $2,500 cash for each of the three men, and they were expected to be released late Friday or early Saturday.

If convicted, they each face up to a year in jail.

The men appeared before a judge after sundown on Friday, during a time when Jews are not allowed to work, drive or use an elevator.

That made it more difficult for their families to be there for support, and the men will be unable to get a ride home when they are released.

"It's a huge problem," said Joseph Fried's brother, Yoel Fried. "They are going to have to walk home."

The men belong to the Satmar sect of Hasidic Jews who live in Williamsburg, approximately 2.5 to 3 miles from the court.

The case has been a lighting rod within the Brooklyn ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, which does not generally want to involve outside law enforcement.

Supporters of the young woman said she has already faced intimidation from the community in coming forward, and that the pictures may be another attempt to shame her.

"It's extremely disrespectful, especially in her community," said one 18-year-old woman on Thursday. "It's hard enough for her to stand in front of Weberman."

Her testimony continued Friday, and the court ended those proceedings at 2 p.m. because of the Sabbath.

The Brooklyn District Attorney's office would not comment on the arraignment taking place Friday night, but did say they have no control over when it happens.

A friend of the young men said he felt the proceedings were being stalled.

"It's very bad. They're doing it on purpose," the friend said. "The paperwork should be done by now. It's been 24 hours."



 http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20121130/downtown-brooklyn/orthodox-men-charged-with-snapping-court-pics-be-arraigned-on-sabbath#ixzz2DqvlIHoy

Intimidation of sexual abuse victims in the ultra-Orthodox community is common



Nechemya Weberman AKA The Animal

Photos of Accuser on Stand Disrupt Sexual Abuse Trial

The trial of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish counselor accused of repeatedly molesting a girl was disrupted on Thursday afternoon when four spectators in a Brooklyn courtroom were accused of taking pictures with their cellphones of the accuser on the witness stand.

The four men, identified by prosecutors as Joseph Fried, Yona Weisman, Abraham Zupnick and Lemon Juice, were arrested and charged with criminal contempt in the second degree, a misdemeanor that carries a sentence of up to one year in jail.

The accuser, who is now 17, has testified that she and her family had faced a pattern of intimidation from the Satmar Hasidic community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, since she alleged last year that Nechemya Weberman, the unlicensed therapist her parents had sent her to for counseling, repeatedly forced her to have oral sex during their sessions together from the time she was 12 until she turned 15.

In June, prosecutors charged four Williamsburg men with attempting to silence her by offering her a $500,000 bribe through her boyfriend to drop her participation in the case. Intimidation of sexual abuse victims in the ultra-Orthodox community is common, prosecutors say, because going to secular authorities with charges against another Jew is considered treasonous. But arrests for intimidation are rare.

Mr. Weberman’s accuser had already been provided with increased security after onlookers said they spotted Mr. Weberman staring at her threateningly through the window of a conference room as she rested during a break in the court session on Wednesday, said Jerry Schmetterer, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office. The defense denies that Mr. Weberman did this.

Then at about 2 p.m. Thursday, court officers spotted a man taking a picture of the teenager as she testified, Mr. Schmetterer said. The judge, Justice John G. Ingram, ordered the jury cleared from the 20th-floor courtroom in State Supreme Court, and the cellphones of all onlookers in the courtroom were confiscated.

The phones of the four men arrested had photos of the teenager that had been taken in the courtroom, and one photo appeared to have already been posted to Twitter, Mr. Schmetterer said. David Bookstaver, a spokesman for the court, said that Judge Ingram also admonished the men before allowing the trial to continue.

While the district attorney’s office did not comment on motive, Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg, an advocate for abuse victims who was in the courtroom, said that the men arrested were Satmar Hasidim, some of whom supported Mr. Weberman. “This is intimidation,” he said. “The government should not let this slide away, because this is not an accident. It is done deliberately in an effort to keep the law system from functioning.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/30/nyregion/in-ultra-orthodox-sexual-abuse-trial-4-arrests-for-photos-of-witness.html?ref=nyregion&_r=0

DAY 3: Trial of Child Rapist Nechemya Weberman

By Debbie Teller

(Editor Ad-Kan)

My admiration for Ms. A grows as I watch the defense team try to break her down.

For four hours, Mr. Farkas junior pounded away asking questions about times and dates that could very easily have boggled the mind of even an expert witness.

But Ms. A stood her ground and did not waver even once. I noticed that even the judge was getting a little annoyed even though he comes across as extremely easy going and even jovial at times.

Michael Farkas spent most of the day going over dates and times of when Ms. A met certain relevant people. It seemed as though he was trying to prove that she is unreliable and a liar to boot. From my perspective he was not successful. He spent over half an hour trying to find out if Weberman knew that she was having a hard time in school or not. He kept going over and over these points until even the jury seemed exhausted from listening to the repetitive questions.

At one point Mr. Farkas asked Ms. A if it is a fact that Mr. Weberman is a Satmar. (He pronounced it Sat maaaar) And she responded that she didnt know.

Farkas turned to the victim and barked: "What do you mean you dont know, cant you see that he is- what makes you think that he might not be Satmar?"

And without a blink she responded that all Satmar men pray at the Satmar synagogue, and Mr. Weberman did not.

There was an audible chuckle from the audience.

It goes without saying that Farkas said nothing further on the subject of the authenticity of Nechemya's "Satmerism".

Today the judge threw out a piece of so called evidence. It was a telephone directory - a Jewish one of course. Apparently it is a joint business venture between Weberman and Ms A's father. This business partnership had absolutely no relevance to the case, yet Michael Farkas tried very hard to get it to be admissible going as far as handing the book to the victim to see if she recognized it.

The defense continuously tried to portray Ms. A as not only dishonest but as an angry teenager who spent her teenage years in Williamsburg engaged in all sorts of terrible activities. It was laughable because the worst thing he came up with was that she had been reading Cosmopolitan and People magazine! (I am sure that the mostly black jury were wondering if there was something in People magazine that they didn't know about)

She also testified that she used Mr. Webermans email account (Apparantly HE is allowed to have Internet access) to sell some poems and lyrics that she had created. It was almost amusing to see how hard Farkas and his team were digging to find some nasty, terrible deed in her past. But of course the worst this young girl had "done" in her life was to be raped and molested by her guidance counsellor Nechemya Weberman.

The argument that she should have told someone what was happening was terribly lame. One can Google anything to do with sexual abuse and disclosure and hundreds of articles will appear on this subject. It is well known that coming forward and exposing the secret of being abused is very difficult for the victim. It is beyond my understanding how this highly trained team of lawyers are using something like this as a defense.

