EVERY SIGNATURE MATTERS - THIS BILL MUST PASS!
CLICK - GOAL - 100,000 NEW SIGNATURES! 75,000 SIGNATURES HAVE ALREADY BEEN SUBMITTED TO GOVERNOR CUOMO!
EFF Urges Court to Block Dragnet Subpoenas Targeting Online Commenters
CLICK! For the full motion to quash: http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/hersh_v_cohen/UOJ-motiontoquashmemo.pdf
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
WILLFUL BLINDNESS - "If It Was Dangerous, Somebody Would Have Told Us!"
"85% of people know there is a problem, but do NOTHING!"
Watch it - Pass it around to everyone on the Planet!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willful_blindness
Reality is the obligation to tell the truth, “the reality most people would recognize” is the imperative, if they witness improper or unlawful behaviour, to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
http://www.iveybusinessjournal.com/topics/leadership/willful-blindness-when-a-leader-turns-a-blind-eye
Mortal Sins, a MUST READ New Book, for All Conscious Human Beings - Jews Included!
WICKED OLD MEN AT WAR WITH THE TRUTH
Pulitzer Prize winning writer Michael D'Antonio deserves another one. Another Pulitzer prize, that is, for his new book, "Mortal Sins: Sex, Crime and the Era of Catholic Scandal." This work is a 343 page offering that with a flick of a switch floods light onto the dark side of the sex abuse scandals within the Catholic Church.
As D'Antonio reveals, the 2,000-year-old church, with its culture of secrecy and unlimited resources, covered-up thousands of cases of clergy abuse for over three decades. Bishops and cardinals used their influence at the highest levels of society around the world to suppress criminal investigations and deny victims both compensation and access to the truth.
The full story of the scandal is told for the first time as D'Antonio follows three major figures in the movement for victims' rights - a lawyer named Jeffrey Anderson, a victim named Barbara Blaine, and a whistleblower priest named Rev. Thomas Doyle who sacrifices his career to the cause of children who had been raped and molested by ordained men.
In D'Antonio's telling, Anderson and Doyle emerge as complex men who fought their own demons, including alcoholism and self doubt, to prevail in a thirty year fight. Blaine is transformed from a loyal Catholic social service worker into a fierce international advocate. Near the end of the tale she leads a group of victims from around the world to the International Criminal Court at The Hague to file lodge formal charges of crimes against humanity in a case that names the worldwide church, the pope, and Vatican officials as defendants.
Among church officials few seem capable of grasping the trauma experienced by people who were sexually abused as children. As one bishop tells Anderson, in a deposition, "little boys heal." Then he goes on to discuss his worry and concern for the fate of the priest who will be publicly charged with sexual assault on a child.
Disturbing as some of the details may be, Mortal Sins is not an overly troubling book to read. Though non-fiction, it reads with the drama of a novel, or perhaps a detective story, and much of the tale is inspirational and surprising. Of particular note are the off-hours antics of some lawyers, including a gator-shooting Cajun who sued the Diocese of Lafayette, and the guerilla activities of victims/activists who won' rest until their cause is known to the world.
Ultimately, as Mortal Sins reveals, a worldwide human rights movement developed as victims came forward in dozens of countries. In America alone, roughly 500 priests have been imprisoned and more than $2 billion has been paid to settle lawsuits. And yet the revelations keep coming in the United States, Ireland, Latin America and beyond. Indeed, as Pope Benedict XVI recently resigned - becoming the first pope to step down in more than five centuries - his papacy became yet another victim in this scandal-without-end. Implicated in many cover-ups and unable to stop the revelations or reform the church, Benedict's "fatigue" was, no doubt, the product of these failures.
If you think you know the story of the sexual abuse scandal and the crisis it has created in the worldwide Catholic Church you probably do not. If you read this book, it will become clear to you in all is astonishing, tragic, and ultimately inspiring complexity. It's hard to imagine a more compelling read than this tale of a patriarchal monarchy at war with the truth.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michealene-cristini-risley/mortal-sins-a-must-read-n_b_3118308.html
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
European Rabbis: Stop child abuse cover up
Following an increase in the incidence of child abuse in Jewish communities throughout Europe, called the Council of European Rabbis to stop religious educational institutions.
Council of European Rabbis met this week and called for religious educational institutions and religious communities to stop coveirng up the assaults against children and against women in their communities. Earlier this week, a conference was held in Paris, rabbinical council of Europe, including the rabbis of countries and cities across Europe. Present at one of the main issues was child abuse in different communities, sexual abuse and violence against students.
Rabbinical Council did not enter details of cases in which they discussed, but they decided to call to put an end to the phenomenon of silencing. Recently made headlines a number of cases of child abuse, when in question of which is the arrest of four ultra-Orthodox community rabbis in London on suspicion of sexual abuse by one of them, and disrupt the investigation by the other three.
According to reports, the number of women who have a consultation with Rabbi Chaim Halpern judge later claimed that he sexually harassed them. First cases were published, but all attempts to deal with the issue in the community were unsuccessful. Several months ago, the police began to investigate the matter, an investigation led to the arrest of four: the main suspect, his brother and two other politicians close to him. According to reports, there are approximately 30 women affected by Halperin in counseling given to them.
At that time was published a number of other matters in London of child sexual abuse in the community were examined and questioned by London police. According to a source close to the Rabbinical Council, the community in Paris were quite a few instances of abuse of minors. There were also a number of cases in the haredi community in Manchester and Amsterdam.
"The rabbis see these symptoms very seriously"
Council of European Rabbis decided, as stated, to instruct all educational institutions to stop whitewashing affairs of this kind and treat each one professionally. It was reported that for this purpose it was decided to establish a committee, it shall appoint Rabbi Benjamin Jacobs Shlita, Chief Rabbi of the Netherlands and Rabbi Yitzchak Rubin Shlita - the most prominent rabbis in Manchester and Chairman of the counties of England to rabbis will stand in connection with educational institutions and help give advice and guidance in cases of abuse.
According to Vice President of Rabbi Aryeh Goldberg, "The rabbis see these symptoms very seriously and the focus was to stop covering up cases of abuse." They were called to turn to professionals and even the police so that the matter will be handled. Goldberg explains that in some countries there are professionals in the community that they are responsible for the treatment of sex offenders, in coordination with the police.
http://www.mintmark.co.il/walla/ExpandedItem.aspx?WallaId=1/0/2633779&ItemType=100&VerticalId=2
Council of European Rabbis met this week and called for religious educational institutions and religious communities to stop coveirng up the assaults against children and against women in their communities. Earlier this week, a conference was held in Paris, rabbinical council of Europe, including the rabbis of countries and cities across Europe. Present at one of the main issues was child abuse in different communities, sexual abuse and violence against students.
Rabbinical Council did not enter details of cases in which they discussed, but they decided to call to put an end to the phenomenon of silencing. Recently made headlines a number of cases of child abuse, when in question of which is the arrest of four ultra-Orthodox community rabbis in London on suspicion of sexual abuse by one of them, and disrupt the investigation by the other three.
According to reports, the number of women who have a consultation with Rabbi Chaim Halpern judge later claimed that he sexually harassed them. First cases were published, but all attempts to deal with the issue in the community were unsuccessful. Several months ago, the police began to investigate the matter, an investigation led to the arrest of four: the main suspect, his brother and two other politicians close to him. According to reports, there are approximately 30 women affected by Halperin in counseling given to them.
At that time was published a number of other matters in London of child sexual abuse in the community were examined and questioned by London police. According to a source close to the Rabbinical Council, the community in Paris were quite a few instances of abuse of minors. There were also a number of cases in the haredi community in Manchester and Amsterdam.
"The rabbis see these symptoms very seriously"
Council of European Rabbis decided, as stated, to instruct all educational institutions to stop whitewashing affairs of this kind and treat each one professionally. It was reported that for this purpose it was decided to establish a committee, it shall appoint Rabbi Benjamin Jacobs Shlita, Chief Rabbi of the Netherlands and Rabbi Yitzchak Rubin Shlita - the most prominent rabbis in Manchester and Chairman of the counties of England to rabbis will stand in connection with educational institutions and help give advice and guidance in cases of abuse.
According to Vice President of Rabbi Aryeh Goldberg, "The rabbis see these symptoms very seriously and the focus was to stop covering up cases of abuse." They were called to turn to professionals and even the police so that the matter will be handled. Goldberg explains that in some countries there are professionals in the community that they are responsible for the treatment of sex offenders, in coordination with the police.
http://www.mintmark.co.il/walla/ExpandedItem.aspx?WallaId=1/0/2633779&ItemType=100&VerticalId=2
Sunday, April 14, 2013
On Hitting Bottom - the darkest moments of his life -- from the sexual abuse he suffered at age 8
"I got in a car and attached a garden hose to the tail pipe, ran it into the driver-side window and rolled the garden hose up in the window and packed a towel around the garden hose, so the monoxide couldn't leak out. And I had my hand right on the car key. And I was a second away from starting it up."
"R.A.'s story is more than a story about baseball," 60 Minutes producer Rich Bonin told us. "It's a story about life." During R.A. Dickey's emotional 60 Minutes interview, the great knuckleball pitcher talked openly about the darkest moments of his life -- from the sexual abuse he suffered at age 8 to his depression and the extramarital affair that almost ended his marriage. In this week's 60 Minutes Overtime, you'll hear Dickey share something he's never discussed in public before: how close he came to ending his own life.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504803_162-57579440-10391709/r.a-dickey-on-the-moment-he-hit-rock-bottom/
"R.A.'s story is more than a story about baseball," 60 Minutes producer Rich Bonin told us. "It's a story about life." During R.A. Dickey's emotional 60 Minutes interview, the great knuckleball pitcher talked openly about the darkest moments of his life -- from the sexual abuse he suffered at age 8 to his depression and the extramarital affair that almost ended his marriage. In this week's 60 Minutes Overtime, you'll hear Dickey share something he's never discussed in public before: how close he came to ending his own life.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504803_162-57579440-10391709/r.a-dickey-on-the-moment-he-hit-rock-bottom/
Thursday, April 11, 2013
For God’s Sake --- Circumcision, herpes, and religious freedom
The idea that a grown man would put his mouth on an infant’s penis is rather disturbing under pretty much any circumstance. Yet according to an understanding of Jewish law that has more than a little support within parts of the Hasidic and ultra-Orthodox communities, that is a necessary part of the blood drawing required in Jewish ritual circumcision.
Tragically, two infants in New York were recently infected with herpes after undergoing a circumcision ceremony which included the oral blood drawing. Of course, post-surgical infections, many far worse than those suffered by the two babies in question, occur in hospitals every day across this country, so why is this story being covered in the national media?
I can think of at least three important reasons why this story is news -- each instructive, not only regarding the ongoing debate about circumcision, but about the dangers of religious fanaticism and the meaning of religious freedom in America.
First, the story catches our attention because it is a story of religion gone awry -- a topic of constant interest, especially with an American media that is both fascinated with faith, and yet seems to delight in mocking or unmasking those who practice it in ways deemed “unenlightened.” And of course, this story gets our attention because of it’s sexual, and potentially pedophilic, overtones.
Does anyone really think that if the blood was drawn from the infants’ fingers, even by mouth, the stories of subsequent infection would garner as much attention? Does anyone think that the debates over circumcision in general would be as fierce, and fiercely emotional, were some other part of the anatomy involved? The answer is obvious.
All that said, the second reason this story deserves our attention is because it is genuinely disturbing that this practice continues despite the clear evidence that the practice itself is dangerous. In fact, according to many religious authorities the practice is not only unnecessary, but actually prohibited precisely because of the evidence that it is harmful to the babies.
So however scintillating the story may be, it is also an important episode about a serious breakdown within religious community. The fierce attachment to oral bloodletting may well reflect a dangerous approach to faith which can be found, not only among some segments of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, but among practitioners of every faith I know.
This is a story about the dangers of confusing belief in the perfection of a tradition and its institutions -- an entirely reasonable claim made by many traditional adherents in many different faiths -- with the arrogant presumption that the way any particular group practices their faith is, by definition, perfect and above critique.
One need not be ashamed or uncomfortable about a tradition that was practiced in good conscience for millennia in the absence of any evidence that it was actually harmful. I appreciate, and even respect, fierce attachment to a tradition.
Actively refusing however, to take steps that mitigate a clear and present danger to members of one’s own community, especially when alternative means to honor the tradition can be found, is both dangerous, and not really even about defending the practice in question. In fact, the community which practices this form of oral blood letting is part of a rich and nuanced legal tradition which has long found creative solutions to living with new medical knowledge which impacts their observance. This is, I fear, about something else.
This has become, whether those involved in the fight realize it our not, less about cutting penises, and more about thumbing noses. For me, that is the most disturbing part of this whole story. This has become a case of celebrating rejectionism as a means of defining community -- a dangerous approach when practiced in any community, faith-based or otherwise.
Those who defend the practice cite their “right” to define their own norms of religious practice regardless of what anyone else has to say. And though I am a staunch supporter of religious freedom, and a committed defender of religiously-mandated infant circumcision, I don’t hesitate to declare that those who defend oral blood letting are wrong about their rights, which is the third reason this story demands our attention.
The test of our commitment to religious freedom is at precisely those moments when the practice in question is unpopular. That right however, was never meant to include failing to mitigate known dangers to children who cannot otherwise defend themselves. And it certainly does not include a parent’s “right” to refuse to acknowledge, as required by New York State law, which allows the practice, that by practicing oral blood letting parents are putting their children at greatly-increased risk of contracting a serious and otherwise preventable infection.
As with the protection and expression of most freedoms, the protection of religious freedom is a delicate balancing act -- trying to honor the rights of practitioners, those impacted by their practices, and the greater good of the larger community in which they take part.
While I have no doubt that we will continue to have much debate about circumcision in general, this is one practice whose potential dangers must be admitted by those who practice it. Ritual circumcisors must be more carefully supervised, even if we can not agree that it is a practice that should be stopped altogether. That approach would return some balance to a situation that seems pretty clearly unbalanced to me.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/circumcision-herpes-and-religious-freedom/2013/04/10/a0336d0e-a202-11e2-82bc-511538ae90a4_story.html
Submitted by : http://survivorsforjustice.org/
Tragically, two infants in New York were recently infected with herpes after undergoing a circumcision ceremony which included the oral blood drawing. Of course, post-surgical infections, many far worse than those suffered by the two babies in question, occur in hospitals every day across this country, so why is this story being covered in the national media?
I can think of at least three important reasons why this story is news -- each instructive, not only regarding the ongoing debate about circumcision, but about the dangers of religious fanaticism and the meaning of religious freedom in America.
First, the story catches our attention because it is a story of religion gone awry -- a topic of constant interest, especially with an American media that is both fascinated with faith, and yet seems to delight in mocking or unmasking those who practice it in ways deemed “unenlightened.” And of course, this story gets our attention because of it’s sexual, and potentially pedophilic, overtones.
Does anyone really think that if the blood was drawn from the infants’ fingers, even by mouth, the stories of subsequent infection would garner as much attention? Does anyone think that the debates over circumcision in general would be as fierce, and fiercely emotional, were some other part of the anatomy involved? The answer is obvious.
All that said, the second reason this story deserves our attention is because it is genuinely disturbing that this practice continues despite the clear evidence that the practice itself is dangerous. In fact, according to many religious authorities the practice is not only unnecessary, but actually prohibited precisely because of the evidence that it is harmful to the babies.
So however scintillating the story may be, it is also an important episode about a serious breakdown within religious community. The fierce attachment to oral bloodletting may well reflect a dangerous approach to faith which can be found, not only among some segments of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, but among practitioners of every faith I know.
This is a story about the dangers of confusing belief in the perfection of a tradition and its institutions -- an entirely reasonable claim made by many traditional adherents in many different faiths -- with the arrogant presumption that the way any particular group practices their faith is, by definition, perfect and above critique.
