25 years later, man sues bar mitzvah tutor, synagogue and day school for abuse

Nearly 25 years after his bar mitzvah tutor pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct, a 40-year-old New Jersey native has sued the former tutor as well as the synagogue and day school that employed him.

The tutor, Akiva Roth, pleaded guilty in 1997 to four counts of lewdness, and lost his jobs at the East Brunswick Jewish Center, the former Solomon Schechter School of Essex and Union counties and Camp Ramah in the Berkshires. But the plaintiff in the lawsuit and two other former students of Roth who were interviewed over the past month contend that the three institutions failed to properly inform their communities of the situation, allowing Roth to continue teaching in other Jewish organizations for years.

 

Akiva Roth was a bar mitzvah tutor convicted of four counts of lewdness in 1997.

The three men, two of whom were speaking publicly about their experiences for the first time, said Roth’s behavior — which included masturbating in front of middle-school boys and near-incessant talk of pornography and penises — was an open secret at the synagogue, school and camp in the mid 1990s. He was sentenced to 10 years probation for his sexual behavior in front of four boys in one of their homes. But the men said that the criminal investigation at the time was too narrow, and expressed outrage that the Conservative movement has yet to be held fully accountable for its handling of the situation.

“I’ve frankly been kind of disgusted and my parents have been disgusted for years that the investigation never went past the four kids,” said Scott Schonfeld, a former Ramah camper and student at East Brunswick and Schechter — now known as Golda Och Academy — who alleges that Roth was sexually inappropriate towards him.

Schonfeld, now 40 and living in California, said he had never been contacted about Roth’s lewd behavior by detectives or administrators at the camp, synagogue or school. “You’re literally the first person ever to ask me about it,” he recently told the Forward.

Roth, meanwhile, worked at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Drew University’s Hillel and Yeshiva University before the Forward reported on the misconduct in 2013.

The lawsuit and other accusations come as the Conservative movement, like other parts of the Jewish community, are undergoing a reckoning over past handling of sexual and other misconduct.

Four years after the Harvey Weinstein scandal launched the #MeToo movement, the Rabbinical Assembly last month made public its list of expelled or suspended rabbis for the first time. The Assembly announced in April a plan to revise its code of conduct, while the Reform movement’s seminary, rabbinical organization and synagogue network have all hired separate law firms to independently investigate allegations of harassment and the institutions’ policies to prevent it.

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The fresh allegations against Roth join a steady trickle of recent stories about sexual misconduct with Jewish youth. Rabbi Jordan Soffer, now head of a Jewish day school in Sharon, Mass., in August alleged that an employee of United Synagogue Youth sexually abused him at a convention when Soffer was 15, but continued to work in the Conservative movement for years. Two victims of the same USY staffer filed lawsuits against the youth group this summer, and the CEO of United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism quickly announced it would implement new safety procedures and investigate how the organization handles complaints.

After being informed of the lawsuit and other material about Roth gathered by the Forward, Camp Ramah said it had hired the law firm Jackson Lewis to conduct an investigation.

“While these allegations relate to conduct 25 years ago, we take this new information very seriously and are committed to discovering the truth of what may have occurred,” Camp Ramah said in a statement. “We owe it to the individuals directly involved and to our community.”

The camp also said its current employees are trained to respect boundaries and recognize predatory behavior, and that its child-safety policies were recently audited — at Ramah’s request — by Sacred Spaces, a Jewish abuse-prevention organization.

“Then, as now, we stand with all victims of sexual misconduct and recognize the courage it takes for them to come forward,” the statement said.

Roth, who was fired by Yeshiva University after the Forward’s 2013 articles, says on his LinkedIn profile that he now works as a Hebrew translator. He did not respond to requests for comment made by phone and through Facebook, where he has posted mini-sermons, including one in which he describes Moses as “canceled.”

“He doesn’t get to see the promised land,” Roth noted. “So in one way he was canceled. In another way it teaches an important lesson. In cancel culture, there has to be a happy medium between canceling the entirety of what a person has done just based on one foible or one negative quality.”

‘It wasn’t hidden at all’

Akiva Roth grew up in the Conservative movement — his father, Rabbi Joel Roth, was an influential leader in the Rabbinical Assembly and a professor of Jewish law at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Roth majored in Jewish studies and political science at Rutgers University and graduated in 1994, according to his LinkedIn profile.