Ms A. is a resilient young woman who has shown unbelievable emotional strength in the face of her ordeal. And on day 3 of this trial she has once again shown us that the truth will always prevail!

Please come to the trial tomorrow at 1:45pm to show your support!!

http://www.adkanenough.com/index.html

Teen Takes Stand in Abuse Trial Against Orthodox Leader

In this May 16, 2012 image taken from video and provided by WCBS-TV, Nechemya Weberman attends a fundraiser on his behalf in Brooklyn.

After months of anticipation, a 17-year-old girl took the stand in the sexual abuse trial of a respected counselor from an ultra-orthodox Jewish community that authorities say has historically avoided such prosecutions by keeping members quiet.

In a packed courtroom filled mostly with her supporters, the teen took the stand against Nechemya Weberman, an unlicensed religious counselor in the Satmar community, an ultra-orthodox sect of Judaism.

Weberman is accused of sexually abusing the girl dozens of times in his home and office over a three-year span beginning when she was 12 years old. The girl, who turns 18 next week, is not being identified because she is the victim of a sexual-abuse crime.

The teen testified she was taken to see Weberman after school leaders deemed her a problem after she questioned her religion.

“I had a lot of questions about religion. … How do you know God exists?” she said, adding that in response her teacher “yelled at me and sent me to the principal. It happened to me a lot of times.”

She started seeing Weberman in March 2007, first twice a week and sometimes up to four times a week.

Speaking in almost inaudible tones and at times struggling to hold back tears, she described the alleged abuse in detail for more than three hours.

“I just froze,” she said about their first encounter. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to respond. I didn’t know how to fight back. I was numb.”

“He would continue touching me all the time,” she said, adding later, “I wanted to die rather than live with myself.”

The testimony brought many in the audience to tears, with court officers having to quiet attendees for whispering loudly during breaks in testimony.

The case is one of the few that Brooklyn prosecutors say they have been able to bring to fruition because going after sexual predators in the community has been difficult without cooperation from residents.

In the lead up to the trial, District Attorney Charles Hynes said prosecutions in the community can be more difficult than even organized-crime investigations, in which he can at least offer a witness-protection program.

The case has caused deep divisions among Williamsburg’s Hasidim, with some rallying behind Weberman, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for his defense and subjecting the accuser to threats and name-calling.

Four men were charged earlier this year after they allegedly tried to buy the silence of the girl and her now-husband. The girl was married in October.

On Tuesday, the girl talked about what a difficult decision it was to have to testify against Weberman.

The girl testified that her parents had suggested she drop the case as recently as six months ago, taking her to a Rabbi, who tried to get her to drop the case.

When asked by a prosecutor what was the benefit of proceeding, she answered, “peace.”

Asked about the pressure to drop the case, she gave several examples, including “intimidation,” “intimidation of my parents,” “loss of business,” “having my nieces kicked out of school.”

Defense attorneys have argued that the girl has singled out Weberman and the Satmar religious community because of its ultra-orthodox policies.

Tuesday is the second day of a trial that is expected to last a week. Weberman is also expected to take the stand in his defense.

Prosecutors finished their direct examination Tuesday morning. The girl is back on the stand Tuesday afternoon, being questioned by Weberman’s attorneys.

http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2012/11/27/teen-takes-stand-in-abuse-trial-against-orthodox-leader/

At Abuse Trial, Support for Orthodox Jewish Girl

The young Orthodox Jewish woman who took the stand to testify in her sexual abuse case in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn on Tuesday faced an inscrutable jury but also a crowd of sympathetic observers.

Her extended family, friends, victims’ advocates, and some who said they were sexually abused within the Orthodox Jewish community filled the three rows of seats. More supporters waited outside.

At the same time, the prominent ultra-Orthodox Jewish man from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Nechemya Weberman, who stands accused of molesting the young woman, had only a few family members and supporters present in the courtroom.

Abe Rubenstein, an audience member whose son had testified as a victim in a high-profile Orthodox Jewish sexual abuse case in Borough Park, Brooklyn, two years ago, remembered how that courtroom had been packed with supporters of the defendant. That experience, prosecutors said, was typical of a community that had tried for years to intimidate sexual abuse victims into silence.

“Only I was there,” Mr. Rubenstein remembered. “When my son testified, he said he felt alone in the jungle.”

This time, people said that they came because they had read on victims’ advocacy blogs that the victim needed support or heard about her case through publicity surrounding a fund-raiser for Mr. Weberman in May.

Though the young woman’s parents had asked her to drop the case as recently as this spring, the victim testified, about 20 members of her family came to show their support in court.

“The anger has reached a level where people have decided to put an end to making the victim into the villain,” said Judy Genut, an advocate for abuse victims in Williamsburg.

The testimony of the young woman, who turns 18 next week, lasted for hours.

She recalled in detail her first meeting with Mr. Weberman, now 54, at an apartment he used as an office. Her father, she testified, had brought her there for counseling at age 12 because he falsely believed she was having a physical relationship with a 16-year-old neighbor named Shimmy.

Mr. Weberman, she testified, locked the door to his office as the session started, spoke to her, and, later, asked her to stand up.

“He asked me, ‘Did Shimmy kiss you like that?’ ” she said. Then, she testified, he kissed her. “He asked me, ‘Did he touch you on the breast?’ And he did that. And then, he kept going down.”

“I just froze,” she said. “I didn’t know how to fight back.”

She said nothing to her father when he came to pick her up, she testified under cross-examination. Nor did she tell her family she wanted to stop going to sessions, though she said the abuse went on for years, in four-hour sessions that sometimes were held several times a week. In 2011, she reported being abused to a licensed therapist, who brought her to the police.

George Farkas, a defense lawyer, argued Monday that the young woman, who often got into trouble for flouting strict Satmar dress codes and other rules, was making up the abuse story because she wanted revenge against Mr. Weberman, who she believed had told her parents about a boyfriend she had when she was 15. The boy, then 18, was subsequently arrested, though the charges were later dropped.

Michael Farkas, another defense lawyer, asked the young woman if she sometimes felt a deep anger at her religious community and those who enforced its strict rules. She said she did.

But when prosecutors asked her whom she blamed for the boyfriend’s arrest, she did not say Mr. Weberman.