One need not be ashamed or uncomfortable about a tradition that was practiced in good conscience for millennia in the absence of any evidence that it was actually harmful. I appreciate, and even respect, fierce attachment to a tradition.
Actively refusing however, to take steps that mitigate a clear and present danger to members of one’s own community, especially when alternative means to honor the tradition can be found, is both dangerous, and not really even about defending the practice in question. In fact, the community which practices this form of oral blood letting is part of a rich and nuanced legal tradition which has long found creative solutions to living with new medical knowledge which impacts their observance. This is, I fear, about something else.
This has become, whether those involved in the fight realize it our not, less about cutting penises, and more about thumbing noses. For me, that is the most disturbing part of this whole story. This has become a case of celebrating rejectionism as a means of defining community -- a dangerous approach when practiced in any community, faith-based or otherwise.
Those who defend the practice cite their “right” to define their own norms of religious practice regardless of what anyone else has to say. And though I am a staunch supporter of religious freedom, and a committed defender of religiously-mandated infant circumcision, I don’t hesitate to declare that those who defend oral blood letting are wrong about their rights, which is the third reason this story demands our attention.
The test of our commitment to religious freedom is at precisely those moments when the practice in question is unpopular. That right however, was never meant to include failing to mitigate known dangers to children who cannot otherwise defend themselves. And it certainly does not include a parent’s “right” to refuse to acknowledge, as required by New York State law, which allows the practice, that by practicing oral blood letting parents are putting their children at greatly-increased risk of contracting a serious and otherwise preventable infection.
As with the protection and expression of most freedoms, the protection of religious freedom is a delicate balancing act -- trying to honor the rights of practitioners, those impacted by their practices, and the greater good of the larger community in which they take part.
While I have no doubt that we will continue to have much debate about circumcision in general, this is one practice whose potential dangers must be admitted by those who practice it. Ritual circumcisors must be more carefully supervised, even if we can not agree that it is a practice that should be stopped altogether. That approach would return some balance to a situation that seems pretty clearly unbalanced to me.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/circumcision-herpes-and-religious-freedom/2013/04/10/a0336d0e-a202-11e2-82bc-511538ae90a4_story.html
Submitted by : http://survivorsforjustice.org/
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Aleinu Can Never Be Trusted Again! One Strike And Your Out!
Fox takes instruction from long time pedophile protector Shmuel Kaminetzky of Agudath Israel infamy! Kaminetzky lies and Fox tries!
A Los Angeles Jewish welfare group has rejected an Australian media report it shielded a self-confessed pedophile being investigated for abusing boys in Sydney.
The report in Fairfax newspapers on Wednesday alleged Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles was harbouring the man, who was not named for legal reasons.
The assaults, said to have happened at Bondi's Yeshiva school in the 1980s, are being investigated by NSW detectives.
"The child abuse suspect at the centre of Australian media reports was neither a client nor an employee of Jewish Family Service or its Aleinu program," the Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles said in a statement.
"Because of the controversy surrounding this issue, Jewish Family Service needs to set the record straight."
The Jewish Family Service said the Aleinu Family Resource Center pioneered a premier child abuse education and awareness program, Safety Kid, and the employee identified in the Fairfax report, Debbie Fox, was a nationally recognised expert on the prevention of child abuse within the orthodox community.
The report referred to an email Ms Fox allegedly wrote to the alleged pedophile in 2011 that said: "I have no idea how anyone found out - but calls are coming daily from many sources. So far, we've been protecting you."
The Jewish Family Service said Ms Fox was contacted by a victim requesting assistance connecting with the local Rabbinic Council in Los Angeles, and at the victim's request, she served as a liaison between the council, the victim, and the alleged perpetrator.
"There was nothing reportable to law enforcement because Ms Fox was never made directly aware of specific incidents that had occurred in Australia decades earlier, nor did the alleged perpetrator admit to her to any crimes or specific actions," the statement said.
"At no time did Aleinu staff ever shield a suspect from local or international law enforcement in any way whatsoever, nor would they ever do so.
"Rather, Aleinu staff follows all mandated reporting laws to the letter, working closely with local law enforcement, without exception."
http://m.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/la-jewish-group-rejects-pedophile-report/story-fn3dxix6-1226617325183
A Los Angeles Jewish welfare group has rejected an Australian media report it shielded a self-confessed pedophile being investigated for abusing boys in Sydney.
The report in Fairfax newspapers on Wednesday alleged Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles was harbouring the man, who was not named for legal reasons.
The assaults, said to have happened at Bondi's Yeshiva school in the 1980s, are being investigated by NSW detectives.
"The child abuse suspect at the centre of Australian media reports was neither a client nor an employee of Jewish Family Service or its Aleinu program," the Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles said in a statement.
"Because of the controversy surrounding this issue, Jewish Family Service needs to set the record straight."
The Jewish Family Service said the Aleinu Family Resource Center pioneered a premier child abuse education and awareness program, Safety Kid, and the employee identified in the Fairfax report, Debbie Fox, was a nationally recognised expert on the prevention of child abuse within the orthodox community.
The report referred to an email Ms Fox allegedly wrote to the alleged pedophile in 2011 that said: "I have no idea how anyone found out - but calls are coming daily from many sources. So far, we've been protecting you."
The Jewish Family Service said Ms Fox was contacted by a victim requesting assistance connecting with the local Rabbinic Council in Los Angeles, and at the victim's request, she served as a liaison between the council, the victim, and the alleged perpetrator.
"There was nothing reportable to law enforcement because Ms Fox was never made directly aware of specific incidents that had occurred in Australia decades earlier, nor did the alleged perpetrator admit to her to any crimes or specific actions," the statement said.
"At no time did Aleinu staff ever shield a suspect from local or international law enforcement in any way whatsoever, nor would they ever do so.
"Rather, Aleinu staff follows all mandated reporting laws to the letter, working closely with local law enforcement, without exception."
http://m.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/la-jewish-group-rejects-pedophile-report/story-fn3dxix6-1226617325183
Tuesday, April 09, 2013
Debbie Fox - What In The World Are You Thinking!
Jewish welfare group knows it is sheltering a paedophile
A self-confessed paedophile who sexually abused several boys in Sydney is being harboured by a leading Los Angeles Jewish welfare group.
The man, who is being investigated by NSW detectives over several sexual assaults at Bondi's Yeshiva school in the 1980s, has been shielded from exposure and scrutiny by Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles.
The service, more than 150 years old, provides medical, housing, food, counselling, educational and family support services.
Emails obtained from US sources show that since mid-2011 its board members have been aware of the man's sexual abuse history in Australia but have not reported him to authorities in Sydney or the US.
In an email to the man in November 2011, Debbie Fox, executive director of the Los Angeles organisation, refers to phone calls to board members about his activities in Sydney.
''I have no idea how anyone found out - but calls are coming daily from many sources. So far, we've been protecting you.''
The revelation that a big Jewish organisation in the US is protecting a known paedophile comes at a time when orthodox communities around the world are being challenged about their historical preference for handling of child sex abuse cases internally rather than involving the police.
The man is central to the controversy surrounding Bondi's Yeshiva community and some of Australia's most senior rabbis.
Emails show the Jewish Family Service conducted an ''evaluation'' of the man, who is not being named for legal reasons, to see if he was still a risk to children.
The evaluation included assessments by doctors and psychologists, and the man undertaking a lie detector test.
In her email, Ms Fox expressed frustration at how long the man was taking to complete the process, writing ''we have NEVER had any evaluation take nearly this long.
''For your security - you must complete it and we must get the evaluation report and recommendations,'' she wrote.
It is believed the man did not pass the evaluation and remains under strict controls to prevent his being with children unsupervised. Ms Fox did not respond to questions.
The emails show the man's history as a sexual abuser has not been made known to most members of the Jewish community he mixes with in LA. Close members of his family in Australia and the US are also understood to be unaware of his past.
It was revealed this year during a recent conversation with one of his victims that the man admitted to regular and serious sexual abuse of several boys in the 1980s.
NSW police are understood to have a recording of this conversation. In it, the man says Yeshiva's spiritual leader Rabbi Pinchus Feldman confronted him about a sexual abuse incident in the mid-1980s.
In February, Rabbi Feldman released a statement saying he had no recollection of anyone confessing to child sexual abuse 25 years ago and that he encouraged anyone with knowledge of such crimes to go to the police.
The man who admitted to sexually abusing boys at Yeshiva left Sydney to find a wife in Los Angeles. But after a few weeks he returned to Sydney and continued sexually abusing boys. He eventually settled in Los Angeles.
The head of the Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia, Moshe Gutnick, said last month that he had received an anonymous phone call about 25 years ago from a boy who claimed to have been sexually abused by the man.
Rabbi Gutnick said, with hindsight, he should have alerted police. But he had told senior leaders of the Yeshiva community.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/jewish-welfare-group-knows-it-is-sheltering-a-paedophile-20130409-2hjer.html
A self-confessed paedophile who sexually abused several boys in Sydney is being harboured by a leading Los Angeles Jewish welfare group.
The man, who is being investigated by NSW detectives over several sexual assaults at Bondi's Yeshiva school in the 1980s, has been shielded from exposure and scrutiny by Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles.
The service, more than 150 years old, provides medical, housing, food, counselling, educational and family support services.
Emails obtained from US sources show that since mid-2011 its board members have been aware of the man's sexual abuse history in Australia but have not reported him to authorities in Sydney or the US.
In an email to the man in November 2011, Debbie Fox, executive director of the Los Angeles organisation, refers to phone calls to board members about his activities in Sydney.
''I have no idea how anyone found out - but calls are coming daily from many sources. So far, we've been protecting you.''
The revelation that a big Jewish organisation in the US is protecting a known paedophile comes at a time when orthodox communities around the world are being challenged about their historical preference for handling of child sex abuse cases internally rather than involving the police.
The man is central to the controversy surrounding Bondi's Yeshiva community and some of Australia's most senior rabbis.
Emails show the Jewish Family Service conducted an ''evaluation'' of the man, who is not being named for legal reasons, to see if he was still a risk to children.
The evaluation included assessments by doctors and psychologists, and the man undertaking a lie detector test.
In her email, Ms Fox expressed frustration at how long the man was taking to complete the process, writing ''we have NEVER had any evaluation take nearly this long.
''For your security - you must complete it and we must get the evaluation report and recommendations,'' she wrote.
It is believed the man did not pass the evaluation and remains under strict controls to prevent his being with children unsupervised. Ms Fox did not respond to questions.
The emails show the man's history as a sexual abuser has not been made known to most members of the Jewish community he mixes with in LA. Close members of his family in Australia and the US are also understood to be unaware of his past.
It was revealed this year during a recent conversation with one of his victims that the man admitted to regular and serious sexual abuse of several boys in the 1980s.
NSW police are understood to have a recording of this conversation. In it, the man says Yeshiva's spiritual leader Rabbi Pinchus Feldman confronted him about a sexual abuse incident in the mid-1980s.
In February, Rabbi Feldman released a statement saying he had no recollection of anyone confessing to child sexual abuse 25 years ago and that he encouraged anyone with knowledge of such crimes to go to the police.
The man who admitted to sexually abusing boys at Yeshiva left Sydney to find a wife in Los Angeles. But after a few weeks he returned to Sydney and continued sexually abusing boys. He eventually settled in Los Angeles.
The head of the Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia, Moshe Gutnick, said last month that he had received an anonymous phone call about 25 years ago from a boy who claimed to have been sexually abused by the man.
Rabbi Gutnick said, with hindsight, he should have alerted police. But he had told senior leaders of the Yeshiva community.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/jewish-welfare-group-knows-it-is-sheltering-a-paedophile-20130409-2hjer.html
Another Anti-Internet Rally! "Too Jewish"!
CLICK FOR VIDEO: http://aje.me/YZ07vM
+++Hundreds of thousands of marchers call for law that would include death penalty for bloggers who they say insult Islam.+++
Hundreds of thousands of people have held protests in Bangladesh to demand that the government introduce an anti-blasphemy law that would include the death penalty for bloggers who insult Islam.
Protest organisers called Saturday's rally the "long march", with many travelling from remote villages to the capital, Dhaka's Motijheel area that became a sea of white skull caps and robes.
Supporters of Hefazat-e-Islam, an Islamist group which draws support from tens of thousands of religious seminaries, converged on Dhaka's main commercial hub to protest against what they said were blasphemous writings by atheist bloggers, shouting "God is great - hang the atheist bloggers".
"I've come here to fight for Islam. We won't allow any bloggers to blaspheme our religion and our beloved Prophet Mohammed," said Shahidul Islam, an imam at a mosque outside Dhaka who walked 20km.
"I've come here to fight for Islam. We won't allow any bloggers to blaspheme our religion and our beloved Prophet Mohammed."
The religious group, which has the backing of country's largest party Jamaat-e-Islami, organised the rally in support of its 13-point demand including enactment of a blasphemy law to prosecute and hang what they call atheist bloggers.
"Around 200,000 people attended the rally," Dhaka's deputy police commissioner Sheikh Nazmul Alam told AFP news agency, while protest organisers put the number at over half a million.
Al Jazeera's correspondent, who cannot be named for safety reasons, speaking from Dhaka, said that very huge crowds had gathered.
The bloggers, who deny they are atheists, have sought capital punishment for those found guilty of war crimes during the nation's liberation war.
A well-known protester and blogger, Ahmed Rajib Haider, was killed reportedly by Jamaat supporters.
Zafar Sobhan, editor of the Dhaka Tribune, speaking to Al Jazeera's via Skype from Dhaka, said that while the government was had maintained a "neutral line" and was "scrambling" to prevent an "explosive" situation, he believed it was unlikely that a blasphemy law would be introduced.
Saturday's 'long march' was organised by the Hefazat-e-Islam, which draws support from thousands of seminaries [AFP]
Last week, four online writers were arrested on charges of hurting religious sentiment through their Internet writings against Islam.
Muhiuddin Khan, Bangladesh home minister, said on Wednesday the government had identified 11 bloggers, including the four detainees, who had hurt the religious sentiments of the nation's majority Muslim population.
The government has blocked about a dozen websites and blogs to stem the unrest. It has also set up a panel, which includes intelligence chiefs, to monitor blasphemy on social media.
Under the country's cyber laws, a blogger or Internet writer can face up to ten years in jail for defaming a religion.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2013/04/20134661058364976.html#.UWNTi39Vwhs.facebook
+++Hundreds of thousands of marchers call for law that would include death penalty for bloggers who they say insult Islam.+++
Hundreds of thousands of people have held protests in Bangladesh to demand that the government introduce an anti-blasphemy law that would include the death penalty for bloggers who insult Islam.
Protest organisers called Saturday's rally the "long march", with many travelling from remote villages to the capital, Dhaka's Motijheel area that became a sea of white skull caps and robes.
Supporters of Hefazat-e-Islam, an Islamist group which draws support from tens of thousands of religious seminaries, converged on Dhaka's main commercial hub to protest against what they said were blasphemous writings by atheist bloggers, shouting "God is great - hang the atheist bloggers".
"I've come here to fight for Islam. We won't allow any bloggers to blaspheme our religion and our beloved Prophet Mohammed," said Shahidul Islam, an imam at a mosque outside Dhaka who walked 20km.
"I've come here to fight for Islam. We won't allow any bloggers to blaspheme our religion and our beloved Prophet Mohammed."
The religious group, which has the backing of country's largest party Jamaat-e-Islami, organised the rally in support of its 13-point demand including enactment of a blasphemy law to prosecute and hang what they call atheist bloggers.
"Around 200,000 people attended the rally," Dhaka's deputy police commissioner Sheikh Nazmul Alam told AFP news agency, while protest organisers put the number at over half a million.
Al Jazeera's correspondent, who cannot be named for safety reasons, speaking from Dhaka, said that very huge crowds had gathered.
The bloggers, who deny they are atheists, have sought capital punishment for those found guilty of war crimes during the nation's liberation war.