So when the East Brunswick Jewish Center’s population swelled in the early 1990s, the younger Roth was an easy hire to help Cantor Jonas Rosen, a Holocaust survivor and beloved pillar of the community, train the bnai mitzvah candidates. Roth, who is now about 50, also taught at what was then Schechter; and worked at Camp Ramah in the Berkshires until the criminal investigation.

Yishai Cohen, now a 38-year-old who lives in Florida, was one of the four boys whose testimony that Roth had masturbated in front of them led to his guilty plea. He said in a recent interview that the four attended Camp Ramah together and that he also witnessed Roth masturbate in front of an entire bunk of boys who were in middle school.

“Everyone knew Akiva was just a pervert,” Cohen said. “That was just known among the boys. That’s why it was so bizarre. It wasn’t hidden at all.”

Schonfeld said he once saw Roth’s exposed penis in a bunk with other boys, and that Roth would openly talk about penises and masturbation.

The plaintiff said his abuse went further.

“He ultimately led me into a bathroom,” the plaintiff said in the interview. “Inside of the East Brunswick Jewish Center, not very far from the classroom where he taught me. And proceeded to unzip his pants in front of a standup urinal and masturbate in full sight of me, while encouraging me to join him and participate.

“I saw him ejaculate,” the plaintiff continued. “I was 12 years old.”

The first page of a lawsuit filed by an anonymous plaintiff, now an adult, against his bar mitzvah tutor, a synagogue and a day school for alleged abuse when he was a child

 

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The lawsuit, filed in New Jersey’s Middlesex County Superior Court last week, accuses Schechter — now Golda Och Academy — and the East Brunswick Jewish Center of negligence for failing to oversee Roth and protect their young students. The plaintiff has also sued Roth personally, alleging sexual abuse and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The suit seeks damages and attorney’s fees but does not specify how much.

“I just thought he was one sick bastard,” the plaintiff said. “Unfortunately it took me half a lifetime to realize that that’s sex abuse.”

‘I never talked about it’

In the summer of 1996, Cohen said, one of his friends confided in his brother about what Roth was doing. The brother told their parents, and from there things moved quickly. Cohen recalled being interviewed by an investigator with the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office, and then hearing that Roth had been arrested and lost his job at the synagogue, school and camp. But all three institutions chose to handle the problem quietly.

Schonfeld and the plaintiff each said that Ramah, Schechter and the East Brunswick Jewish Center all failed to inform parents of Roth’s arrest or the reason his employment with them ended. Schonfeld attended all three institutions, but said his parents only learned of Roth’s misconduct years later from the father of one of the boys in the 1996 criminal case.

Rabbi Paul Resnick, Ramah’s executive director in 1996, said he contacted child protective services as soon as he heard about the allegations, which focused on Roth’s conduct at a private home. Ramah did not, at the time, investigate whether any misconduct took place at camp, Resnick said.

“Because these allegations were not yet fully substantiated, we did not believe it was appropriate to share the news with our entire camp community,” Resnick emailed in response to the Forward’s questions. “Importantly, I did not want an internal investigation to interfere with the state investigation.”

Schonfeld said in the interview that as a student at Schechter, he occasionally carpooled with the son of East Brunswick Jewish Center’s Rabbi Chaim Rogoff. After the first day of school in 1996, Schonfeld recalled, when they arrived at the Rogoff’s home, Roth was there.

He said the rabbi and the tutor told him that Roth was no longer working at Schechter because of inappropriate behavior involving other boys. But instead of offering support or asking whether he had any problems with Roth, Schonfeld said, “I do distinctly remember that Chaim Rogoff swore me to secrecy.”

“Meaning: do not tell your parents, you cannot tell your parents,” Schonfeld recalled. “I complied. I never talked about it. He scared me, and it worked.”

Rogoff, who left the East Brunswick Jewish Center more than a decade ago, did not respond to a request for comment.

Charlotte Abramson, the principal of Schechter’s middle school at the time, wrote in an email that she could not recall details about how the school handled the case. Roth never worked for the school again after his arrest, she said.

“I have no knowledge of that nor any recollection of what the school’s official response may have been at the time,” Abramson said. “I do know that a major priority and obligation of the educational institution was — and is — to assure and protect the safety and welfare of the students and the institution.”