“I blamed my father,” she said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/28/nyregion/at-sexual-abuse-trial-support-for-an-orthodox-jewish-girl.html?ref=nyregion

Teen Accusing Orthodox Jewish Leader Of Sex Abuse Testifies ‘I Wanted To Die’

Accuser: Man Who Was Supposed To Be Counselor, Molested Me For 3 Years

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — A teen alleging a prominent member of Brooklyn’s Satmar community sexually abused her over three years took the stand Tuesday to describe her alleged ordeal.

In a quiet, controlled voice, the now-married 17-year-old said she endured years of abuse at the hands of 54-year-old Nechemya Weberman.

The teen’s father had taken her to Weberman for counseling because he thought she had a boyfriend, which was prohibited in the community, 1010 WINS’ Juliet Papa reported.

However, the teen claimed the counseling turned into undressing, touching and other sexual contact.

The teen told a packed courtroom that from her first meeting with Weberman in an office next to his Clinton Hill apartment, the much-respected Orthodox Jewish leader sexually abused her.

In fact, she said it happened every time they met from 2007 — when she was 12 — and continued through 2010.

The accuser said that Weberman would triple lock his door before the abuse, which allegedly took place twice a week for the three years.

At one point, the teen said she stopped eating for three days. The accuser said she was so depressed she couldn’t stop or even talk to Weberman.

The teen also described another incident in which she claimed Weberman came to her home.

“He got into bed with me and I wanted to die,” the teen stated in court.

She said she was eventually was able to tell a school counselor what was taking place.

Weberman has pleaded not guilty to charges of committing a criminal sex act, rape, endangering the welfare of a child and sexual abuse.

Lawyers for Weberman have argued that the allegations being brought against their client are false.

Weberman is expected to testify in his own defense later in the week.

Earlier this year, a controversial fundraiser was held in the Hasidic community to raise Weberman’s legal funds.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/11/27/teen-accusing-orthodox-jewish-leader-of-sex-abuse-testifies-i-wanted-to-die/

Sexual Abuse Trial of Brooklyn Man Begins

Nechemya Weberman after the opening of the sexual abuse trial against him in Brooklyn. Prosecutors say he molested a girl, starting when she was 12.

The abuse began when the girl was 12 years old, prosecutors in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn said on Monday. She was sent to a prominent man in her ultra-Orthodox Jewish community for counseling, and prosecutors said the man sexually molested her over the next three years.

But lawyers defending the man, Nechemya Weberman, 54, of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, told a far different story during the opening arguments of his trial. The girl, a defense lawyer told the jury, had hatched the sordid tale of abuse as an act of revenge against Mr. Weberman and against a religious community she found stifling and rulebound.

As proceedings began during the trial of Mr. Weberman, who is accused of 88 counts of sexual abuse of a minor, it became clear that the community itself, as well as Mr. Weberman, would undergo scrutiny during what is expected to be an emotional week of sexually explicit and culturally intricate testimony.

Both the prosecution and the defense informed the jury that the Satmar Hasidic community, to which Mr. Weberman and the girl belonged, was so rigid that questions from a young girl about something as simple as the proper length of a skirt could lead to mandatory counseling, and even expulsion from school. The accuser in this case, both sides said, was just that kind of girl: a free spirit whose questioning and challenges to authority landed her in trouble.

“She was going off the path,” said Kevin O’Donnell, an assistant district attorney. “She was being a little bit different.” In response, Mr. O’Donnell said, she was branded a “heretic” by her Satmar girls’ school, the United Talmudical Academy in Williamsburg, and her parents were required to send her to therapy.

What happened next is in dispute. The prosecution says that Mr. Weberman, the counselor whom the girl began seeing, forced the girl to perform oral sex on him on multiple occasions. He is also accused of touching her breasts and vagina during sessions, which were held mostly in his home office. The prosecution said he was unlicensed in any mental health profession.

“When you think about it,” Mr. O’Donnell said, the girl’s parents “were actually paying the defendant to have sex with their daughter,” which he did, “over and over again.”

The girl, who turns 18 next week, told a licensed counselor in 2011 at a new school outside of her neighborhood about the abuse allegations, and that counselor reported them, Mr. O’Donnell said. “She eventually got the courage to come forward,” he said.

Lawyers for Mr. Weberman, however, argue that the young woman fabricated the allegations because she was furious at Mr. Weberman for what she thought was a betrayal of her trust. At age 15, they said, she had revealed to Mr. Weberman that she had a boyfriend — a serious breach of the community’s stringent rules — and then, a defense lawyer said, she concluded that he told her parents about it.

“There was only one answer,” said George Farkas, the defense lawyer, “vengeance and revenge against Nechemya Weberman, and through this, to bring down the entire community that either supported him, or of which he was a part.”

Mr. Farkas also argued that the girl’s family had a business dispute with Mr. Weberman that may have also played a part in a desire for revenge.

Mr. Weberman’s accuser is expected to testify on Tuesday. Mr. Weberman is expected to take the stand in his own defense as early as Thursday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/27/nyregion/sexual-abuse-trial-of-nechemya-weberman-of-brooklyn-begins.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y&_r=0

14 life sentences for child rape for this "medical professional" & he does not live in Toronto

Uninformed sources claim that Dr. Bradley will be the "surprise" featured keynote guest speaker at this year's Agudath Israel convention - session will be moderated by David Zweibel, Avi Shafran and Lipa Margulies. Topic - Molesting Kids With A Kapittel Tehillim.

DOVER, Del. (AP) — A judge approved a $123 million settlement Monday in a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of young children who were sexually abused by former Delaware pediatrician Earl Bradley.

The settlement approved by New Castle County Superior Court Judge Joseph Slights III resolves claims against Beebe Medical Center, a southern Delaware hospital where Bradley had hospital privileges; the Medical Society of Delaware; and five physicians accused by the plaintiffs of not reporting suspicions about Bradley to authorities.

"Although no amount of monetary or non-monetary compensation can atone for Dr. Bradley's atrocities, the settlement approved today provides Dr. Bradley's victims with means by which to facilitate the healing process," wrote Slights, who held a fairness hearing on the settlement last week.

Bradley, 59, is serving 14 life sentences for child rape after being convicted last year by a judge who viewed more than 13 hours of homemade videos showing sex crimes against more than 80 victims.

Slights approved the settlement in the civil lawsuit after attorneys for the plaintiffs agreed to reduce their fees to 22.5 percent of the proposed settlement, down from 25 percent. Attorneys will receive about $27.8 million in fees and another $2.1 million in expenses, leaving about $90 million available for victims of Bradley. Beebe also has agreed to provide up to $1 million in medical care over 15 years to plaintiffs included in the lawsuit.