A well-known protester and blogger, Ahmed Rajib Haider, was killed reportedly by Jamaat supporters.
Zafar Sobhan, editor of the Dhaka Tribune, speaking to Al Jazeera's via Skype from Dhaka, said that while the government was had maintained a "neutral line" and was "scrambling" to prevent an "explosive" situation, he believed it was unlikely that a blasphemy law would be introduced.
Saturday's 'long march' was organised by the Hefazat-e-Islam, which draws support from thousands of seminaries [AFP]
Last week, four online writers were arrested on charges of hurting religious sentiment through their Internet writings against Islam.
Muhiuddin Khan, Bangladesh home minister, said on Wednesday the government had identified 11 bloggers, including the four detainees, who had hurt the religious sentiments of the nation's majority Muslim population.
The government has blocked about a dozen websites and blogs to stem the unrest. It has also set up a panel, which includes intelligence chiefs, to monitor blasphemy on social media.
Under the country's cyber laws, a blogger or Internet writer can face up to ten years in jail for defaming a religion.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2013/04/20134661058364976.html#.UWNTi39Vwhs.facebook
Monday, April 08, 2013
Lawmakers should extend window to sue for for sex abuse victims: As I See It
By Cathleen Palm
On Aug. 25, 1991, I started the transition from child victim to adult survivor of child sexual abuse. Just after my 22nd birthday, I walked into my hometown police station to disclose my sexual abuse and name the perpetrator — a trusted family friend.
Like many survivors, I was pushed — without warning or a sufficient safety net — into confronting this abuse. An event in college, when I was a resident assistant, unexpectedly triggered painful memories and left me immobilized. In the course of disclosing the abuse to family and close family friends, I discovered that many people had strong suspicions — and some even direct knowledge — of the abuse. Coming to terms with the role silence played in perpetuating the abuse was not easy.
Law enforcement’s initial reaction to my 1991 disclosure was discouraging. I second-guessed myself, but tried to remember that there already were too many victims. Each of us had been sexually assaulted in different years, but all at the hands of the same perpetrator. The threat still posed to younger victims, and the perpetrator’s leadership position at a state-funded institution, provided urgency.
I met with supportive investigators from the district attorney’s office. I learned from those who worked with children and youth that Pennsylvania rigidly defines a perpetrator of child abuse, tying their hands even as it related to the younger victims.
It didn’t take long to understand that the law does have winners and losers, and the shorter stick is most often drawn by the child victim.
In 1991, state law required that a civil action be filed before the victim reached the age of 20, and prosecution generally was required to begin within five years from the time of the abuse.
Given the expired statute of limitations, law enforcement could not file criminal charges and I was unable to file a civil suit, so stopping the cycle now fell to younger children and their parents. However, the parents opted against working with investigators, some citing the trauma the children would endure. Others worried how jobs would be affected, given their employment at the same institution as the perpetrator.
Faced with such legal dead ends, I turned instead to personal healing.
Recently, however, a conversation with a fellow survivor, who had also been faced with expired statute of limitations, has had me revisiting my own experiences. She still lives, works, and raises children in the shadow of this community “nice guy” — the man who abused us. Even as she works to heal, she is relentless in doing her part to keep a watchful eye on her community’s children.
Child sexual abuse has lifelong consequences. Survivors are committed to prevention, and work to protect victimized children when laws, including arbitrary statutes of limitations, fall short.
It didn’t take long to understand that the law does have winners and losers. In 2002, state law changed. Going forward, civil actions by child-abuse victims could be filed until a victim’s 30th birthday, and the criminal statute was extended until the victim turns 50. Currently, legislation has been introduced to eliminate the criminal statute of limitations and to extend the civil one to age 50.
State Reps. Louise Bishop and Michael McGeehan, both Philadelphia Democrats, are among the leaders seeking reforms, including the enactment of a temporary, retroactive civil window — something few other states have passed.
This “window” would permit victims for whom the statute of limitations have expired to pursue a civil action against their abuser within a designated two-year period. The idea is controversial, and it’s an uphill battle, partially because policymakers and the public haven’t understood that, prior to 2002, Pennsylvania’s statutes of limitations on pursuing child abusers were extremely restrictive.
As a consequence, perpetrators were free to pursue other victims. Some may well still be abusing children today.
Like child sexual abuse itself, the debate on the civil-window legislation has been ugly, manipulative, and deeply wounding.
Opponents of the window cite it as unconstitutional and ripe for false claims. They suggest that the only beneficiaries would be people who have been victimized by someone affiliated with the Catholic Church. Leaders in the state have used obscure procedural moves to deny debate on the issue, let alone allow votes.
Meanwhile, supporters routinely add window-related amendments to other child-protection bills, jeopardizing those compelling pieces of legislation.
Throughout this back and forth, many survivors, including myself, have stayed silent.
Lately, however, I have been reminded that silence by others didn’t serve me well as a victimized child.
So now I’m joining the chorus of survivors who are urging Pennsylvania lawmakers to stop stalling on statute of limitation reform. Don’t hold these measures or other equally important child protection bills hostage in committee or on the House calendar.. The benefits and challenges of child protection legislation, including related to the civil window, deserve to be publicly debated by state lawmakers, , followed by an up-or-down vote.
Realizing meaningful and sustained change to prevent and respond to child abuse requires that the best interests of children — not political gamesmanship — be Harrisburg’s priority.
Cathleen Palm writes from Berks County. Readers may contact her at cpalm@comcast.net.
On Aug. 25, 1991, I started the transition from child victim to adult survivor of child sexual abuse. Just after my 22nd birthday, I walked into my hometown police station to disclose my sexual abuse and name the perpetrator — a trusted family friend.
Like many survivors, I was pushed — without warning or a sufficient safety net — into confronting this abuse. An event in college, when I was a resident assistant, unexpectedly triggered painful memories and left me immobilized. In the course of disclosing the abuse to family and close family friends, I discovered that many people had strong suspicions — and some even direct knowledge — of the abuse. Coming to terms with the role silence played in perpetuating the abuse was not easy.
Law enforcement’s initial reaction to my 1991 disclosure was discouraging. I second-guessed myself, but tried to remember that there already were too many victims. Each of us had been sexually assaulted in different years, but all at the hands of the same perpetrator. The threat still posed to younger victims, and the perpetrator’s leadership position at a state-funded institution, provided urgency.
I met with supportive investigators from the district attorney’s office. I learned from those who worked with children and youth that Pennsylvania rigidly defines a perpetrator of child abuse, tying their hands even as it related to the younger victims.
It didn’t take long to understand that the law does have winners and losers, and the shorter stick is most often drawn by the child victim.
In 1991, state law required that a civil action be filed before the victim reached the age of 20, and prosecution generally was required to begin within five years from the time of the abuse.
Given the expired statute of limitations, law enforcement could not file criminal charges and I was unable to file a civil suit, so stopping the cycle now fell to younger children and their parents. However, the parents opted against working with investigators, some citing the trauma the children would endure. Others worried how jobs would be affected, given their employment at the same institution as the perpetrator.
Faced with such legal dead ends, I turned instead to personal healing.
Recently, however, a conversation with a fellow survivor, who had also been faced with expired statute of limitations, has had me revisiting my own experiences. She still lives, works, and raises children in the shadow of this community “nice guy” — the man who abused us. Even as she works to heal, she is relentless in doing her part to keep a watchful eye on her community’s children.
Child sexual abuse has lifelong consequences. Survivors are committed to prevention, and work to protect victimized children when laws, including arbitrary statutes of limitations, fall short.
It didn’t take long to understand that the law does have winners and losers. In 2002, state law changed. Going forward, civil actions by child-abuse victims could be filed until a victim’s 30th birthday, and the criminal statute was extended until the victim turns 50. Currently, legislation has been introduced to eliminate the criminal statute of limitations and to extend the civil one to age 50.
State Reps. Louise Bishop and Michael McGeehan, both Philadelphia Democrats, are among the leaders seeking reforms, including the enactment of a temporary, retroactive civil window — something few other states have passed.
This “window” would permit victims for whom the statute of limitations have expired to pursue a civil action against their abuser within a designated two-year period. The idea is controversial, and it’s an uphill battle, partially because policymakers and the public haven’t understood that, prior to 2002, Pennsylvania’s statutes of limitations on pursuing child abusers were extremely restrictive.
As a consequence, perpetrators were free to pursue other victims. Some may well still be abusing children today.
Like child sexual abuse itself, the debate on the civil-window legislation has been ugly, manipulative, and deeply wounding.
Opponents of the window cite it as unconstitutional and ripe for false claims. They suggest that the only beneficiaries would be people who have been victimized by someone affiliated with the Catholic Church. Leaders in the state have used obscure procedural moves to deny debate on the issue, let alone allow votes.
Meanwhile, supporters routinely add window-related amendments to other child-protection bills, jeopardizing those compelling pieces of legislation.
Throughout this back and forth, many survivors, including myself, have stayed silent.
Lately, however, I have been reminded that silence by others didn’t serve me well as a victimized child.
So now I’m joining the chorus of survivors who are urging Pennsylvania lawmakers to stop stalling on statute of limitation reform. Don’t hold these measures or other equally important child protection bills hostage in committee or on the House calendar.. The benefits and challenges of child protection legislation, including related to the civil window, deserve to be publicly debated by state lawmakers, , followed by an up-or-down vote.
Realizing meaningful and sustained change to prevent and respond to child abuse requires that the best interests of children — not political gamesmanship — be Harrisburg’s priority.
Cathleen Palm writes from Berks County. Readers may contact her at cpalm@comcast.net.
Sunday, April 07, 2013
Sandusky victim Aaron Fisher's support team highlights ways to help victims of child sex abuse!
Gillum said that after a time, a rallying point for Fisher became his determination that "he didn't want Sandusky to do this to anybody else. He said: 'Mike, he's going to do it to other people. It's important to me that we stop this.'"... Along the way, Fisher had to be be eased through a real fear of retaliation by Sandusky for his reports and, like many child victims of sexual abuse, he had to be assured that none of this was his fault.... In Fisher's case, Gillum said, that involved a long explanation of the grooming process used by pedophiles, to help him understand that he wasn't at fault simply because he didn't try to physically resist when he was 11 years old.
HARRISBURG — It wasn't easy helping Clinton County teenager Aaron Fisher through the process of outing, and then prosecuting former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky.
But Fisher got through it, with the help of his mother, Dawn Daniels Hennessy, and his psychologist, Dr. Michael Gillum, both of whom headlined a benefit Saturday night in Camp Hill for the Children's Resource Center.
Even though she was often filled with personal doubts, Hennessy said she was resolute in telling her son "that this is a fight that you will not lose ... And to win it for all of those who did not have the strength to finish it."
Gillum said the most important ingredient was "unconditional positive regard," essentially his constant reassurance to Fisher that he was his ally in this ordeal and he would be in his corner every step of the way.
Many victims need that sense of trust in someone, Gillum said, if they are ever going to get past their initial reluctance to share the details that law enforcement or child welfare investigators need to bring a perpetrator to justice.
"We really want them to feel that: 'I'm with you. I'm here for you and I'm going to see this thing through with you.' ... If you repeat those and if you're consistent with that with a victim or patient, they tend to do very well in the longer term," Gillum said.
Fisher, who was abused repeatedly by Sandusky for years and whose initial breakdown in a conference with school officials ultimately cracked what would become one of America's most sensational cases of pedophilia, initially was reluctant to admit the full scope of that abuse to anyone.
Hennessy, of Lock Haven, played an important role in that regard in Fisher's case, Gillum said, by going to child welfare officials when school officials initially met her son's allegations with skepticism. Gillum picked up the torch, once he became involved in the case.
By last June, however, Fisher was one of most compelling witnesses against Sandusky, who was convicted of abusing 10 boys between 1994 and 2008.
Now a student at St. Bonaventure in Olean, N.Y., Fisher — who is also one of some 30 men pressing civil claims against Penn State stemming from Sandusky's pedophila — was not present Saturday night.
But that transformation didn't happen overnight, Gillum noted.
Along the way, Fisher had to be be eased through a real fear of retaliation by Sandusky for his reports and, like many child victims of sexual abuse, he had to be assured that none of this was his fault.
In Fisher's case, Gillum said, that involved a long explanation of the grooming process used by pedophiles, to help him understand that he wasn't at fault simply because he didn't try to physically resist when he was 11 years old.
Gillum said that after a time, a rallying point for Fisher became his determination that "he didn't want Sandusky to do this to anybody else. He said: 'Mike, he's going to do it to other people. It's important to me that we stop this.'"
As Fisher's story became known under the alias "Victim 1" through interviews Gillum granted, cards and letters of support from total strangers helped bolster his resolve as well, Gillum said.
Finally, victims have to understand, Gillum said, "that you're not damaged goods" coming out of this process. That's where ongoing support from families and counselors are important, so the victims can develop a healthy picture of their future.
Gillum said the big positive that Fisher can share in now is that the Sandusky case has shined a light of awareness on the scourge of child sex abuse.
"We've seen positive outcomes across the country and even the world about people in the public starting to better understand what you all do and what victims go through," he told the audience, peppered with prosecutors, doctors and counselors.
Hennessy and Gillum are speaking together about their experiences with Fisher now as an extension of the family's healing process. Hennessy said she hopes her son's story will always "inspire other (victims) to speak out, stay strong and get the justice they deserve."
The Children’s Resource Center in the capital city served 845 children in 2012, all referred by police, children and youth services agencies or physicians for abuse-type complaints.
Such children's advocacy centers are seen as effective venues where police, doctors and child welfare personnel can collaborate on cases with minimal trauma to and maximum service for youthful victims.
A state task force examining Pennsylvania’s child abuse capabilities in the wake of the Sandusky scandal has called for the establishment of many more such centers statewide.
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2013/04/aaron_fishers_support_team_hig.html
Thursday, April 04, 2013
Enough Abuse!
“One of the barriers to preventing child sexual abuse is helping parents learn the true facts about child sexual abuse and steps they can take that protect their children,” notes Program Coordinator Haley Ward. “The Enough Abuse curriculum teaches parents that the real risk to their child is someone they know and trust and who has access to their child in a one-on-one situation.” The program includes information about steps that perpetrators take to find possible victims, called “grooming” and how parents can intervene.
Project Self-Sufficiency rallies support to help prevent child sex abuse
One year after the launch of the Enough Abuse Campaign in New Jersey, awareness of the need to educate the community about the nature and scope of child sexual assault has grown exponentially announced lead agency Project Self-Sufficiency this week.
The Enough Abuse Campaign is a grassroots movement gaining momentum across the country. Developed in Massachusetts, the campaign has been adopted by New Jersey and Maryland and has recently been launched in New York and California.
“Community by community we are giving individuals the knowledge and skills to stop the silence around child sexual assault,” noted Deborah Berry-Toon, Project Self-Sufficiency’s executive director. “We are giving people the tools to raise their hands and say ‘enough.’”
Local residents are invited to help prevent child sexual assault by joining the Enough Abuse Campaign, a joint effort of Prevent Child Abuse New Jersey (PCA-NJ), Project Self-Sufficiency and the Sussex Warren Partnership to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse. The community-wide education effort aims to mobilize adults and communities to prevent child sexual assault by increasing awareness of the warning signs displayed by predators and as well as victims.
Training sessions are offered by certified trainers to middle and high school youth, their parents, teachers, administrators, coaches and other youth-serving professionals on how to recognize and prevent child sexual abuse.
According to PCA-NJ, one in four girls and one in six boys will fall victim to child sexual abuse before the age of 18 in the state of New Jersey. State data reports that 80% of child sexual abuse cases are never reported to authorities.
Additionally, studies continue to show that many parents believe the major risk of child sexual abuse involves strangers, when in fact, up to 90% of sexual predators are actually known to the victim.