The current leadership of what is now Golda Och Academy, a non-denominational day school in West Orange, N.J., said in a statement that there is no record of communication with parents about Roth’s case, and that the school would notify the community and reach out to support victims if similar allegations arose today.

“We feel deep compassion for the people victimized by Mr. Roth,” the statement said. “Any violation of the teacher-student relationship is unacceptable. That Mr. Roth broke the trust of students and their parents while preparing them to become responsible members of the Jewish community is especially reprehensible.”

Golda Och, like Ramah, said it now trains staff to recognize and report signs of sexual abuse. “We are committed to creating a safe and supportive environment for our entire community,” the school said in the statement. “Our policy includes following all state-mandated background checks, reference checking, and regular training for faculty and staff on preventing, recognizing, and reporting signs of sexual abuse.”

The East Brunswick Jewish Center said it would not comment due to the pending litigation.

‘The effect on me has been tremendous’

Schonfeld and the man now suing under the name John Doe both said separately that they were never contacted by law enforcement during or after the investigation that led to Roth’s 1996 arrest. The Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office said it could not locate any records of Roth’s criminal case and declined to comment further. Middlesex County Superior Court also did not find any records, and did not respond to questions about whether the case was sealed.

The plaintiff in the suit said he still struggles with the emotional impact of Roth’s actions: “The effect on me has been tremendous.”

He said it took him a long time to realize he needed to take action to make clear that Roth’s offenses went beyond what he pleaded guilty to in 1997 — and to hold Roth’s former employers accountable. When the Forward reported in 2013 that Yeshiva University had hired Roth as a lecturer despite his criminal record of abusing boys, that, he said, helped to motivate him.

“This was a long-coming development for me,” the plaintiff said. “I think it probably really began in earnest in 2013, when I realized that he had abused so many children and that the truth had not been told.

“At that point I knew I was going to do it, and it was a matter of developing the personal courage and fortitude to be able to get to this moment.”

https://forward.com/news/477521/lawsuit-sexual-abuse-akiva-roth-bar-mitzvah-tutor-synagogue-day-school/?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_3130732

I Did The Math -- At Least 1 in 3 Chabadniks Under The Age Of 40, Are Not Halachically Jewish! (50% or more of Intermarriage Rates among the Reform, Conservative & Unafilliated)

 

 Pew Research Center:

"While many Hasidic groups are growing primarily through procreation, Chabad, focused as it is on outreach, appears to be picking up a significant chunk of the Jews who have disaffiliated from the Reform or Conservative movements or who have never had much of an institutional affiliation to begin with. In its recent survey, Pew estimated that among Chabad participants, 24% are Orthodox, while 26% are Reform, 27% are Conservative, and 16% don’t identify with any particular branch of Judaism."

 

Chabad bet on more than $137 million in real estate during COVID

 

A Chicago church was bought by a Chabad emissary couple and will be converted into a synagogue and preschool.

A RUSTIC sign expresses a heartfelt welcome to the Chabad House in Utah

Facing declining membership, a mainline Protestant congregation in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood listed its historic church complex for sale in the summer of last year. Church leaders were told it would take at least a year to complete the deal. But within days, an attractive offer came in, and a few months later the building’s $2.85 million sale closed. 

 

The buyers were a pair of Chabad emissaries who had been serving Jews in the North Side neighborhood from their rented apartment since 2015. By converting the church complex, the Hasidic couple, Rabbi Dovid Kotlarsky and his wife Devorah Leah, could now realize their dream of expanding Chabad’s footprint and establishing a synagogue and preschool.

 

According to Chabad.org, key to making the purchase was a $2 million donation from Chicago tax attorney Jaques Aaron Preis, who heads the Phillip Leonian and Edith Rosenbaum Leonian Charitable Trust. Preis was quoted as praising Chabad’s “authenticity” and welcoming attitude.

 

The real estate transaction in Lakeview — a hub of Jewish life in Chicago, where large Reform, Conservative and Orthodox synagogues have long operated from stately buildings — represents just one of dozens of investments by Chabad in new buildings or in renovating and expanding existing properties. 