The judge agreed with attorneys that without the settlement, Beebe would be staring at bankruptcy while victims would face years of costly and uncertain litigation involving a "race to the courthouse" and young children would be compelled to talk about what happened to them.

"The settlement provides a sizable fund to compensate all victims injured by Dr. Bradley's abuse through an orderly claims administration process," Slights wrote in a 54-page opinion. "And it marks a welcomed early end to litigation that, once fully activated, would have caused great distress to class members, given the tender age of the victims and the vulgar nature of Dr. Bradley's treatment of them."

Thomas Rutter, a former Pennsylvania judge who served as a settlement arbitrator in the bankruptcy of the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington — a case prompted by liabilities stemming from abuse by pedophile priests — will serve as claims administrator in the Bradley case.

Rutter will be responsible for determining which claims have merit and for separating claimants into five categories, based upon the alleged harm suffered and the evidence presented. Children within each category would receive the same compensation, but it's unclear what the range of payments could be among categories.

Criteria for the five injury categories are:

— clear and convincing evidence of sexual intercourse;
— significant evidence of sexual abuse;
—evidence revealing a probability of sexual abuse;
—no evidence that would allow one to conclude that the child was abused;
—evidence that would allow one reasonably to conclude that the child was not abused.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs have received more than 900 potential claims. The deadline to submit a claim is Dec. 14, but attorneys have agreed to allow a late-filing period of 90 days for claimants who can demonstrate extraordinary circumstances. They also agreed to set aside $3 million from attorney fees to establish a fund to cover latent injury claims. Those claims would be allowed to be filed over the next five years on behalf of children who appear healthy now but later develop symptoms requiring medical or psychiatric treatment.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/11/19/delaware-child-abuse-case/1715867/

This case may turn out to be the worst ever seen involving the abuse of deaf children.

“I used to say that not every priest was an abuser, that there were some bad ones, but now I think that those who were not pedophiles must have known what was going on and they didn’t say anything. Damn them all.”

Lawsuit alleges dozens of clergy abused children at Montreal school for deaf

MONTREAL — Another chapter of Quebec’s dark history of the sexual abuse of children in church-run institutions was aired this week by Radio-Canada. But this was not just any chapter. It threatens to be one of the most horrifying in an already heartbreaking record.

It deals with the sexual abuse of young boys, already vulnerable because of their age but doubly or triply so because they were also deaf and mute. Their alleged abusers were educated men who promised to set the boys free from their silent world.

Clerical and lay members of a much-admired Roman Catholic teaching order, the Clercs de Saint-Viateur, these men did not set the boys free. The boys who say they were abused ended up in a living hell, terrified of telling anyone what was happening to them. They remained trapped in that hell in adulthood, unable to erase the grotesque images in their heads of masturbating priests and anal rape.

This case may turn out to be the worst ever seen involving the abuse of deaf children. Unlike the previous record, held by a single Roman Catholic priest, Lawrence Murphy of Wisconsin, in Quebec more than 30 clergy are alleged to have abused the deaf children in their care, sometimes one after another. (Murphy, who may have sexually assaulted as many as 200 children at a school for the deaf in Wisconsin, was denounced in 1996 to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. The Vatican took no action against Murphy, who died in 1998.)

In Quebec, the alleged victims of the Clercs de Saint-Viateur were given permission by Superior Court in March to pursue a class-action suit against the religious order. Named in the suit are 28 priests and brothers and six lay workers. More than 60 former students have signed on to the suit, all alleging sexual abuse. They are seeking $100,000 each in damages.

Radio-Canada’s investigative program Enquête called its program The Perfect Victims. The boys came as boarders to the only school for the deaf in the province at the age of 7 or 8. Many were thrilled to be at the school, where for the first time they would be taught to communicate with other children and learn to read and write.

Speaking of the abuse in public for the first time in his life, Denis Chalifoux told Radio-Canada that he arrived as an 8-year-old at the Institut pour des sourds de Montréal in 1968, happy to be with other deaf children. The happiness was not to last long. Within short order, Chalifoux found himself in a priest’s bedroom, with the priest’s penis in his face.

“I wanted my mother,” he said. “I so badly wanted to see my mother.”

Chalifoux said the abuse went on for years, until he left school at age 14, unable to read or write, fit for nothing but prostitution, he said. He worked as a prostitute until he was 30 and said he is haunted by that part of his life. He never told his parents about the abuse. He became hysterical every time he was forced to return to the school after a vacation, but according to his brother Marcel Chalifoux, the family put it down to homesickness. “I don’t think my parents would have believed him,” Marcel Chalifoux told Radio-Canada.

“Quebec was like Ireland,” said Carlo Tarini, communications director for a not-for-profit support group, the Association des victimes de prêtres. “The church totally dominated Quebec. It owned the hospitals and the schools. You didn’t have a prayer going up against a priest.”

Tarini thinks this domination may be in part why outside society failed to help the boys no matter how obvious it was that they were being abused. Former student Rock Savoie, who was at the institute in the late 1950s, told Radio-Canada he was anally raped a number of times. He would be sent to hospital with a torn anus, treated and then sent back to the institute. “The nurses gave me candy,” he said. (Savoie and Chalifoux communicated using sign language which an interpreter then translated into speech.)

Tarini said the allegations of abuse at the school stretch from 1942 to 1982.

“I used to say that not every priest was an abuser, that there were some bad ones, but now I think that those who were not pedophiles must have known what was going on and they didn’t say anything. Damn them all.”

Tarini also thinks the Clercs de Saint-Viateur have no right to the money they were paid, $7 million according to Radio-Canada, when they sold the former institute to a private developer. “That money was raised by the community,” said Tarini. “The priests would come around saying, ‘Give generously,’ and now they’re keeping the money.” The Clercs de Saint-Viateur did not respond to a request for reaction to the allegations aired on Radio-Canada.

France Bédard, 65, is helping to organize a protest demonstration Sunday by men and women who say they were abused by members of religious orders. She expects a large turnout. Bédard said she herself was raped by a priest and became pregnant as a 17-year-old when she worked in a presbytery. She did not see the son she gave birth to for 30 years.