“One of the barriers to preventing child sexual abuse is helping parents learn the true facts about child sexual abuse and steps they can take that protect their children,” notes Program Coordinator Haley Ward. “The Enough Abuse curriculum teaches parents that the real risk to their child is someone they know and trust and who has access to their child in a one-on-one situation.” The program includes information about steps that perpetrators take to find possible victims, called “grooming” and how parents can intervene.
Project Self-Sufficiency is the lead agency in the Sussex Warren Partnership to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse, an effort which brings together experts from a variety of civic, religious, healthcare and other organizations who share a commitment to preventing child sexual abuse.
“Project Self-Sufficiency is proud to be partnering with Prevent Child Abuse – New Jersey in this important effort to eliminate child sexual abuse in northwestern New Jersey,” commented Deborah Berry-Toon. “This educational outreach program builds on Project Self-Sufficiency’s history of assisting families with their goals of becoming stable and economically self-sufficient. Protecting our children from harm is an adult responsibility, and we are confident t hat the Enough Abuse Campaign will help to prevent child sexual abuse and result in safer, more stable families in our community.”
Enough Abuse training sessions are held regularly at Project Self-Sufficiency, and are offered frequently to civic organizations, schools, houses of worship, social service agencies and youth-serving organizations. To schedule a training, to find out more about the other programs and services offered at Project Self-Sufficiency, call 973-940-3500.
http://www.nj.com/suburbannews/index.ssf/2013/04/project_self-sufficiency_ralli.html
Project Self-Sufficiency rallies support to help prevent child sex abuse
One year after the launch of the Enough Abuse Campaign in New Jersey, awareness of the need to educate the community about the nature and scope of child sexual assault has grown exponentially announced lead agency Project Self-Sufficiency this week.
The Enough Abuse Campaign is a grassroots movement gaining momentum across the country. Developed in Massachusetts, the campaign has been adopted by New Jersey and Maryland and has recently been launched in New York and California.
“Community by community we are giving individuals the knowledge and skills to stop the silence around child sexual assault,” noted Deborah Berry-Toon, Project Self-Sufficiency’s executive director. “We are giving people the tools to raise their hands and say ‘enough.’”
Local residents are invited to help prevent child sexual assault by joining the Enough Abuse Campaign, a joint effort of Prevent Child Abuse New Jersey (PCA-NJ), Project Self-Sufficiency and the Sussex Warren Partnership to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse. The community-wide education effort aims to mobilize adults and communities to prevent child sexual assault by increasing awareness of the warning signs displayed by predators and as well as victims.
Training sessions are offered by certified trainers to middle and high school youth, their parents, teachers, administrators, coaches and other youth-serving professionals on how to recognize and prevent child sexual abuse.
According to PCA-NJ, one in four girls and one in six boys will fall victim to child sexual abuse before the age of 18 in the state of New Jersey. State data reports that 80% of child sexual abuse cases are never reported to authorities.
Additionally, studies continue to show that many parents believe the major risk of child sexual abuse involves strangers, when in fact, up to 90% of sexual predators are actually known to the victim.
“One of the barriers to preventing child sexual abuse is helping parents learn the true facts about child sexual abuse and steps they can take that protect their children,” notes Program Coordinator Haley Ward. “The Enough Abuse curriculum teaches parents that the real risk to their child is someone they know and trust and who has access to their child in a one-on-one situation.” The program includes information about steps that perpetrators take to find possible victims, called “grooming” and how parents can intervene.
Project Self-Sufficiency is the lead agency in the Sussex Warren Partnership to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse, an effort which brings together experts from a variety of civic, religious, healthcare and other organizations who share a commitment to preventing child sexual abuse.
“Project Self-Sufficiency is proud to be partnering with Prevent Child Abuse – New Jersey in this important effort to eliminate child sexual abuse in northwestern New Jersey,” commented Deborah Berry-Toon. “This educational outreach program builds on Project Self-Sufficiency’s history of assisting families with their goals of becoming stable and economically self-sufficient. Protecting our children from harm is an adult responsibility, and we are confident t hat the Enough Abuse Campaign will help to prevent child sexual abuse and result in safer, more stable families in our community.”
Enough Abuse training sessions are held regularly at Project Self-Sufficiency, and are offered frequently to civic organizations, schools, houses of worship, social service agencies and youth-serving organizations. To schedule a training, to find out more about the other programs and services offered at Project Self-Sufficiency, call 973-940-3500.
http://www.nj.com/suburbannews/index.ssf/2013/04/project_self-sufficiency_ralli.html
Wednesday, April 03, 2013
Diagnosis: Human
THE news that 11 percent of school-age children now receive a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder — some 6.4 million — gave me a chill. My son David was one of those who received that diagnosis.
In his case, he was in the first grade. Indeed, there were psychiatrists who prescribed medication for him even before they met him. One psychiatrist said he would not even see him until he was medicated. For a year I refused to fill the prescription at the pharmacy. Finally, I relented. And so David went on Ritalin, then Adderall, and other drugs that were said to be helpful in combating the condition.
In another age, David might have been called “rambunctious.” His battery was a little too large for his body. And so he would leap over the couch, spring to reach the ceiling and show an exuberance for life that came in brilliant microbursts.
As a 21-year-old college senior, he was found on the floor of his room, dead from a fatal mix of alcohol and drugs. The date was Oct. 18, 2011.
No one made him take the heroin and alcohol, and yet I cannot help but hold myself and others to account. I had unknowingly colluded with a system that devalues talking therapy and rushes to medicate, inadvertently sending a message that self-medication, too, is perfectly acceptable.
My son was no angel (though he was to us) and he was known to trade in Adderall, to create a submarket in the drug among his classmates who were themselves all too eager to get their hands on it. What he did cannot be excused, but it should be understood. What he did was to create a market that perfectly mirrored the society in which he grew up, a culture where Big Pharma itself prospers from the off-label uses of drugs, often not tested in children and not approved for the many uses to which they are put.
And so a generation of students, raised in an environment that encourages medication, are emulating the professionals by using drugs in the classroom as performance enhancers.
And we wonder why it is that they use drugs with such abandon. As all parents learn — at times to their chagrin — our children go to school not only in the classroom but also at home, and the culture they construct for themselves as teenagers and young adults is but a tiny village imitating that to which they were introduced as children.
The issue of permissive drug use and over-diagnosis goes well beyond hyperactivity. In May, the American Psychiatric Association will publish its D.S.M. 5, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It is called the bible of the profession. Its latest iteration, like those before, is not merely a window on the profession but on the culture it serves, both reflecting and shaping societal norms. (For instance, until the 1970s, it categorized homosexuality as a mental illness.)
One of the new, more controversial provisions expands depression to include some forms of grief. On its face it makes sense. The grieving often display all the common indicators of depression — loss of interest in life, loss of appetite, irregular sleep patterns, low functionality, etc. But as others have observed, those same symptoms are the very hallmarks of grief itself.
Ours is an age in which the airwaves and media are one large drug emporium that claims to fix everything from sleep to sex. I fear that being human is itself fast becoming a condition. It’s as if we are trying to contain grief, and the absolute pain of a loss like mine. We have become increasingly disassociated and estranged from the patterns of life and death, uncomfortable with the messiness of our own humanity, aging and, ultimately, mortality.
Challenge and hardship have become pathologized and monetized. Instead of enhancing our coping skills, we undermine them and seek shortcuts where there are none, eroding the resilience upon which each of us, at some point in our lives, must rely. Diagnosing grief as a part of depression runs the very real risk of delegitimizing that which is most human — the bonds of our love and attachment to one another. The new entry in the D.S.M. cannot tame grief by giving it a name or a subsection, nor render it less frightening or more manageable.
The D.S.M. would do well to recognize that a broken heart is not a medical condition, and that medication is ill-suited to repair some tears. Time does not heal all wounds, closure is a fiction, and so too is the notion that God never asks of us more than we can bear. Enduring the unbearable is sometimes exactly what life asks of us.
But there is a sweetness even to the intensity of this pain I feel. It is the thing that holds me still to my son. And yes, there is a balm even in the pain. I shall let it go when it is time, without reference to the D.S.M., and without the aid of a pill.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/03/opinion/diagnosis-human.html?hpw&_r=0
In his case, he was in the first grade. Indeed, there were psychiatrists who prescribed medication for him even before they met him. One psychiatrist said he would not even see him until he was medicated. For a year I refused to fill the prescription at the pharmacy. Finally, I relented. And so David went on Ritalin, then Adderall, and other drugs that were said to be helpful in combating the condition.
In another age, David might have been called “rambunctious.” His battery was a little too large for his body. And so he would leap over the couch, spring to reach the ceiling and show an exuberance for life that came in brilliant microbursts.
As a 21-year-old college senior, he was found on the floor of his room, dead from a fatal mix of alcohol and drugs. The date was Oct. 18, 2011.
No one made him take the heroin and alcohol, and yet I cannot help but hold myself and others to account. I had unknowingly colluded with a system that devalues talking therapy and rushes to medicate, inadvertently sending a message that self-medication, too, is perfectly acceptable.
My son was no angel (though he was to us) and he was known to trade in Adderall, to create a submarket in the drug among his classmates who were themselves all too eager to get their hands on it. What he did cannot be excused, but it should be understood. What he did was to create a market that perfectly mirrored the society in which he grew up, a culture where Big Pharma itself prospers from the off-label uses of drugs, often not tested in children and not approved for the many uses to which they are put.
And so a generation of students, raised in an environment that encourages medication, are emulating the professionals by using drugs in the classroom as performance enhancers.
And we wonder why it is that they use drugs with such abandon. As all parents learn — at times to their chagrin — our children go to school not only in the classroom but also at home, and the culture they construct for themselves as teenagers and young adults is but a tiny village imitating that to which they were introduced as children.
The issue of permissive drug use and over-diagnosis goes well beyond hyperactivity. In May, the American Psychiatric Association will publish its D.S.M. 5, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It is called the bible of the profession. Its latest iteration, like those before, is not merely a window on the profession but on the culture it serves, both reflecting and shaping societal norms. (For instance, until the 1970s, it categorized homosexuality as a mental illness.)
One of the new, more controversial provisions expands depression to include some forms of grief. On its face it makes sense. The grieving often display all the common indicators of depression — loss of interest in life, loss of appetite, irregular sleep patterns, low functionality, etc. But as others have observed, those same symptoms are the very hallmarks of grief itself.
Ours is an age in which the airwaves and media are one large drug emporium that claims to fix everything from sleep to sex. I fear that being human is itself fast becoming a condition. It’s as if we are trying to contain grief, and the absolute pain of a loss like mine. We have become increasingly disassociated and estranged from the patterns of life and death, uncomfortable with the messiness of our own humanity, aging and, ultimately, mortality.
Challenge and hardship have become pathologized and monetized. Instead of enhancing our coping skills, we undermine them and seek shortcuts where there are none, eroding the resilience upon which each of us, at some point in our lives, must rely. Diagnosing grief as a part of depression runs the very real risk of delegitimizing that which is most human — the bonds of our love and attachment to one another. The new entry in the D.S.M. cannot tame grief by giving it a name or a subsection, nor render it less frightening or more manageable.
The D.S.M. would do well to recognize that a broken heart is not a medical condition, and that medication is ill-suited to repair some tears. Time does not heal all wounds, closure is a fiction, and so too is the notion that God never asks of us more than we can bear. Enduring the unbearable is sometimes exactly what life asks of us.
But there is a sweetness even to the intensity of this pain I feel. It is the thing that holds me still to my son. And yes, there is a balm even in the pain. I shall let it go when it is time, without reference to the D.S.M., and without the aid of a pill.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/03/opinion/diagnosis-human.html?hpw&_r=0
Sunday, March 31, 2013
I know firsthand about the long-term effects of sexual abuse on children!
As Yeshiva Child Sex Abuse Scandal Grows, Why Are We Afraid To Speak Out?
Community Will Be Judged Harshly If We Stay Silent
We in the Orthodox Jewish community claim to value children deeply. We want to have children, and we pressure our own children to get married and have children, and yet, when it comes to really ensuring those children’s utmost protection from harm, somehow the silence is deafening.
As a Yeshiva University alumnus and a psychotherapist who works with abused children, I was horrified to learn that my alma mater was apparently involved in a 30-year cover-up of sexual abuse that affected hundreds of children and protected known abusers. Y.U. — an institution to which I am grateful for making me who I am today — also has refused to commit to releasing to the public details of its investigation into these abuses.
So I created a petition urging Y.U. to commit to sharing the report findings with the public. Nearly everyone I know — many alumni from Y.U. and its Stern College for Women, including rabbis, did not sign. Other than one or two brave figures, the people I worked with for years through Y.U., programs teaching Jewish children worldwide about Jewish values, wouldn’t sign, nor would they do anything else I am aware of to support victims.
I am deeply saddened by this blinding lack of empathy for our fellow suffering Jews.
As a psychotherapist, I know firsthand about the long-term effects of sexual abuse on children: It impacts their self-esteem, their faith, their trust in others — especially in the community. Silence in the face of abuse conveys the message to victims that their suffering matters much less than protecting the abuser or the leaders who covered up the abuse. With each day of silence that passes, the victims feel more isolated and betrayed. What is this passivity in the face of such terrible injustice?
I have come to understand that most people in my community are blocked by fear. Most people want to do the right thing, but are afraid of being judged by others, or they don’t want to “break with Y.U.” While loyalty is an important value, it cannot take precedence over the safety of our children....
Read more: http://forward.com/articles/173955/as-yeshiva-child-sex-abuse-scandal-grows-why-are-w/?p=all#ixzz2P90AaNtV
Community Will Be Judged Harshly If We Stay Silent
We in the Orthodox Jewish community claim to value children deeply. We want to have children, and we pressure our own children to get married and have children, and yet, when it comes to really ensuring those children’s utmost protection from harm, somehow the silence is deafening.
As a Yeshiva University alumnus and a psychotherapist who works with abused children, I was horrified to learn that my alma mater was apparently involved in a 30-year cover-up of sexual abuse that affected hundreds of children and protected known abusers. Y.U. — an institution to which I am grateful for making me who I am today — also has refused to commit to releasing to the public details of its investigation into these abuses.
So I created a petition urging Y.U. to commit to sharing the report findings with the public. Nearly everyone I know — many alumni from Y.U. and its Stern College for Women, including rabbis, did not sign. Other than one or two brave figures, the people I worked with for years through Y.U., programs teaching Jewish children worldwide about Jewish values, wouldn’t sign, nor would they do anything else I am aware of to support victims.
I am deeply saddened by this blinding lack of empathy for our fellow suffering Jews.
As a psychotherapist, I know firsthand about the long-term effects of sexual abuse on children: It impacts their self-esteem, their faith, their trust in others — especially in the community. Silence in the face of abuse conveys the message to victims that their suffering matters much less than protecting the abuser or the leaders who covered up the abuse. With each day of silence that passes, the victims feel more isolated and betrayed. What is this passivity in the face of such terrible injustice?
I have come to understand that most people in my community are blocked by fear. Most people want to do the right thing, but are afraid of being judged by others, or they don’t want to “break with Y.U.” While loyalty is an important value, it cannot take precedence over the safety of our children....
Read more: http://forward.com/articles/173955/as-yeshiva-child-sex-abuse-scandal-grows-why-are-w/?p=all#ixzz2P90AaNtV
Thursday, March 28, 2013
The Orthodox Jewish community is going through its Catholic Church moment!
Sharing The Secret That’s Haunted My Soul
An abuse victim goes public, and suggests some communal reforms.
My name is David Cheifetz and I am a victim of childhood sex abuse in a Jewish institution.
There. I have said it. After more than 30 years I have shared the dark secret that has haunted my soul.
I was 13 years old, attending sleep-away camp at Camp Dora Golding, an all-boys Orthodox camp that some of you still send your sons to. I was befriended by a 28-year-old member of the rabbinic staff. Over the course of a week he sexually abused me repeatedly. When the activity was exposed, I was summoned to the camp director’s office and forced to confront the assailant. Then I was summarily sent home, as if it were I who had committed the crime. The camp never even told my parents why I was being sent home. They were just advised to pick me up at the Greyhound terminal at New York’s Port Authority.