As part of her own struggle for justice, during which she stumbled over a Quebec law requiring victims file complaints within a prescribed period, Bédard founded the association for victims of priests as a support network for victims. “Three times as many men call us as women,” said Bédard, who said that hundreds of victims have sought the association’s help. “These boys were abused while doing their studies,” she said. “That’s proof that priests were involved. They were the teachers. For men to come forward and say they were abused is very, very difficult. It raises the taboo of homosexuality. But what matters is to not be silent any longer.”

http://www.montrealgazette.com/literacy/raiseareader/Lawsuit+alleges+dozens+clergy+abused+children+Montreal+school+deaf/7602508/story.html#ixzz2DIaO1yMV

The prevalence of sexual abuse among all boys 17 and under has been variously estimated to be as low as 5 percent and as high as 16 percent.

In Close Relationship Between Player and Coach, Potential for Sexual Abuse

It was the summer before high school, and Christopher Gavagan, then 13, was preparing to leave the safe familiarity of the friends he had known during his boyhood. With a plan to excel at ice hockey, he began training on inline skates, moving through his New York City neighborhood, up and down the streets until, he said, “I turned down the wrong street.”

Gavagan, now a filmmaker, was one of eight panelists who participated Friday in a discussion about young athletes who have been sexually assaulted or abused by their coaches. The panel was part of the MaleSurvivor 13th International Conference, held this year at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The conference brought together men who have been sexually abused, as well as psychologists, social workers, academics and members of the legal community.

A dour procession of stories about sexual misconduct by coaches toward their male charges has come to light in recent months. Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant football coach at Penn State, was sentenced in October to 30 to 60 years in prison on 45 counts of child molesting. Sugar Ray Leonard wrote in his autobiography last year that he was sexually molested by an Olympic boxing coach. The N.H.L. players Theo Fleury and Sheldon Kennedy were sexually abused as teenagers by their hockey coach Graham James.

The prevalence of sexual abuse among all boys 17 and under has been variously estimated to be as low as 5 percent and as high as 16 percent. For some of the millions of children who participate in sports nationwide, and their parents, sexual assault in a sports context has its own dynamic.

“Sports is a place where parents send their boys to learn skills, to learn how to be teammates and how to work together — to make boys stronger and healthier,” said Dr. Howard Fradkin, author of “Joining Forces,” a book about how men can heal from sexual abuse. “It’s the place where we send our boys to grow up. The betrayal that occurs when abuse occurs in sports is damaging because it destroys the whole intent of what they started out to do.”

When Gavagan, now 38, turned down that fateful street, and stepped briefly into the house of a man recommended as a hockey coach by a couple of female acquaintances, what greeted him, he said, was “a young boy’s dream come true.”

The dream Gavagan glimpsed was embodied in the trophy room of the house.

“It was everything I wanted to be right there,” recalled Gavagan, who is working on a feature-length documentary on sexual abuse in youth sports, in which he interviews other sexual-abuse victims and his own attacker, against whom he has never pressed charges. In addition to the shiny relics that seemed to give testimony to the man’s coaching prowess, Gavagan said, the trophy room had pictures of hockey teams the man had coached and workout equipment — the physical tools promising the chance to get bigger and stronger.

“To a skinny 13-year-old, it was like winning the lottery,” Gavagan said.

Christopher Anderson, the executive director of MaleSurvivor, said sexual abuse — basically nonconsensual touching or sexual language — is devastating under any circumstance, but coach and player often have a special relationship.

“Especially as you progress higher and higher, the coach can become just as important in some ways to an athlete as the relationship with his parents might have,” Anderson said. “In some cases, it’s a substitute for parents.”

He added: “There’s also a fundamentally different power dynamic. When you’re a young star, the coach can literally make or break your career as an athlete.”

But caution has to extend beyond coaches who guide future Olympians, Gavagan said, noting that his coach was not of that caliber.

“The entire grooming process was so subtle,” Gavagan said. “It’s not like when I first went into his house that he tried to grope me.”

First, Gavagan said, the coach said it was all right to curse in that house. On another visit it was fine to have a beer, which led on another day to Playboy magazine and on subsequent days to harder pornography and harder liquor. It was six months before the coach laid an explicitly sexual hand on him, Gavagan said.

“I didn’t feel like a sudden red line had been crossed — the line had been blurred,” Gavagan said, explaining that he avoided his parents when he returned home with liquor on his breath by telling them he was exhausted and going straight to his room. (Unlike many sexual-abuse victims, Gavagan said his parents, with whom the coach had ingratiated himself, were supportive of their son, and his was a loving family. He said that if he had approached them about the coach, they would have listened.)

Another aspect of sexual abuse in sports is the environment, which emphasizes a kind of macho ethic.

“What is most different about abuse is the sports culture itself,” Fradkin said. “It is a culture that promotes teamwork and teaches boys to shrug it off. When a boy or man is abused, he risks being thrown off the team if he should speak the truth because he’ll be seen as being disloyal — and weak.”

At 17, after four years with his coach, Gavagan said he “aged out” of his coach’s target age.

“At the time I had no idea of how it would impact my life, but the unhealthy lessons about relations, trust and the truth set a time bomb that would detonate my relationships for the next 10 years,” Gavagan said.

As a word of caution, Anderson said the lesson for parents should not be that sports are dangerous.

“It should be that there are sometimes dangerous people who gravitate to sporting organizations and our safeguards aren’t good enough yet to adequately protect our children,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that we should be pulling our kids from soccer and baseball and basketball. What it means is that parents need to be vigilant.”

He added: “They need to be proactive with athletic organizations to make sure that policies are in place — such as doing criminal background checks on staff and having a procedure where young athletes can complain about inappropriate behavior — that make sure children are protected.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/19/sports/malesurvivor-conference-examines-sexual-abuse-in-sports.html?src=rechp

And Pray Tell What Say The Jews "The Light Unto The Nations"?

Four deaf Wisconsin men were some of the first to seek justice after suffering childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a priest, and a new documentary about the Catholic Church's poor handling of such cases stemming from the Vatican seeks to make their voices heard.

"Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God" explores the impact of the Roman Catholic Church's protocol as dictated from the Vatican for dealing with pedophile priests. It opened in U.S. cinemas on November 16, and will air on cable channel HBO in February.

Though American media coverage about child sex abuse by clergy has been extensive since a slew of cases came to light in Boston in 2002, Oscar-winning documentary director Alex Gibney wanted to connect individual stories with what he sees as systemic failures stemming from the top of the church.

"A lot of individual stories had been done about clerical sex abuse, but I hadn't seen one that really connected the individual stories with the larger cover-up by the Vatican, so that was important," Gibney told Reuters in an interview.

The film centers on the group of deaf men and their experiences as young boys attending St. John's School for the Deaf in St. Francis, Wisconsin.

In a letter to the Vatican in 1998, the late Rev. Father Lawrence Murphy admitted abusing some 200 deaf boys over two decades beginning in the 1950s.

Murphy claimed he had repented, and asked to live out his last years as a priest, and was never defrocked or punished by civil authorities. He died in 1998.

In the film, the men communicate their frustrating attempts to bring their experiences to the attention of religious and civil authorities with effusive sign language and facial expressions, paired with voiceovers by actors such as Ethan Hawke.

The film also traces a convoluted bureaucracy - right up to the cardinal who is now Pope Benedict - to reveal a set of policies that the film portrays as often seeming more interested in preserving the Church's image.

STRUGGLING TO BE HEARD

"These were deaf men whose voices literally couldn't be heard, so there was a silence from them, and there was also this silence coming from the church, a refusal to confront this obvious crime, in part because they were covering it up," said Gibney.

The Vatican has denied any cover-up in the Murphy case and in 2010 issued a statement condemning his abuse. It has criticized media reports about the Church's handling of the cases as anti-Catholic.

Contrasting that, the film shows interviews with former church officials who talk openly of church policies to handle cases by "rehabilitating" abusive clergymen and snuffing out scandal.

Gibney said that all of the Vatican officials he contacted declined his interview requests.

Raised Catholic himself, Gibney no longer practices organized religion, but empathizes with Catholics who feel a sense of loyalty to the religion's institutions and acknowledges that criticism of the church can feel like a personal attack.

"Mea Maxima Culpa," a Latin phrase meaning "my most grievous fault" focuses on the failures of the Catholic Church's hierarchy. But Gibney - who won an Oscar for "Taxi to the Dark Side" - said the film's theme transcends religion and is also relevant for secular institutions.

"This is obviously about the church, but it's also a crime film," he said. "It's about abuse of power and it's about how institutions instead of reckoning with problems try to cover them up. It's always the cover-up that creates the problem."

He cited the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal that rocked Penn State University recently, and the BBC's poor handling of abuse allegations against the late British TV personality Jimmy Savile as examples of secular institutions brought low by similar issues.

"The thing about predators is that they tend to hide in plain sight," Gibney said. "You're seeing it now with Sandusky, you're seeing it now with Jimmy Savile in Great Britain, and you saw it with Father Murphy in the film."

Gibney thinks that the public's stubbornly rosy perceptions of charismatic authority figures, including priests, is a major factor in such scandals.

"They're often involved in charity or good works," he said of high-profile abusers. "That seems to give you license to do unbelievable things because people cut you all sorts of slack that they wouldn't normally do for other people."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/16/entertainment-us-meamaximaculpa-idUSBRE8AF0PL20121116

Another Arrest In The Toronto Jewish Community For Child Sex-Abuse Today!

9:12 A.M.

Dr. Harvey Erlich

 The Toronto Police this morning arrested Harvey Erlich.  Erlich was the conductor of the Toronto Pirchei (Agudath Israel) Choir. This was the same choir with which Heshy Nussbaum was involved.

http://www.torontopolice.on.ca/newsreleases/

Nov 15, 2012, 05:00 pm Man Charged In Historical Sexual Assault Investigation, Harvey Erlich, 58, Police Believe There May Be More Victims
___________________________________________________

Danny Wool has left a new comment on your post "Another Arrest In The Toronto Jewish Community For...":

Let me be clear here. No one is talking about "commenc[ing] the destruction of a man and [I agree] more importantly, his family." I believe that a press release is forthcoming, and it is only a matter of time.

At the same time, I wish you would consider the lives that were already destroyed because of what happened, even if it was so long ago. Those scars are real.

In my yeshiva days I learned that chataim bein adam lehaveiro, Yom Kippur eino mechaper" (Yom Kippur does not atone for sins between people). As one of the victims (yes, I said it), I cannot even begin to think of forgiveness unless there is a full public confession of what happened, not just to me, but to everyone else who was victimized. I expect that from both the perpetrators yimach shemam (may their names be erased) because only then will I be able to begin the process of yimach zichram (may the memory of them and what they did be erased).

When I was in the choir we used to sing, Ivdu et Hashem besimha, bo'u lefanav birnana. These are words every Orthodox kid knows. They come from Psalms 100, and are recited every weekday as part of the morning prayer service. When I used to pray, I found them ironic. They tell us to serve God with happiness, but they always reminded me of the choir, and that always left me depressed.

As I grew older, I learned that this is what is called a trigger (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trauma_trigger). What a horrible realization that was--the very invocation to be happy, especially when serving God, actually evoked one of the most traumatic events of my life. By extension, the very act of prayer becomes a trigger--the very kind of thing that survivors learn to avoid.

To put matters into perspective, prayer was one of the things that was stolen from me by those two animals. And there was much, much more--things that can never be returned.

As for the silence from the community, shetika kehoda'a (silence is the equivalent of admission). I regard the Jewish community's silence as their admission of what happened and, by extension, of their acceptance of what happened too.

You asked, How can we know that the charges are true? There is one simple way. Ask the perpetrators. Demand that they tell you the truth, regardless of the consequences. The truth will come out anyway. They will be recognized for what they did. Maybe by admitting it now, they can, at least, begin to show the first signs of remorse.

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/torontopircheichoir

Had he used a modicum of his considerable power and call the police immediately, he could have saved countless other victims, the shame and damage to Penn State, and the tragedy of his own shattered end as a president.

A Shadow Across the Soul of the University




The scandal at Penn State is a shadow across the soul of the university, a bitter reminder that the president who fails to confront corruption will ultimately fail completely, taking down countless other people as he crashes into thousands of shards and clouds of dust.


I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away."

(Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias)

Seems like Shelley's traveller took a detour through Happy Valley. The shards of Graham Spanier's shattered presidency at Penn State litter the collegiate landscape. Yes, he is innocent until proven guilty, but the damage is done. He allegedly failed to stop Jerry Sandusky when he had the power do to so, and the knowledge about what was going on. The evidence detailed in the Pennsylvania grand jury presentment appears damning. The charges are appalling; the abuse of children is horrifying, the cover-up outrageous.

Nobody takes a college presidency expecting to wind up indicted, let alone accused of failing to protect children from sex abuse. The ruination of Spanier's once-hailed presidency is a chilling morality tale for the rest of us who dare to take responsibility for leading a university community.