I do not know if the perpetrator was ever fired; to the best of my knowledge he was never reported to legal authorities. I understand that he went on to a long career in Jewish education, and based on whispers on the Internet, probably continued targeting young Jewish boys within the walls of Jewish educational institutions. [Camp Dora Golding officials did not respond to repeated attempts for comment on the author’s allegations.]
When I arrived home, I was not given a hero’s welcome. I was also not given a victim’s welcome. I was never sent to a psychiatrist or a psychologist or even a pediatrician. The bitter secret was locked away, barely thought of or spoken of over the next 30-plus years. I did once share the incident with my yeshiva high school principal who insisted, “No, Duvid, he could not have been a rabbi. Rabbis never do such things.”
♦The Orthodox community is going through its Catholic Church moment: All elements of the community, from the chasidic to the Modern Orthodox, are being inundated by reported cases of sexual abuse of minors. Each of these incidents is characterized not just by accusations of sexual abuse, but by accompanying allegations of systematic cover-ups — incidents hidden or swept under the rug, in some cases (such as the Weberman case) with allegations of extreme financial and social pressures brought to bear on the victims and their families.
But, as my experience reflects, such behaviors of the abusers and of those that protect them are not new. It is not that Orthodox groups and institutions advocate pedophilia. It is that the Orthodox community is unwilling to address this “inconvenient truth.” Instead of confronting this scourge, many members the community have taken on a “circle the wagons” mentality, perhaps to protect their friends, perhaps to protect their institutions. But in all of this, what is forgotten is the victim.
I know. I was a forgotten victim. But I will no longer remain silent or silenced.
And what happens with these child sex abusers when they are ignored, or allowed to continue working within the community? Research shows that they are serial offenders, they tend to hunt out their prey and commit their despicable crimes again and again. Such is the nature of pedophiles. In the Catholic Church. In the Boy Scouts. And in the Orthodox community.
I look with sadness at my own story. I look at all the unanswered questions surrounding the Baruch Lanner case and the full investigative report conducted by the Orthodox Union that was never released, a study led by Richard Joel, now the president of Yeshiva University. Will there be a full release of the current investigation at YU’s boys’ high school involving its former principal, George Finkelstein. I listen to the voices in the ultra-Orthodox community citing mesirah — the notion that one Jew cannot hand over another Jew to the non-Jewish authorities — a remnant of medieval fear of hostile gentile governments. Thankfully that is an anachronism in our current society. These lingering questions and troubling observations take away any belief, any faith that the Orthodox community as a whole is able to reform itself.
I ask you: how many times in recent months has your congregational rabbi delivered a sermon on the travesty that is sexual abuse of minors in our community? It is headline news, but how many rabbis have raised their voices to increase awareness or called for fundamental change? I worry when rabbis are more prepared to discuss nuclear fusion and complex geopolitical machinations than they are to discuss the despicable sex crimes that are happening in our own Jewish educational institutions.
If change will not come from the inside, then it must come from the outside. And so I am speaking up and encouraging the thousands of other victims of childhood sexual abuse in our community to do the same.
I am also encouraging everyone to withhold financial support from every institution suspected of ignoring or covering up sexual abuse activities in their midst. There are plenty of other important causes and institutions that can benefit from your generosity.
But that is only a start. In order for the Jewish community to seriously address this scourge it must embrace real reforms. I believe necessary reforms include:
♦The establishment of an independent ombudsman sensitive to the needs of the Jewish community, with programs in every major educational institution. Too many rabbis have been hesitant to advise victims and their families to report abuses to the police, to social service agencies, or to the local district attorney. Or they have been outright complicit in cover-ups. So a central, independently funded ombudsman program (preferably funded by a foundation, and not reliant on the financial pressures of communal mood swings) must exist for victims and their families. The ombudsman will work with legal authorities and social service agencies and the schools to investigate all credible allegations and use its voice and power to pursue and bring pedophiles and their supporters to justice.
♦The institution of mandatory training programs for schools and summer camps — leaders, administrators, teachers and counselors — of what is and isn’t acceptable behavior. (Isolated programs already exist, but are only in place in limited instances.)
♦The institution of criminal background checks for all school leaders, teachers, administrators and camp staff.
♦The establishments of a “one strike you are out” policy, and the immediate suspension of anyone facing a credible accusation, pending a detailed investigation.
♦The establishment of protocols that penalize not only sex offenders, but those who knowingly ignore, protect and enable their behaviors. These people should be held liable on both criminal and civil levels. And they should certainly not be allowed to work in schools, camps, or other Jewish educational institutions. They too should be held accountable.
Speaking as a survivor, I bear scars that will be with me for life. I wish I did not have that unique set of perspectives. But sadly, the Orthodox community has progressed very little since 1979.
We face a demon in our midst, a cancer that will not go away without harsh measures. The Orthodox community can keep Shabbat and pray three times a day; its members can keep kosher and learn Torah day and night. But that means nothing if the community remains deaf to the cries of the past and future victims, and is ultimately complicit in the atrocities committed against our children and grandchildren.
David Cheifetz is a resident of Teaneck, N.J.
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new-york-news/sharing-secret-thats-haunted-my-soul
RELATED: ON THE RABBI'S KNEE - DO THE JEWS HAVE A CATHOLIC PRIEST PROBLEM?:
http://nymag.com/news/features/17010/
An abuse victim goes public, and suggests some communal reforms.
My name is David Cheifetz and I am a victim of childhood sex abuse in a Jewish institution.
There. I have said it. After more than 30 years I have shared the dark secret that has haunted my soul.
I was 13 years old, attending sleep-away camp at Camp Dora Golding, an all-boys Orthodox camp that some of you still send your sons to. I was befriended by a 28-year-old member of the rabbinic staff. Over the course of a week he sexually abused me repeatedly. When the activity was exposed, I was summoned to the camp director’s office and forced to confront the assailant. Then I was summarily sent home, as if it were I who had committed the crime. The camp never even told my parents why I was being sent home. They were just advised to pick me up at the Greyhound terminal at New York’s Port Authority.
I do not know if the perpetrator was ever fired; to the best of my knowledge he was never reported to legal authorities. I understand that he went on to a long career in Jewish education, and based on whispers on the Internet, probably continued targeting young Jewish boys within the walls of Jewish educational institutions. [Camp Dora Golding officials did not respond to repeated attempts for comment on the author’s allegations.]
When I arrived home, I was not given a hero’s welcome. I was also not given a victim’s welcome. I was never sent to a psychiatrist or a psychologist or even a pediatrician. The bitter secret was locked away, barely thought of or spoken of over the next 30-plus years. I did once share the incident with my yeshiva high school principal who insisted, “No, Duvid, he could not have been a rabbi. Rabbis never do such things.”
♦The Orthodox community is going through its Catholic Church moment: All elements of the community, from the chasidic to the Modern Orthodox, are being inundated by reported cases of sexual abuse of minors. Each of these incidents is characterized not just by accusations of sexual abuse, but by accompanying allegations of systematic cover-ups — incidents hidden or swept under the rug, in some cases (such as the Weberman case) with allegations of extreme financial and social pressures brought to bear on the victims and their families.
But, as my experience reflects, such behaviors of the abusers and of those that protect them are not new. It is not that Orthodox groups and institutions advocate pedophilia. It is that the Orthodox community is unwilling to address this “inconvenient truth.” Instead of confronting this scourge, many members the community have taken on a “circle the wagons” mentality, perhaps to protect their friends, perhaps to protect their institutions. But in all of this, what is forgotten is the victim.
I know. I was a forgotten victim. But I will no longer remain silent or silenced.
And what happens with these child sex abusers when they are ignored, or allowed to continue working within the community? Research shows that they are serial offenders, they tend to hunt out their prey and commit their despicable crimes again and again. Such is the nature of pedophiles. In the Catholic Church. In the Boy Scouts. And in the Orthodox community.
I look with sadness at my own story. I look at all the unanswered questions surrounding the Baruch Lanner case and the full investigative report conducted by the Orthodox Union that was never released, a study led by Richard Joel, now the president of Yeshiva University. Will there be a full release of the current investigation at YU’s boys’ high school involving its former principal, George Finkelstein. I listen to the voices in the ultra-Orthodox community citing mesirah — the notion that one Jew cannot hand over another Jew to the non-Jewish authorities — a remnant of medieval fear of hostile gentile governments. Thankfully that is an anachronism in our current society. These lingering questions and troubling observations take away any belief, any faith that the Orthodox community as a whole is able to reform itself.
I ask you: how many times in recent months has your congregational rabbi delivered a sermon on the travesty that is sexual abuse of minors in our community? It is headline news, but how many rabbis have raised their voices to increase awareness or called for fundamental change? I worry when rabbis are more prepared to discuss nuclear fusion and complex geopolitical machinations than they are to discuss the despicable sex crimes that are happening in our own Jewish educational institutions.
If change will not come from the inside, then it must come from the outside. And so I am speaking up and encouraging the thousands of other victims of childhood sexual abuse in our community to do the same.
I am also encouraging everyone to withhold financial support from every institution suspected of ignoring or covering up sexual abuse activities in their midst. There are plenty of other important causes and institutions that can benefit from your generosity.
But that is only a start. In order for the Jewish community to seriously address this scourge it must embrace real reforms. I believe necessary reforms include:
♦The establishment of an independent ombudsman sensitive to the needs of the Jewish community, with programs in every major educational institution. Too many rabbis have been hesitant to advise victims and their families to report abuses to the police, to social service agencies, or to the local district attorney. Or they have been outright complicit in cover-ups. So a central, independently funded ombudsman program (preferably funded by a foundation, and not reliant on the financial pressures of communal mood swings) must exist for victims and their families. The ombudsman will work with legal authorities and social service agencies and the schools to investigate all credible allegations and use its voice and power to pursue and bring pedophiles and their supporters to justice.
♦The institution of mandatory training programs for schools and summer camps — leaders, administrators, teachers and counselors — of what is and isn’t acceptable behavior. (Isolated programs already exist, but are only in place in limited instances.)
♦The institution of criminal background checks for all school leaders, teachers, administrators and camp staff.
♦The establishments of a “one strike you are out” policy, and the immediate suspension of anyone facing a credible accusation, pending a detailed investigation.
♦The establishment of protocols that penalize not only sex offenders, but those who knowingly ignore, protect and enable their behaviors. These people should be held liable on both criminal and civil levels. And they should certainly not be allowed to work in schools, camps, or other Jewish educational institutions. They too should be held accountable.
Speaking as a survivor, I bear scars that will be with me for life. I wish I did not have that unique set of perspectives. But sadly, the Orthodox community has progressed very little since 1979.
We face a demon in our midst, a cancer that will not go away without harsh measures. The Orthodox community can keep Shabbat and pray three times a day; its members can keep kosher and learn Torah day and night. But that means nothing if the community remains deaf to the cries of the past and future victims, and is ultimately complicit in the atrocities committed against our children and grandchildren.
David Cheifetz is a resident of Teaneck, N.J.
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new-york-news/sharing-secret-thats-haunted-my-soul
RELATED: ON THE RABBI'S KNEE - DO THE JEWS HAVE A CATHOLIC PRIEST PROBLEM?:
http://nymag.com/news/features/17010/
Leib Tropper - The Pig Who Wants Desperately To Become Kosher!
Rabbi Leib Tropper & Philosophy
by Leib Tropper - (Who else?)
The Talmudic scholar, Rabbi Leib Tropper has recently written a "philosophical" essay regarding a most complex issue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9nage_%C3%A0_trois.
Rabbi Leib Tropper wrote this introductory article regarding Solipsism. Rabbi Leib Tropper remarked about this topic when asked 'Solipsm is rarely germane to the experience of those who support or disagree with the Solipsistic theory. All experience the same though there are absolute qualitative differences. Rabbi Leib Tropper wrote about this obscure topic to various professors of philosophy nationally and internationally.
Over the course of many years Rabbi Leib Tropper has developed a relationship with various leading whores and pimps across the globe. The esteem that these intellectuals hold for Rabbi Tropper is unusual considering that Rabbi Leib Tropper studied in a whore house and not in a truly secular oriented environment like a college or university (GASP!)
This essay on solipsism written by Rabbi Leib Tropper is the introduction of an all encompassing study of the topic of Solipsism.
Witgenstein, Russel ,Satre and Leibnitz are just some of the names that are found in Rabbi Leib Tropper's paper regarding this topic.
ROTFLMAO:
http://rabbileibtropper.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/rabbi-leib-tropper-philosophy/
by Leib Tropper - (Who else?)
The Talmudic scholar, Rabbi Leib Tropper has recently written a "philosophical" essay regarding a most complex issue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9nage_%C3%A0_trois.
Rabbi Leib Tropper wrote this introductory article regarding Solipsism. Rabbi Leib Tropper remarked about this topic when asked 'Solipsm is rarely germane to the experience of those who support or disagree with the Solipsistic theory. All experience the same though there are absolute qualitative differences. Rabbi Leib Tropper wrote about this obscure topic to various professors of philosophy nationally and internationally.
Over the course of many years Rabbi Leib Tropper has developed a relationship with various leading whores and pimps across the globe. The esteem that these intellectuals hold for Rabbi Tropper is unusual considering that Rabbi Leib Tropper studied in a whore house and not in a truly secular oriented environment like a college or university (GASP!)
This essay on solipsism written by Rabbi Leib Tropper is the introduction of an all encompassing study of the topic of Solipsism.
Witgenstein, Russel ,Satre and Leibnitz are just some of the names that are found in Rabbi Leib Tropper's paper regarding this topic.
ROTFLMAO:
http://rabbileibtropper.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/rabbi-leib-tropper-philosophy/
Surviving sexual abuse takes courage and hope
We were supposed to be knocked down, hung out to dry, and left behind. We were supposed to be the freaks in life, the nobodies, the angered, and the powerless. But we have strength and courage within us that no one possibly could realize they have, unless they have walked in our shoes.
HOUSTON, March 26, 2013 — Not too long ago, a few individuals shared their lives with me, stories of lost innocence. One man shared his story of being sexually molested as a child. Another was a woman who was raped. Still another woman was a victim of sexual abuse as a child. They all have inspired me by sharing their trauma, coming forward with the truth, and speaking so honestly. Their strength, endurance, perseverance, and courage are commendable.
I will not pretend to know what it’s like to be a woman who was raped, but I can relate to having innocence ripped away when as a child, my body invaded by a predator. Children who are molested will have different side effects and issues than a teenager who is raped or an adult who is raped and depending on the nature of the sexual abuse. However there are also similar effects that all sex abuse victims share and we all know the same courage.
I write this letter to my brothers and sisters who have been sexually abused.
My Fellow Survivors,
I’m truly sorry.
I’m sorry someone put his or her hands on you as a child. I’m sorry someone forced himself on you. I’m sorry that the people who were supposed to protect and love you tried to break you. I’m sorry if anyone could have helped by intervening, yet chose not to. I’m proud of your strength and endurance. You are strong and amazing and you are not in this alone.
Do not give up hope!
Six years ago I had a shotgun in my mouth, and now I’m the COO of Vera Wear, a columnist for this wonderful publication, an entertainer, manager of models, a coach, professional speaker, and the list goes on.
Do I share this information, bragging? Yes, I do!
I take pride in the fact that my blueprint in life, like you, was to fail, to become a monster, to be hurt and broken, and angry and bitter. But here I am, still standing. Happy, whole, healed, and complete. I am living proof that you can achieve anything, when you truly want to, regardless of the odds being stacked against you. I represent you.
Pathetically, in the U.S., one in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused before they reach the age of eighteen. One in six women have been the victim of an attempted rape or completed rape.
Being a part of this statistic can feel humiliating and embarrassing, and make us feel weak and powerless. This is wrong. Being a part of that statistic is a badge of strength, determination, resiliency, and empowerment.