I've been a college president for 24 years, and in that span of time I've come to know many amazingly dedicated and selfless leaders, a few remarkably incompetent managers, and more than a fair share of prickly egos whose out-sized lifestyles betray the real idea of the university. The near-deification of the university presidency in some places is a big part of the problem that not only led to the catastrophe at Penn State, but that also contributes to the myriad fractures in the facade of higher education today.

Treating the college president as a minor potentate is dangerous, but the illusion is pervasive and often carefully cultivated starting with the search process that treats finding the president as something akin to the Holy Grail. Then comes the contract negotiations with much attention to lavish perks --- houses, drivers, chefs, club memberships, the list goes on. But it doesn't stop there. The presidential inauguration, a grand medieval festival with presidential medallions and colorful costumes and even a mace, helps to ensure that the president's ego is sufficiently inflated to carry him or her through the challenging months and years to come.

Sensible people becoming college presidents can stay grounded even with all of that hoopla (and some of us chose to skip the hoopla years ago), but along come other, more insidious influences that can easily corrupt a once-thoughtful leader. A university is a place that does play by different rules, whose culture is heavily weighted in favor of individual autonomy and the careful cultivation of minor fiefdoms with their own rules and languages and customs, such as the athletics programs.

There's a somewhat small corporate culture in the university that the governing board is more likely to see, and against which the faculty may rail from time to time. But the more dominant culture is one of often fiercely-protected departments acting like private clubs and related interest groups. I've come to call this the "kiosks at the airport" syndrome in which many university departments act as quasi-independent entities, rejecting any notion of a more common university-wide interest other than finding convenient parking. Not only faculty, but even mid-level managers dismiss any effort at senior management oversight as the dreaded "micromanagement," which seems to be one of the worst offenses in the litany of executive sins.

The last thing a president wants to be accused of is micromanagement. Heavens! What could be worse?

Child abuse. Covering-up child abuse. Protecting the people who commit and cover-up child abuse.

When the Sandusky case first broke open in November 2011, it appeared that Spanier's worst offense was aloofness, a willful disengagement from the details. Good presidents, as some academic management theory would have it, don't need to know what goes on in the locker room. We have people for that.

If the evidence in the grand jury presentment is accurate, however, President Spanier allegedly did engage in selective micromanagement. He allegedly knew what was going on in the locker room, and he very personally and specifically approved the plan to cover it up.

All of this is in the grand jury presentment. In February 2001, Athletic Director Tim Curley wrote an email to Vice President Gary Schultz and Graham Spanier in which he retreated from reporting Sandusky's possible rape of a child to the Department of Welfare "after talking it over with Joe [Paterno] yesterday..." Instead, he wanted to talk directly to Sandusky. Spanier writes that Curley's approach is "acceptable" and "humane." His message does indicate awareness of potential future trouble: "The only downside for us is if the message isn't 'heard' and acted upon, and we then become vulnerable for not having reported it. But that can be assessed down the road."

Spanier now has a lot of time to assess how he could have been so wrong. He did not have the courage to stand up to Joe Paterno, that's clear, nor to his own deputies. He agreed to a "humane" solution for Jerry Sandusky but made no inquiry into justice for the children who were Sandusky's victims. Had he used a modicum of his considerable power to overrule Curley and direct him to call the police immediately, he could have saved countless other victims, the shame and damage to Penn State, and the tragedy of his own shattered end as a president.

College presidents need to have the guts to hold everyone on campus accountable, at minimum, for the highest ethical conduct and obeying the law, and to make it clear to all managers that holding people accountable is not micromanagement -- or if it is, so what?

University presidents cannot be afraid to exercise their considerable authority to insist that every department, including athletics, must follow the same rules when it comes to upholding and respecting human dignity -- whether the protection of children or the campus climate for women or hazing or fraternities that still think blackface is funny.

The real soul of a university resides in its ethical reverence for human life and dignity in all university endeavors. We have rules to protect human subject research, academic freedom and free expression, faculty on their way to promotion and tenure, students accused of misconduct, staff needing medical leave, people expecting freedom from harassment and abuse of all kinds. These rules bespeak our values, manifesting our idealistic goal to shape the best possible human community on our campus.

A president has many responsibilities but none so important as the stewardship of the climate for ethics and respect for human dignity without which the university loses its soul, becoming a mere shell for self-interested transactions among various interest groups.

The scandal at Penn State is a shadow across the soul of the university, a bitter reminder that the president who fails to confront corruption will ultimately fail completely, taking down countless other people as he crashes into thousands of shards and clouds of dust.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/patricia-mcguire/graham-spanier-charged_b_2072944.html

Down and Under Priest reveals system of child sexual abuse and cover-up

A former priest in Australia has come forward with information about a "system of cover-ups" within the Catholic Church to hide the sexual abuse of children.

Former priest Kevin Lee appeared on the Australian news program Lateline on Friday, November 9. On the program, Lee said he “saw a system of cover-ups, a system of blind-eye turning and just ignorance of the fact that it (the sexual abuse of children) was happening.”

Lee said: “"I became aware that some of the other priests were actually paedophiles and were not necessarily becoming priests because they wanted to help people, but because they were paedophiles who wanted the opportunity."

On Thursday, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox told Lateline that the Catholic Church in Australia is involved in cover-ups and pedophile priests have destroyed evidence to avoid prosecution. Fox claims that his investigations into the sexual abuse of children by clergy had been hampered by interference from within the police force and by the Catholic Church.

In response to the recent allegations concerning the rape and sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy, and the cover-up of those crimes, on Saturday, November 10, New South Wales Premier Barry O'Farrell ordered a special commission of inquiry into claims of a police cover-up of church sex abuse.

http://www.examiner.com/article/catholic-church-priest-reveals-system-of-child-sexual-abuse-and-cover-up

Australia to launch national investigation of child sex abuse - More Catholic Priests Down & Under!

Australia is launching a federal investigation into sexual abuse of children, Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced Monday. The decision came after a string of accusations surrounding the Roman Catholic Church outraged Australians and spurred regional inquiries.

The royal commission will center on institutional responses to allegations of such “insidious, evil acts,” Gillard said, scrutinizing religious and government institutions, schools and other organizations.

“I believe we must do everything we can to make sure that what has happened in the past is never allowed to happen again,” the prime minister said.

Government officials had faced growing pressure to take action after a veteran police detective in the state of New South Wales wrote a public letter accusing the church of covering up abuse, silencing victims and thwarting police investigations.

“Many police are frustrated by this sinister behavior, which will continue until someone stops it. You have the power to do that, Mr. Premier,” Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox wrote in his open letter to the leader of New South Wales. “The whole system needs to be exposed; the clergy covering up these crimes must to be brought to justice and the network protecting pedophile priests dismantled.”

Responding to his plea, New South Wales Premier Barry O'Farrell earlier announced a special commission to delve into the issue, but only in the Newcastle area. Similar allegations are also being investigated in neighboring Victoria state, where the church recently revealed at least 620 children had been abused by clergy since the 1930s.

Fox argued local investigations weren’t enough because alleged abusers were often moved. Gillard showed “intestinal fortitude” by deciding to investigate nationally, he told the Australian newspaper.

"For a prime minister to come out and say, 'We believe you, there is something very wrong out there, we are going to sit up and listen,' it's just amazing," he said.

The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference said it welcomed the investigation and was horrified by such crimes but said “talk of a systemic problem of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church is ill-founded and inconsistent with the facts.” Major changes have been made since “failures” decades earlier, it said.

"Public opinion remains unconvinced that the Catholic Church has dealt adequately with sexual abuse. Ongoing and at times one-sided media coverage has deepened this uncertainty. … I believe the air should be cleared and the truth uncovered,” Sydney Archbishop Cardinal George Pell said in a statement released Monday.

Gillard said more details of the royal commission would be determined in the following weeks.

http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-australia-child-sex-abuse-investigation-20121112,0,4286907.story

Why Your Child Must Be Believed - And The Adult Must Be Suspect

Complaint Ignored for Decades Is Heard at Last in BBC Abuse

At least six former students have told the British news media that Mr. Savile assaulted them in places that included his Rolls-Royce and the school’s dormitories, and in London on school-approved “treats.” ‘If he gets the chance, he’ll touch you up. He’ll put his hand up your skirt, his hand up your shirt, he’ll pinch your bum, he’ll stick his tongue down your throat.’ ” Finally, the day before ITV, a British television network, broadcast the documentary that exposed the allegations against Mr. Savile, The Sun went ahead with an article about Ms. Cogger. But she is still haunted by what happened, and by the years of having to bear it alone. “They pimped us out,” she said of the teachers at Duncroft. “He was a big, powerful man with a big voice, and we had no voices.”

LONDON — No one listened to Deborah Cogger’s story. Not her teachers, who dismissed it as no big deal. Not her social worker, who accused her of making it up. Not the newspapers she called decades later, which said it was too explosive to publish. Deborah Cogger was a teenager in reform school where, she says, Jimmy Savile molested her and others.

It was not until this fall, nearly 40 years after she left a reform school in Surrey, England, that Ms. Cogger finally got anyone to believe her account of how she and other girls there were routinely molested by one of Britain’s most powerful celebrities, the eccentric, cigar-chomping television host Jimmy Savile.

“If you moaned about it, you were told not to say those awful things about Jimmy — ‘Oh, that’s just Jimmy, that’s his way; he loves you girls,’ ” said Ms. Cogger, 52. If you said he had touched your breasts, she added, “they’d say, ‘Don’t be wicked, he would never do that.’ ”

The revelation last month that Mr. Savile, who died last year, was most likely a child sex abuser with perhaps hundreds of victims has profoundly shocked a country that now acknowledges that all the signs were there, if anyone had cared to see them.

The disclosures have spurred a broad criminal inquiry involving numerous police departments and caused institutions, including schools, hospitals and the BBC, to investigate their ties to Mr. Savile. The disclosures have also provoked a crisis of management and responsibility inside the BBC and forced Prime Minister David Cameron to order two new inquiries into the handling of a sexual abuse scandal in Wales several years ago.

Hundreds of people have reported their own experiences to abuse hot lines. In addition, profound senses of discomfort and guilt were felt among those who knew, hired, admired, watched, welcomed, solicited charity from or cheerfully put young people in the path of Mr. Savile. And on Saturday, the chief executive of the BBC, George Entwistle, became the latest casualty, resigning after an uproar over a BBC program on the Wales scandal that wrongly implicated a former Conservative Party politician.

The disclosures have also highlighted how much Britain’s attitude toward sexual abuse has changed since Mr. Savile’s heyday, in the 1970s and ’80s, a time when it was not uncommon for women to be groped and harassed at work, and when show business celebrities openly leered at, if not preyed on, the teenage girls who idolized them.

“There was a massive cultural difference then,” said Donald Findlater, director of Stop It Now, which works to prevent child sex abuse. “We hadn’t really properly discovered child abuse yet.”

But, along with increasingly strict legislation, attitudes have swung drastically in the other direction — to a fault, some believe. In Britain, police background checks are now required of anyone working with children, including parents who volunteer in schools. Teachers are advised not to be alone with students and to be wary of touching them.

Some playgrounds refuse admission to adults without children. Some schools forbid parents to photograph sports events or plays, lest the pictures end up in the wrong places. In 2000, a tabloid antipedophile campaign led to vigilante attacks in which, at one point, a crowd confused the words pedophile and pediatrician and vandalized the home of an innocent doctor.

Given the current climate, it is hard to believe that Mr. Savile could have gotten away with so much for so long, even in a society burdened by collective, willful blindness. But the account of Ms. Cogger shows how for victims, the abuse was compounded by the realization that anyone who complained would be ignored, scoffed at or punished.

Ms. Cogger is not the only one from the reform school, the Duncroft Approved School for Girls, to have come forward with a tale of what Mr. Savile did and how he got away with it. At least six former students have told the British news media that Mr. Savile assaulted them in places that included his Rolls-Royce and the school’s dormitories, and in London on school-approved “treats.”

“Jimmy treated Duncroft like a pedophile sweet shop,” one former student, Toni Townsend, told The Daily Mirror.

In 2007, the Surrey police investigated Mr. Savile’s conduct at Duncroft, even detaining and questioning him. But he was never charged.

Duncroft, which closed in the 1980s — it is now a luxury apartment complex — was a privately run boarding school, operating under state control, for academically promising but unruly girls. Ms. Cogger was sent there in 1974, when she was 14.

Her childhood was chaotic. When she was 12, she explained in several telephone interviews, she overheard a shocking family secret: the woman she thought was her mother was actually her aunt. Ms. Cogger’s real mother, one of 13 children at home, had given birth at 15 and relinquished the baby to her older sister.

The disclosure sent her into a dark period. “I just kept running away,” Ms. Cogger said. “They put me in Duncroft because no one wanted me.....”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/world/europe/long-ago-jimmy-savile-abuse-complaint-is-heeded.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y&_r=0