We were supposed to be knocked down, hung out to dry, and left behind. We were supposed to be the freaks in life, the nobodies, the angered, and the powerless. But we have strength and courage within us that no one possibly could realize they have, unless they have walked in our shoes.
We know what it’s like to have to dig deep within us and rise above the water trying to cover our heads. We know what it’s like to find the strength to heal the cracks in our armor, to put ourselves back together again. But we’re not the same: we are stronger, smarter, wiser, and more loving and accepting because of it.
We can heal and transcend through the past, transform to greatness. Yes, I’m sure you all relate to the residual effects from abuse that may never go away, and that’s ok. We will never know what normal is, besides a setting on a dryer. We’re a bit weird, and a little crazy, odd and eccentric.
But, we’re not broken, we’re not hiding from our past, and we can love who we are. I now embrace my crazy personality quirks with pride, rather than hiding from them in shame. Maybe we’re different, but different is beautiful.
We define our past. Our past does not define us.
To the raped, to the molested, and to the sixteen year old rape victim of Steubenville High School, to the strong young women and brave man who recently inspired me, to all the victims of abuse and rape, we will not be left behind, we will not be hung out to dry, we will heal, we will transcend, we will triumph, and we will achieve greatness. They will not break us. I believe in you!
Love, Carter
Carter Lee is the author of When Jonathan Cried For Me, a child sex abuse survivor and spokesman, host of Carter Lee Presents the Fever, Partner to verawear.com, a coach, and manager of models (Carter’s Bombshells). To learn more about Carter or to see all of his projects visit TheCarterLee.com.
HOUSTON, March 26, 2013 — Not too long ago, a few individuals shared their lives with me, stories of lost innocence. One man shared his story of being sexually molested as a child. Another was a woman who was raped. Still another woman was a victim of sexual abuse as a child. They all have inspired me by sharing their trauma, coming forward with the truth, and speaking so honestly. Their strength, endurance, perseverance, and courage are commendable.
I will not pretend to know what it’s like to be a woman who was raped, but I can relate to having innocence ripped away when as a child, my body invaded by a predator. Children who are molested will have different side effects and issues than a teenager who is raped or an adult who is raped and depending on the nature of the sexual abuse. However there are also similar effects that all sex abuse victims share and we all know the same courage.
I write this letter to my brothers and sisters who have been sexually abused.
My Fellow Survivors,
I’m truly sorry.
I’m sorry someone put his or her hands on you as a child. I’m sorry someone forced himself on you. I’m sorry that the people who were supposed to protect and love you tried to break you. I’m sorry if anyone could have helped by intervening, yet chose not to. I’m proud of your strength and endurance. You are strong and amazing and you are not in this alone.
Do not give up hope!
Six years ago I had a shotgun in my mouth, and now I’m the COO of Vera Wear, a columnist for this wonderful publication, an entertainer, manager of models, a coach, professional speaker, and the list goes on.
Do I share this information, bragging? Yes, I do!
I take pride in the fact that my blueprint in life, like you, was to fail, to become a monster, to be hurt and broken, and angry and bitter. But here I am, still standing. Happy, whole, healed, and complete. I am living proof that you can achieve anything, when you truly want to, regardless of the odds being stacked against you. I represent you.
Pathetically, in the U.S., one in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused before they reach the age of eighteen. One in six women have been the victim of an attempted rape or completed rape.
Being a part of this statistic can feel humiliating and embarrassing, and make us feel weak and powerless. This is wrong. Being a part of that statistic is a badge of strength, determination, resiliency, and empowerment.
We were supposed to be knocked down, hung out to dry, and left behind. We were supposed to be the freaks in life, the nobodies, the angered, and the powerless. But we have strength and courage within us that no one possibly could realize they have, unless they have walked in our shoes.
We know what it’s like to have to dig deep within us and rise above the water trying to cover our heads. We know what it’s like to find the strength to heal the cracks in our armor, to put ourselves back together again. But we’re not the same: we are stronger, smarter, wiser, and more loving and accepting because of it.
We can heal and transcend through the past, transform to greatness. Yes, I’m sure you all relate to the residual effects from abuse that may never go away, and that’s ok. We will never know what normal is, besides a setting on a dryer. We’re a bit weird, and a little crazy, odd and eccentric.
But, we’re not broken, we’re not hiding from our past, and we can love who we are. I now embrace my crazy personality quirks with pride, rather than hiding from them in shame. Maybe we’re different, but different is beautiful.
We define our past. Our past does not define us.
To the raped, to the molested, and to the sixteen year old rape victim of Steubenville High School, to the strong young women and brave man who recently inspired me, to all the victims of abuse and rape, we will not be left behind, we will not be hung out to dry, we will heal, we will transcend, we will triumph, and we will achieve greatness. They will not break us. I believe in you!
Love, Carter
Carter Lee is the author of When Jonathan Cried For Me, a child sex abuse survivor and spokesman, host of Carter Lee Presents the Fever, Partner to verawear.com, a coach, and manager of models (Carter’s Bombshells). To learn more about Carter or to see all of his projects visit TheCarterLee.com.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Since allegations of sexual assault by Bratslav rabbi Eliezer Berland have come to light, some families have left the community!
A disciple of Rabbi Eliezer Berland, who recently ended contact with him, says: "There is the hard core, which does not believe that anything happened. Even if the rabbi were to confess to the actions he's accused of under interrogation, even if you were to show them video documentation of what [is alleged to have] occurred - they would not abandon him. They will say: There is a secret here, it is hard to 'attain' [i.e., understand] the rabbi. Or [members of his community] will say: He did these things intentionally, because harsh 'precepts' [divine punishment] are pending against the people of Israel, and if the rabbi acts contemptibly, he can prevent a future holocaust. There are also those who are convinced that they slipped Ecstasy into the rabbi's medications, without his knowledge. These are excuses that can serve forever."
Indeed, most members of the Shuvu Banim community, an insular group of newly religious believers belonging to the Bratslav Hasidim, have remained loyal to Berland. Among the hundreds of families in the community, the vast majority have remained with the rabbi and are loyal to the educational institutions of the community. Lately, however, with the growing evidence of sexual assaults - evidence that began to emerge with the filing of complaints by individual women that followed publication of an initial accusation by a disciple who claimed to have witnessed the rabbi having sex with a woman from the community - there has been a change. Some 20 families, hardly a negligible number, decided in recent months to leave the fold. Dozens more have begun to distance themselves from the rabbi, and are gradually moving closer to his son, Rabbi Nachman Berland, who heads a branch of the community in Betar Ilit, just outside of Jerusalem. Nachman has long been considered his father's successor, although rivalry and intrigue are palpable between the two men.
Shuvu Banim, founded in the late 1970s, has a yeshiva in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City. Most of the group's members live on a single street on the outskirts of Mea She'arim, or in the branch in Betar Ilit. Rabbi Berland has boasted of his relations with crime families, but over the years police and army officers have also been regular visitors to his chambers.
The community operates on the fringes of Haredi society, and many ultra-Orthodox take exception to Berland's directives to his disciples to take risks (such as driving at excessive speeds to the graves of tzadikim - holy men - or, specifically, to infiltrate Nablus in order to visit Joseph's tomb ), and to undergo purification that involves personal humiliation.
Nonetheless, in recent years Berland has been granted increased legitimacy in certain rabbinic circles. The ultra-Orthodox world, which always treated him with suspicion, also began to embrace him. Berland had the privilege in recent months, for example, of sitting at one of the tables of honor at the main siyum hashas ceremony (marking completion of a full cycle of daily Talmud study ) held by the United Torah Judaism party ), and at the same party's most important election rally.
Nonetheless, the testimony against Berland that is now coming to light has the Haredi world, and in particular the Shuvu Banim community, in an uproar. No less shocking than the criminal aspect of the matter is the fact that sexual asceticism is one of the main spiritual foundations that Berland preaches - and in this case he was apparently caught red-handed.
This scandal comes on the heels of a stormy series of events that has been ongoing since late 2010; indeed, it turns out that allegations of sexual assault by him were already being made back then. Berland previously staged a sort of "coup" against his wife, son and members of his court, when he allowed publication of his claim that they were confining him against his will, seeking to have him committed, and denying him contact with his disciples.
The rabbi, as part of his revolt, managed to elude, with the aid of a handful of loyalists, the security guards keeping watch over his house, and announced that he had escaped from captivity. Meanwhile, video clips came to light in which his son and grandson are documented in conversations acknowledging that they were exploiting him. A while later, the rabbi reconciled with his family, but the community was left traumatized and divided. Many left, the rabbi fell into debt, and about a year ago several of his senior disciples, including businessman Eran Hochberg (a former youth chess champion ) and Binyamin Ze'evi (son of the late politician and government minister Rehavam Ze'evi ), also jumped ship.
The speculation within the community is that the allegations of sexual harassment reached his wife, Tehila Berland, and son Nachman even before they became public knowledge. For that reason, sources say, the pair sought to keep him out of the public eye, as Eliezer Berland himself has charged.
Haredi world divided over latest sexual harassment scandal - Week's End - Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper
Indeed, most members of the Shuvu Banim community, an insular group of newly religious believers belonging to the Bratslav Hasidim, have remained loyal to Berland. Among the hundreds of families in the community, the vast majority have remained with the rabbi and are loyal to the educational institutions of the community. Lately, however, with the growing evidence of sexual assaults - evidence that began to emerge with the filing of complaints by individual women that followed publication of an initial accusation by a disciple who claimed to have witnessed the rabbi having sex with a woman from the community - there has been a change. Some 20 families, hardly a negligible number, decided in recent months to leave the fold. Dozens more have begun to distance themselves from the rabbi, and are gradually moving closer to his son, Rabbi Nachman Berland, who heads a branch of the community in Betar Ilit, just outside of Jerusalem. Nachman has long been considered his father's successor, although rivalry and intrigue are palpable between the two men.
Shuvu Banim, founded in the late 1970s, has a yeshiva in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City. Most of the group's members live on a single street on the outskirts of Mea She'arim, or in the branch in Betar Ilit. Rabbi Berland has boasted of his relations with crime families, but over the years police and army officers have also been regular visitors to his chambers.
The community operates on the fringes of Haredi society, and many ultra-Orthodox take exception to Berland's directives to his disciples to take risks (such as driving at excessive speeds to the graves of tzadikim - holy men - or, specifically, to infiltrate Nablus in order to visit Joseph's tomb ), and to undergo purification that involves personal humiliation.
Nonetheless, in recent years Berland has been granted increased legitimacy in certain rabbinic circles. The ultra-Orthodox world, which always treated him with suspicion, also began to embrace him. Berland had the privilege in recent months, for example, of sitting at one of the tables of honor at the main siyum hashas ceremony (marking completion of a full cycle of daily Talmud study ) held by the United Torah Judaism party ), and at the same party's most important election rally.
Nonetheless, the testimony against Berland that is now coming to light has the Haredi world, and in particular the Shuvu Banim community, in an uproar. No less shocking than the criminal aspect of the matter is the fact that sexual asceticism is one of the main spiritual foundations that Berland preaches - and in this case he was apparently caught red-handed.
This scandal comes on the heels of a stormy series of events that has been ongoing since late 2010; indeed, it turns out that allegations of sexual assault by him were already being made back then. Berland previously staged a sort of "coup" against his wife, son and members of his court, when he allowed publication of his claim that they were confining him against his will, seeking to have him committed, and denying him contact with his disciples.
The rabbi, as part of his revolt, managed to elude, with the aid of a handful of loyalists, the security guards keeping watch over his house, and announced that he had escaped from captivity. Meanwhile, video clips came to light in which his son and grandson are documented in conversations acknowledging that they were exploiting him. A while later, the rabbi reconciled with his family, but the community was left traumatized and divided. Many left, the rabbi fell into debt, and about a year ago several of his senior disciples, including businessman Eran Hochberg (a former youth chess champion ) and Binyamin Ze'evi (son of the late politician and government minister Rehavam Ze'evi ), also jumped ship.
The speculation within the community is that the allegations of sexual harassment reached his wife, Tehila Berland, and son Nachman even before they became public knowledge. For that reason, sources say, the pair sought to keep him out of the public eye, as Eliezer Berland himself has charged.
Haredi world divided over latest sexual harassment scandal - Week's End - Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper
What does it take for a woman to accuse her rabbi of sexual harassment?
It took some time for A. to realize she was being abused. Since then, her world collapsed.
It took A. some time to realize she had been sexually harassed by Rabbi Eliezer Berland - a holy and righteous man in her eyes - and for her to file a police complaint. She is 18, married, her pretty face wrapped tightly in a black kerchief in the so-called Jerusalem fashion. She is going through a crisis, not only as a woman who was sexually harassed, but also as someone who was raised with a unique system of beliefs, at the center of which is the rabbi, the righteous foundation of the world.
Since A. became disillusioned, her world has collapsed. She stopped working, and her life now revolves around both the court case and the rift in her community, which has shunned her since she submitted her complaint to the police.
"I am the daughter of a veteran disciple of the rabbi," she says. "My father still believes in him. I think that if he were to cease believing, he would die from it. Today, now that I am outside, I understand that Shuvu Banim is a false Hasidic sect that is only after money. Everything the rabbi would do was very peculiar, not ordinary. He would yell, would travel around at night to tikkunim [sessions of 'spiritual repair'], and we'd follow after him.
"My husband is a righteous one. Our vart [a Yiddish term for an occasion that proceeds a betrothal] was at the rabbi's. We waited there all night. My husband cried to the guards to let us in to see the rabbi, and only at 5 A.M. did we break a plate. I was pleased. It was a matter of pride between me and my girlfriends that I had a groom who would chase after the rabbi. After the sheva berakhot [the week of nightly meals and blessings after a wedding], my husband continued his pursuit of the rabbi. He would go to Hebron, Amuka [in the Galilee] - wherever the rabbi was, my husband would chase after him. Later I joined in too.
"We thought we were demonstrating our devotion. For a year after our marriage, I did not have a single evening with my husband, because I was busy, in pursuit: We were the rabbi's minions. There was a group of women who pursued the rabbi. The rabbi would excite us, suddenly emerge from the car, do tikkun, and then get in and drive off. I worked from noon until 4 P.M., so that I would have time to sleep in a little in the morning, but many times I would telephone and say that I wasn't feeling well. So I also wasn't receiving a proper salary.
"My father instilled in us at that the rabbi is the essence of spirituality at home. I began going to the rabbi too, because we'd heard you could get a blessing. Once we used to see him from afar, but now we realized that you could get in to see him without paying millions of shekels. We got excited, we started going to him at night.
"The first time I went in to the rabbi, it was with another woman: He gave us a kiss on the forehead. Something gentle, a kiss from the righteous one. At the time I didn't think it was unusual, but from a kiss it developed into holding you, touching, licking. A lot of women don't believe the rabbi touched and kissed [others], because he didn't touch them. These are older Ashkenazi women.
"If he had touched them, they would have done him in. So he did it to us, the innocent disciples. Like that, so we wouldn't feel it, his hands were constantly fluttering about. He would come close and do it quickly without your realizing, with three or four women in the room - caress this one, embrace that one. One day he told my husband, 'Your wife will have the privilege of being in the world of nobility' [a higher realm the soul belongs to, according to kabbala]. It was only afterward that we understood he was preparing him.
"That time I had come with my husband to the rabbi as usual, and he said, 'You stay here and you come with me.' He locked me in his room and went out. When he entered he pointed to the bed. I don't remember what he said to me. He kissed me and stuck his tongue in my mouth. He held me real tight, my whole body, close to his, and he became dreadfully excited and panted. He told me, 'Now you are in the world of nobility,' and licked my face until it was really sticky. I was fighting with myself not to do anything. To this day I am traumatized by it.
"After that he put his hands under my blouse and felt me up brusquely. And then he opened the door and I ran to my husband and told him excitedly that the rabbi said I was in the world of nobility. We began to fight, because my husband understood."
'I miss kissing you'
A. says Berland frequently preached sexual abstinence. "For nine months he told me and my husband not to touch. From the time we married, we were prushim [abstaining from sexual relations]. It killed us. Sometimes we would touch and then we'd say, 'The rabbi will be mad at us.' My husband and I would go in and I would ask the rabbi, 'When will we be blessed with children?' He would say, 'You are not touching each other? You will be visited.' We were naive. I thought I would have children just because the rabbi promised me we would be visited. But he kept on saying, 'Now go immerse yourself' [in a ritual bath], as though he was ensuring that I would be pure for him. In front of other people he would ask: 'When did you go to immerse yourself?' I whispered in his ear, and he would say in front of the others that I had gone. I would feel embarrassed. The rabbi would call all the time: I love you, miss you, miss kissing you. But he would mix this sort of talk with holy talk. And then all of a sudden he stopped calling me."
READ MUCH MORE:
http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/what-does-it-take-for-a-woman-to-accuse-her-rabbi-of-sexual-harassment.premium-1.511303
It took A. some time to realize she had been sexually harassed by Rabbi Eliezer Berland - a holy and righteous man in her eyes - and for her to file a police complaint. She is 18, married, her pretty face wrapped tightly in a black kerchief in the so-called Jerusalem fashion. She is going through a crisis, not only as a woman who was sexually harassed, but also as someone who was raised with a unique system of beliefs, at the center of which is the rabbi, the righteous foundation of the world.
Since A. became disillusioned, her world has collapsed. She stopped working, and her life now revolves around both the court case and the rift in her community, which has shunned her since she submitted her complaint to the police.
"I am the daughter of a veteran disciple of the rabbi," she says. "My father still believes in him. I think that if he were to cease believing, he would die from it. Today, now that I am outside, I understand that Shuvu Banim is a false Hasidic sect that is only after money. Everything the rabbi would do was very peculiar, not ordinary. He would yell, would travel around at night to tikkunim [sessions of 'spiritual repair'], and we'd follow after him.
"My husband is a righteous one. Our vart [a Yiddish term for an occasion that proceeds a betrothal] was at the rabbi's. We waited there all night. My husband cried to the guards to let us in to see the rabbi, and only at 5 A.M. did we break a plate. I was pleased. It was a matter of pride between me and my girlfriends that I had a groom who would chase after the rabbi. After the sheva berakhot [the week of nightly meals and blessings after a wedding], my husband continued his pursuit of the rabbi. He would go to Hebron, Amuka [in the Galilee] - wherever the rabbi was, my husband would chase after him. Later I joined in too.
"We thought we were demonstrating our devotion. For a year after our marriage, I did not have a single evening with my husband, because I was busy, in pursuit: We were the rabbi's minions. There was a group of women who pursued the rabbi. The rabbi would excite us, suddenly emerge from the car, do tikkun, and then get in and drive off. I worked from noon until 4 P.M., so that I would have time to sleep in a little in the morning, but many times I would telephone and say that I wasn't feeling well. So I also wasn't receiving a proper salary.
"My father instilled in us at that the rabbi is the essence of spirituality at home. I began going to the rabbi too, because we'd heard you could get a blessing. Once we used to see him from afar, but now we realized that you could get in to see him without paying millions of shekels. We got excited, we started going to him at night.
"The first time I went in to the rabbi, it was with another woman: He gave us a kiss on the forehead. Something gentle, a kiss from the righteous one. At the time I didn't think it was unusual, but from a kiss it developed into holding you, touching, licking. A lot of women don't believe the rabbi touched and kissed [others], because he didn't touch them. These are older Ashkenazi women.
"If he had touched them, they would have done him in. So he did it to us, the innocent disciples. Like that, so we wouldn't feel it, his hands were constantly fluttering about. He would come close and do it quickly without your realizing, with three or four women in the room - caress this one, embrace that one. One day he told my husband, 'Your wife will have the privilege of being in the world of nobility' [a higher realm the soul belongs to, according to kabbala]. It was only afterward that we understood he was preparing him.
"That time I had come with my husband to the rabbi as usual, and he said, 'You stay here and you come with me.' He locked me in his room and went out. When he entered he pointed to the bed. I don't remember what he said to me. He kissed me and stuck his tongue in my mouth. He held me real tight, my whole body, close to his, and he became dreadfully excited and panted. He told me, 'Now you are in the world of nobility,' and licked my face until it was really sticky. I was fighting with myself not to do anything. To this day I am traumatized by it.
"After that he put his hands under my blouse and felt me up brusquely. And then he opened the door and I ran to my husband and told him excitedly that the rabbi said I was in the world of nobility. We began to fight, because my husband understood."
'I miss kissing you'
A. says Berland frequently preached sexual abstinence. "For nine months he told me and my husband not to touch. From the time we married, we were prushim [abstaining from sexual relations]. It killed us. Sometimes we would touch and then we'd say, 'The rabbi will be mad at us.' My husband and I would go in and I would ask the rabbi, 'When will we be blessed with children?' He would say, 'You are not touching each other? You will be visited.' We were naive. I thought I would have children just because the rabbi promised me we would be visited. But he kept on saying, 'Now go immerse yourself' [in a ritual bath], as though he was ensuring that I would be pure for him. In front of other people he would ask: 'When did you go to immerse yourself?' I whispered in his ear, and he would say in front of the others that I had gone. I would feel embarrassed. The rabbi would call all the time: I love you, miss you, miss kissing you. But he would mix this sort of talk with holy talk. And then all of a sudden he stopped calling me."
READ MUCH MORE:
http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/what-does-it-take-for-a-woman-to-accuse-her-rabbi-of-sexual-harassment.premium-1.511303
Friday, March 22, 2013
How To Expose The Corrupt!
.......An analogy would be a person who was treated badly as a child and grew up to have little self-respect for themselves. Later in life, they began to eat unhealthy food, smoke cigarettes and drink too much. All around them, people would say, "Why don't you stop smoking? It is so bad for you!" But even though that person agreed...and had successfully quit smoking on previous occasions. The bad habit would later return.
The person has difficulty quitting because that is not the primary issue.
The primary issue is that they learned early on to treat themselves disrespectfully.
Knowing what happened in the past, and what was to blame...will not stop the problem. It is up to the person to observe the dysfunctional behavior and practice thinking in a different way.
And I can see it on a global scale. Where people with good intentions, rightly see a problem and try to fix it. However they cannot, because it is a problem that stems from something more fundamental. Something more primary. All our efforts, our time, our energy and our resources...are being wasted, because we are focused on the secondary issues, destroying stability in our global and local communities, in our families...and within ourselves.
Know thyself!
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Students learn about child sex-abuse!
Beckley-Stratton Middle School’s after-school program invited Just For Kids executive director Scott Miller to teach them more about child abuse, a topic they have already been learning and creating a video about.
While there, the students donated fleece blankets they made to Miller for Just For Kids to help comfort kids interviewed at the Child Advocacy Center.
Miller, who is also on the advisory council for the after-school program, told the students only one in 10 children feels safe enough to tell his or her story and last year in Raleigh, Fayette and Wyoming counties, Just For Kids interviewed 300 kids.
“My message for you is that if you hear about it or it is an experience that happened to you, tell someone about it. The only way you can get help is if an adult who cares about you knows about it,” he said.
A family member or teacher is the person children who have been abused most often confide in. But as of July 2012, any adult in West Virginia who is told about child sexual abuse is, by law, considered a mandated reporter, he said.
The students asked how to tell if someone is being abused.
Miller said that it is adults’ responsibility to make the call if someone truly is abused and report it to the police, but students can also be aware of the signs, for example, if someone has an unexplained injury or has a sudden change in personality or appetite.
The students asked how Just For Kids helps child victims.
Miller explained that before Just For Kids came to the area a little more than a decade ago, victims had to tell their story and be interviewed 10 or 12 times by different people. Having to share those details only once makes it a lot easier for kids, he said.
He also said Just For Kids works to raise awareness and get people thinking about child abuse.
“Many adults don’t realize what a big issue it is and how many children are abused,” he said.
The students asked who is most likely an abuser and how the abuse starts.
Miller told them 80 percent to 90 percent of abusers are “people the children know, love and respect.”
He talked about the grooming process perpetrators go through to build trust in the victim and make it harder for the victim to come forward.
Ultimately, he tried to empower the students to speak up for themselves and others.
“People should not be touching your body in ways you know is not right. It is a challenge when it is someone you love and trust, but you need to be able to say no. You should not be asked to keep secrets about your body,” he said.
The Beckley-Stratton Middle School after-school program is a 21st Century Community Learning Center and is funded by the West Virginia Department of Education through RESA 1.
The program site coordinator is Beckley-Stratton teacher Vickie Webb.
— E-mail: splummer@register-herald.com
While there, the students donated fleece blankets they made to Miller for Just For Kids to help comfort kids interviewed at the Child Advocacy Center.
Miller, who is also on the advisory council for the after-school program, told the students only one in 10 children feels safe enough to tell his or her story and last year in Raleigh, Fayette and Wyoming counties, Just For Kids interviewed 300 kids.
“My message for you is that if you hear about it or it is an experience that happened to you, tell someone about it. The only way you can get help is if an adult who cares about you knows about it,” he said.
A family member or teacher is the person children who have been abused most often confide in. But as of July 2012, any adult in West Virginia who is told about child sexual abuse is, by law, considered a mandated reporter, he said.
The students asked how to tell if someone is being abused.
Miller said that it is adults’ responsibility to make the call if someone truly is abused and report it to the police, but students can also be aware of the signs, for example, if someone has an unexplained injury or has a sudden change in personality or appetite.
The students asked how Just For Kids helps child victims.
Miller explained that before Just For Kids came to the area a little more than a decade ago, victims had to tell their story and be interviewed 10 or 12 times by different people. Having to share those details only once makes it a lot easier for kids, he said.
He also said Just For Kids works to raise awareness and get people thinking about child abuse.
“Many adults don’t realize what a big issue it is and how many children are abused,” he said.
The students asked who is most likely an abuser and how the abuse starts.
Miller told them 80 percent to 90 percent of abusers are “people the children know, love and respect.”
He talked about the grooming process perpetrators go through to build trust in the victim and make it harder for the victim to come forward.
Ultimately, he tried to empower the students to speak up for themselves and others.
“People should not be touching your body in ways you know is not right. It is a challenge when it is someone you love and trust, but you need to be able to say no. You should not be asked to keep secrets about your body,” he said.
The Beckley-Stratton Middle School after-school program is a 21st Century Community Learning Center and is funded by the West Virginia Department of Education through RESA 1.
The program site coordinator is Beckley-Stratton teacher Vickie Webb.
— E-mail: splummer@register-herald.com
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Clergy abuse victims call on Pope Francis to open files on Argentina’s pedophile priests!
A U.S. group that tracks clergy abuse is calling on Pope Francis to apologize for the Argentine church’s protection of two priests convicted of abusing children. The Bishop Accountability group cites the case of Father Julio Cesar Grassi, who ran the “Happy Children” foundation and was convicted of pedophilia in 2008. Now Grassi is free on appeal, thanks in part to the church’s report.
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — A Roman Catholic activist group said Tuesday that Pope Francis was slow as head of the Argentine church to act against sexual abuse by clergy and urged him to apologize for what it called church protection for two priests later convicted of sexually assaulting children.
A lawyer for some of the victims, meanwhile, said the future pope, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, had not met with or helped victims, and charged that mid-level church officials who covered up the problem haven’t lost their jobs.
The Buenos Aires archbishop’s office didn’t immediately comment on the complaints, which came as Francis was being installed as pope in a Vatican ceremony seen around the world.
The U.S.-based Bishop Accountability group cited the cases of two priests: Father Julio Cesar Grassi, who ran the “Happy Children” foundation and was convicted of pedophilia in 2008, and Father Napoleon Sasso, convicted in 2007 of abusing girls at a soup kitchen in suburban Buenos Aires, where he was assigned after being accused of pedophilia elsewhere.
Grassi is currently free pending appeal, thanks partly to a court filing on his behalf by the Argentine church, which was headed by Bergoglio as archbishop of Buenos Aires. Bergoglio oversaw Argentina’s bishops conference when Sasso was assigned to the soup kitchen at a chapel, said the victims attorney, Ernesto Moreau.
Bishop Accountability co-director Anne Doyle said those events show Bergoglio was behind the curve in the Catholic Church’s global struggle to deal with sex abuse by its priests, which erupted in 2002 after thousands of cases became public in the United States and around the world.
“We would be alarmed if the Archbishop Bergoglio had done this in the ‘60s or ‘70s. That would be sad and disturbing,” Doyle told The Associated Press. “But the fact that he did this just five years ago, when other bishops in other countries were meeting victims and implementing tough reporting laws, it puts him behind some of his American counterparts, that’s for sure.”
The group said that to send a message of zero tolerance in the church around the world, the new pope should tell the Buenos Aires archdiocese to release the complete files on the Grassi and Sasso cases, publicly identify any other priests who are “credibly accused” of sex abuse and endorse mandatory reporting by church officials to law enforcement of suspected abuse.
The pope himself should admit that he was wrong to defend abusive priests, apologize to the victims of Grassi and Sasso, and offer to meet with the victims, the group said.
Noting the pope’s coronation, Doyle said: “The victims of these two priests are the very children of God about whom he was speaking in his homily today. They are the most vulnerable of the poor. We hope that Francis will seize this as a priority and reach out to the victims and rectify his terrible insensitivity to them when he was archbishop.”...
READ MUCH MORE:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/clergy-abuse-victims-call-on-pope-francis-to-open-files-on-argentinas-pedophile-priests/2013/03/19/ea524742-90f6-11e2-9173-7f87cda73b49_story.html
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — A Roman Catholic activist group said Tuesday that Pope Francis was slow as head of the Argentine church to act against sexual abuse by clergy and urged him to apologize for what it called church protection for two priests later convicted of sexually assaulting children.
A lawyer for some of the victims, meanwhile, said the future pope, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, had not met with or helped victims, and charged that mid-level church officials who covered up the problem haven’t lost their jobs.
The Buenos Aires archbishop’s office didn’t immediately comment on the complaints, which came as Francis was being installed as pope in a Vatican ceremony seen around the world.
The U.S.-based Bishop Accountability group cited the cases of two priests: Father Julio Cesar Grassi, who ran the “Happy Children” foundation and was convicted of pedophilia in 2008, and Father Napoleon Sasso, convicted in 2007 of abusing girls at a soup kitchen in suburban Buenos Aires, where he was assigned after being accused of pedophilia elsewhere.
Grassi is currently free pending appeal, thanks partly to a court filing on his behalf by the Argentine church, which was headed by Bergoglio as archbishop of Buenos Aires. Bergoglio oversaw Argentina’s bishops conference when Sasso was assigned to the soup kitchen at a chapel, said the victims attorney, Ernesto Moreau.
Bishop Accountability co-director Anne Doyle said those events show Bergoglio was behind the curve in the Catholic Church’s global struggle to deal with sex abuse by its priests, which erupted in 2002 after thousands of cases became public in the United States and around the world.
“We would be alarmed if the Archbishop Bergoglio had done this in the ‘60s or ‘70s. That would be sad and disturbing,” Doyle told The Associated Press. “But the fact that he did this just five years ago, when other bishops in other countries were meeting victims and implementing tough reporting laws, it puts him behind some of his American counterparts, that’s for sure.”
The group said that to send a message of zero tolerance in the church around the world, the new pope should tell the Buenos Aires archdiocese to release the complete files on the Grassi and Sasso cases, publicly identify any other priests who are “credibly accused” of sex abuse and endorse mandatory reporting by church officials to law enforcement of suspected abuse.
The pope himself should admit that he was wrong to defend abusive priests, apologize to the victims of Grassi and Sasso, and offer to meet with the victims, the group said.
Noting the pope’s coronation, Doyle said: “The victims of these two priests are the very children of God about whom he was speaking in his homily today. They are the most vulnerable of the poor. We hope that Francis will seize this as a priority and reach out to the victims and rectify his terrible insensitivity to them when he was archbishop.”...
READ MUCH MORE:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/clergy-abuse-victims-call-on-pope-francis-to-open-files-on-argentinas-pedophile-priests/2013/03/19/ea524742-90f6-11e2-9173-7f87cda73b49_story.html
Monday, March 18, 2013
UOJ Says Most Clergy Are Both A Sickness & A Crime!
* South African Cardinal Says Child Sex Abuse is a Sickness, Not a Crime
* Archbishop Wilfrid Fox Napier, whose comments on paedophilia have caused outrage. A Roman Catholic Cardinal has claimed that paedophilia should be treated as a medical condition, not as a crime.
* Speaking to the BBC the Archbishop of Durban, South Africa, Wilfrid Fox Napier, said child sex abusers were suffering from: "a psychological condition, a disorder".
"What do you do with disorders? You've got to try and put them right," he said.
"If I - as a normal being - choose to break the law, knowing that I'm breaking the law, then I think I need to be punished."
He said that he had spoken to two priests who had abused children and were themselves abused.
"Now don't tell me that those people are criminally responsible like somebody who chooses to do something like that. I don't think you can really take the position and say that person deserves to be punished. He was himself damaged."
Cardinal Napier was one of the 115 members of the papal conclave which elected Francis I as the new pope earlier this week.
His comments have sparked outrage from campaigners and abuse victims.
Barbara Dorries, who as a child was abused by a priest, works for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, which is based in Chicago.
She told the BBC: "If it is a disease that's fine, but it's also a crime and crimes are punished, criminals are held accountable for what they did and what they do.
"The bishops and the cardinals have gone to great lengths to cover these crimes to enable the predators to move on, to not be arrested, to keep the secrets within the church."
In recent years, a string of child sex abuse scandals has rocked the Roman Catholic Church.
This week the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles awarded $10 million to victims abused by former priest Michael Baker.
Last year a Chilean bishop resigned after being accused of sexually abusing an altar boy.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/446863/20130316/archbishop-paedophile-crime-ilness-fox-napier-wilfred.htm
* Archbishop Wilfrid Fox Napier, whose comments on paedophilia have caused outrage. A Roman Catholic Cardinal has claimed that paedophilia should be treated as a medical condition, not as a crime.
* Speaking to the BBC the Archbishop of Durban, South Africa, Wilfrid Fox Napier, said child sex abusers were suffering from: "a psychological condition, a disorder".
"What do you do with disorders? You've got to try and put them right," he said.
"If I - as a normal being - choose to break the law, knowing that I'm breaking the law, then I think I need to be punished."
He said that he had spoken to two priests who had abused children and were themselves abused.
"Now don't tell me that those people are criminally responsible like somebody who chooses to do something like that. I don't think you can really take the position and say that person deserves to be punished. He was himself damaged."
Cardinal Napier was one of the 115 members of the papal conclave which elected Francis I as the new pope earlier this week.
His comments have sparked outrage from campaigners and abuse victims.
Barbara Dorries, who as a child was abused by a priest, works for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, which is based in Chicago.
She told the BBC: "If it is a disease that's fine, but it's also a crime and crimes are punished, criminals are held accountable for what they did and what they do.
"The bishops and the cardinals have gone to great lengths to cover these crimes to enable the predators to move on, to not be arrested, to keep the secrets within the church."
In recent years, a string of child sex abuse scandals has rocked the Roman Catholic Church.
This week the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles awarded $10 million to victims abused by former priest Michael Baker.
Last year a Chilean bishop resigned after being accused of sexually abusing an altar boy.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/446863/20130316/archbishop-paedophile-crime-ilness-fox-napier-wilfred.htm
Sunday, March 17, 2013
MOST people don't understand the impact of sexual abuse.
They rattle off words like ‘rape’ and ‘molestation’ but they don’t really understand it. If they did, they’d do something about it.
My husband, John, and I have four boys, Daniel, Luke, Dominic and Bernard. We raised them on a 25-acre property 40 minutes from Newcastle, NSW, and led a happy life with a strong Catholic faith.
The boys were 11, 10, seven and three when Father James Fletcher arrived in our parish.
He didn’t seem very smart and his homilies were shallow, but he took an interest in the children and we were pleased to have a priest who learnt their names and asked them about cricket and school.
Father Fletcher visited our family a lot and we were very active in his church. John did his accounts and I did everything from sewing the buttons onto his black shirts to taking communion to the elderly.
He took a particular interest in Daniel, recruiting him as an altar server. People were always drawn toDaniel. He had a sweet nature, an angelic face and shining eyes.
In fact, I worried about adults’ interest in him, but I took care to check that outings and parties were supervised.
Daniel was about 14 when his behaviour started to change. He’d disappear without explanation, have emotional outbursts and avoid playing cricket with his brothers as he usually did.
I worried about it to Father Fletcher, who insisted it was normal teenage mood swings, but my other sons didn’t behave like Daniel. He seemed depressed and confused. He was given detentions and his exam results fell.
When he left school, he started binge-drinking and was arrested for drink-driving, he had a series of broken relationships and kept moving job and home. At 19, he was going off the rails and didn’t seem to value his life at all.
One day I was sick of seeing him drunk again and we argued. He walked out, and when I followed, I found him on a trailer beside the tractor with a noose around his neck. As I screamed, he jumped.
I supported his weight until Bernard came to help me and then, not knowing what else to do, I called Father Fletcher.
He told me to send Daniel over to see him, saying he could spend the night there. He returned more distressed than ever.
One night in 2000, he called from Tasmania, where he was now living. He’d just been referred to a psychiatrist for stress.
Suddenly a question popped into my head. I still don’t know what triggered it – call it mother’s intuition.
“Have you been sexually abused?” I asked. He replied: “Yes.”
I was shocked but he wouldn’t say any more – I know now that not wanting to talk about it is a normal reaction from abused people – and I wondered who it was. One name was top of my list: Fletcher.
I was right. Daniel said it had happened the night he tried to hang himself. Fletcher had given him more alcohol and a tablet and he’d bombed out. The next morning, he realised he’d been assaulted.
We thought the priest was a dirty piece of work who’d taken advantage of Daniel.
We were disgusted, but Daniel was an adult so had to report it himself, and he wasn’t ready.
It wasn’t until some time later, when he said he might like to go to the police, that John asked: “We’re right beside you, mate, but why on earth would the priest do that to you when you were 19?”
Daniel looked at me. “Because it started when I was 12,” he replied.
The abuse he suffered was so traumatic, it took him 11 months to make his statement.
An employee at the Department of Public Prosecutions asked to be taken off the case because it was so distressing.
When I finally read it, I wept bitter tears to think all that was happening under my nose. Why didn’t I see it? I asked myself. But I hadn’t been looking for it.
Daniel recalled how he was told to stand on his “tippy toes” during one session of abuse. Once he had to ride his bicycle home standing on his pedals.
One part of his statement, describing a particularly awful incident, reads: “Tears were running down my face. The pain was unbelievable.
"My knuckles were white and I just focused on the St Christopher’s medal [Fletcher] had hanging near the steering wheel.
"If I focused on that, it was as if it would take the pain away and make me forget what was happening. But it didn’t. All the way home he kept emphasising this was a secret.”
I felt furious Fletcher had got away with it. I anguished that Daniel was made to feel it was his fault – he didn’t see himself as a victim.
The church community rallied around Fletcher and many ostracised me.
I received frightening anonymous calls and a man rammed his trolley into me in the supermarket, leaving my shins pouring blood. I’d go to talk to another member of the congregation and they’d move away.
I was taken aback, but understood that if they accepted he was a paedophile, they’d have to accept he fooled them, too.
Many of Fletcher’s supporters came to court for the trial in 2004. Another priest gave half his congregation’s Christmas collection towards his legal fees.
By then, two more victims had come forward – one after Fletcher asked his family for a character reference. The arrogance of it!
The police had accounts of more than 80 offences over five years, and the nine strongest were heard in court.
Fletcher denied eight charges of homosexual intercourse with a child and one of aggravated indecency with a child. He was found guilty on all counts and sentenced to 10 years.
We were asked if we’d celebrate, but there was nothing to celebrate.
Daniel wanted Fletcher to admit what he had done and say sorry, but that never happened: In 2006, Fletcher suffered a stroke and died. His funeral was attended by 34 priests.
After the trial I was so traumatised, I needed to get everything out of my head. I also wanted to write a record for the family to help us move on.
I only intended to keep it on my shelf, but as more information came out about abuse and cover-ups by the Catholic church, people said: “Why don’t you publish that book?” So I have.
Daniel, now 36, spoke at the launch. He has a strong woman, a good job and three beautiful children – he wanted everyone to know he was doing well. I’m very proud of him.
Several positive things happened after the court case. Our diocesan bishop, Michael Malone, set up Zimmerman Services, which refers sex-abuse victims to the police and provides support and counselling.
Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox, who had taken Daniel’s very first statement, went on ABC’s Lateline and spoke graphically of the horror of child abuse and of high-level cover-ups in the church and the police force.
There was a public outcry, and the following Monday, Julia Gillard announced a Royal Commission into child sexual abuse.
I’m 63 now and live quietly in the Hunter Valley. John and I separated – the stress didn’t help – but we’re still a close family. I advocate for other victims and support other mothers going through a similar ordeal.
I don’t go to Mass any more. My faith hasn’t changed, but I don’t need a priest. I’m in charge of my own spirituality.
As told to Beverley Hadgraft
Holy Hell by Patricia Feenan (Fontaine Press, $24.95) is out now. Visit -- holyhell.com.au
If you or anyone you know has suffered abuse, call Lifeline on 131 114.
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/national-news/the-case-of-daniel-feenan-triggered-the-royal-commission-into-child-sex-abuse/story-fncynjr2-1226593380989#ixzz2NBgTmgit
My husband, John, and I have four boys, Daniel, Luke, Dominic and Bernard. We raised them on a 25-acre property 40 minutes from Newcastle, NSW, and led a happy life with a strong Catholic faith.
The boys were 11, 10, seven and three when Father James Fletcher arrived in our parish.
He didn’t seem very smart and his homilies were shallow, but he took an interest in the children and we were pleased to have a priest who learnt their names and asked them about cricket and school.
Father Fletcher visited our family a lot and we were very active in his church. John did his accounts and I did everything from sewing the buttons onto his black shirts to taking communion to the elderly.
He took a particular interest in Daniel, recruiting him as an altar server. People were always drawn toDaniel. He had a sweet nature, an angelic face and shining eyes.
In fact, I worried about adults’ interest in him, but I took care to check that outings and parties were supervised.
Daniel was about 14 when his behaviour started to change. He’d disappear without explanation, have emotional outbursts and avoid playing cricket with his brothers as he usually did.
I worried about it to Father Fletcher, who insisted it was normal teenage mood swings, but my other sons didn’t behave like Daniel. He seemed depressed and confused. He was given detentions and his exam results fell.
When he left school, he started binge-drinking and was arrested for drink-driving, he had a series of broken relationships and kept moving job and home. At 19, he was going off the rails and didn’t seem to value his life at all.
One day I was sick of seeing him drunk again and we argued. He walked out, and when I followed, I found him on a trailer beside the tractor with a noose around his neck. As I screamed, he jumped.
I supported his weight until Bernard came to help me and then, not knowing what else to do, I called Father Fletcher.
He told me to send Daniel over to see him, saying he could spend the night there. He returned more distressed than ever.
One night in 2000, he called from Tasmania, where he was now living. He’d just been referred to a psychiatrist for stress.
Suddenly a question popped into my head. I still don’t know what triggered it – call it mother’s intuition.
“Have you been sexually abused?” I asked. He replied: “Yes.”
I was shocked but he wouldn’t say any more – I know now that not wanting to talk about it is a normal reaction from abused people – and I wondered who it was. One name was top of my list: Fletcher.
I was right. Daniel said it had happened the night he tried to hang himself. Fletcher had given him more alcohol and a tablet and he’d bombed out. The next morning, he realised he’d been assaulted.
We thought the priest was a dirty piece of work who’d taken advantage of Daniel.
We were disgusted, but Daniel was an adult so had to report it himself, and he wasn’t ready.
It wasn’t until some time later, when he said he might like to go to the police, that John asked: “We’re right beside you, mate, but why on earth would the priest do that to you when you were 19?”
Daniel looked at me. “Because it started when I was 12,” he replied.
The abuse he suffered was so traumatic, it took him 11 months to make his statement.
An employee at the Department of Public Prosecutions asked to be taken off the case because it was so distressing.
When I finally read it, I wept bitter tears to think all that was happening under my nose. Why didn’t I see it? I asked myself. But I hadn’t been looking for it.
Daniel recalled how he was told to stand on his “tippy toes” during one session of abuse. Once he had to ride his bicycle home standing on his pedals.
One part of his statement, describing a particularly awful incident, reads: “Tears were running down my face. The pain was unbelievable.
"My knuckles were white and I just focused on the St Christopher’s medal [Fletcher] had hanging near the steering wheel.
"If I focused on that, it was as if it would take the pain away and make me forget what was happening. But it didn’t. All the way home he kept emphasising this was a secret.”
I felt furious Fletcher had got away with it. I anguished that Daniel was made to feel it was his fault – he didn’t see himself as a victim.
The church community rallied around Fletcher and many ostracised me.
I received frightening anonymous calls and a man rammed his trolley into me in the supermarket, leaving my shins pouring blood. I’d go to talk to another member of the congregation and they’d move away.
I was taken aback, but understood that if they accepted he was a paedophile, they’d have to accept he fooled them, too.
Many of Fletcher’s supporters came to court for the trial in 2004. Another priest gave half his congregation’s Christmas collection towards his legal fees.
By then, two more victims had come forward – one after Fletcher asked his family for a character reference. The arrogance of it!
The police had accounts of more than 80 offences over five years, and the nine strongest were heard in court.
Fletcher denied eight charges of homosexual intercourse with a child and one of aggravated indecency with a child. He was found guilty on all counts and sentenced to 10 years.
We were asked if we’d celebrate, but there was nothing to celebrate.
Daniel wanted Fletcher to admit what he had done and say sorry, but that never happened: In 2006, Fletcher suffered a stroke and died. His funeral was attended by 34 priests.
After the trial I was so traumatised, I needed to get everything out of my head. I also wanted to write a record for the family to help us move on.
I only intended to keep it on my shelf, but as more information came out about abuse and cover-ups by the Catholic church, people said: “Why don’t you publish that book?” So I have.
Daniel, now 36, spoke at the launch. He has a strong woman, a good job and three beautiful children – he wanted everyone to know he was doing well. I’m very proud of him.
Several positive things happened after the court case. Our diocesan bishop, Michael Malone, set up Zimmerman Services, which refers sex-abuse victims to the police and provides support and counselling.
Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox, who had taken Daniel’s very first statement, went on ABC’s Lateline and spoke graphically of the horror of child abuse and of high-level cover-ups in the church and the police force.
There was a public outcry, and the following Monday, Julia Gillard announced a Royal Commission into child sexual abuse.
I’m 63 now and live quietly in the Hunter Valley. John and I separated – the stress didn’t help – but we’re still a close family. I advocate for other victims and support other mothers going through a similar ordeal.
I don’t go to Mass any more. My faith hasn’t changed, but I don’t need a priest. I’m in charge of my own spirituality.
As told to Beverley Hadgraft
Holy Hell by Patricia Feenan (Fontaine Press, $24.95) is out now. Visit -- holyhell.com.au
If you or anyone you know has suffered abuse, call Lifeline on 131 114.
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/national-news/the-case-of-daniel-feenan-triggered-the-royal-commission-into-child-sex-abuse/story-fncynjr2-1226593380989#ixzz2NBgTmgit
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