 

In some regards, Chabad seems like an anomaly in the Jewish world. Many non-Orthodox Jewish institutions are unsure about what the future holds for their physical spaces after a year and a half of largely digital engagement — and after decades of declining synagogue membership for Judaism’s largest American denominations. Chabad, meanwhile, whose strictly Orthodox emissaries seek followers from across the range of Jewish beliefs and practices, appears to be confident about its capacity to attract large numbers of people to its centers.  

 

 

The expansive interior of the Chicago Loop Synagogue includes its famous stained-glass window. Synagogue leadership hopes to turn the congregation, which has fallen on hard times, into a showcase for similar congregation windows

The movement has embarked on at least $137 million in real estate projects since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to numbers compiled by Chabad.org and reviewed by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. 

 

In Greenwich, Connecticut, the local Chabad paid $20 million to take over the site of a Jewish day school that closed last year. In Durham, North Carolina, a $3 million renovation of a historic inn — supported in part by Sarah Bloom Raskin, the Duke University law professor who is married to U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin — was dedicated last week. And the Chabad at the University of Illinois is spending more than $7 million to own and renovate a massive Tudor-style fraternity house.

 

Because the thousands of Chabad emissaries around the world fundraise independently, Chabad’s news and public relations arm had to collect the data by gathering media reports and by carrying out an informal survey, according to Rabbi Motti Seligson, a Chabad spokesperson. 

 

The survey turned up a number of capital projects that have not yet been publicly announced, including some purchases that are underway now. Seligson said the true extent of Chabad’s recent real estate expansion is likely much larger than the $137 million figure indicates.

 

But he said he wanted to release the information he had in conjunction with the 38th annual International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries, which takes place this week in-person in and around Brooklyn, New York. as well as virtually. 

 

“We were doing an exploration of Chabad’s impact and growth to examine the effectiveness of various programs through this difficult time of the pandemic,” he said. “These numbers came into sharp focus as we looked at the level of engagement and our institutional and infrastructure growth.”

 

Seligson also pointed out that during the pandemic, Chabad minted 250 new emissary couples who went out to serve existing Chabad centers or establish new ones.

 

Even before the pandemic growth spurt, Chabad had already engaged some 37% of American Jewish adults in activities, according to recent survey data from the Pew Research Center. 

 

Over the past 20 years, the number of Chabad synagogues in the United States has nearly tripled, reaching 1,036 in 2020, according to a tally by Joel Kotkin, a Chapman University professor who studies demographic trends, and independent researcher Edward Heyman. Over that same period, the overall number of synagogues declined by 29%. 

 

“While their secular counterparts are shrinking, the Hasidim and other more traditionally observant Jewish communities in America are experiencing a surge of growth,” Kotkin and Heyman wrote in a Tablet magazine article analyzing their data. 

 

While many Hasidic groups are growing primarily through procreation, Chabad, focused as it is on outreach, appears to be picking up a significant chunk of the Jews who have disaffiliated from the Reform or Conservative movements or who have never had much of an institutional affiliation to begin with. In its recent survey, Pew estimated that among Chabad participants, 24% are Orthodox, while 26% are Reform, 27% are Conservative, and 16% don’t identify with any particular branch of Judaism.

 

“In the present the core social needs of the Jewish world are filled by two kinds of organizations: One is Chabad, which is expanding rapidly and offers a full gamut of services,” Kotkin and Heyman wrote. (The other kind of organization is the local Jewish federation and its affiliated Jewish community centers.)

 

As Chabad proliferates, it is finding among the Jews it serves many willing donors. Sometimes, individual contributors like the Preisses in Chicago play an outsized role, but their gift was accompanied by $500,000 in small donations, according to Chabad.org.

 

In comments to Chabad.org, the Preisses explained why they gave to Chabad. “They focus on each mitzvah without criticizing. They’re so welcoming,” said Jacques Preis, who was raised Reform. “It’s not a diluted Judaism,” said Evelyn, his wife.

 

“Much of the funding for these campaigns is raised locally from people whose lives are personally enriched by Chabad in their community,” Seligson said. “They represent people from large donors to large numbers of small donors like college students who are committed to supporting Jewish life and programs that inspire them with whatever they can based on their means.”

 

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/chabad-bet-on-more-than-137-million-in-real-estate-during-covid-683317?_ga=2.129860229.826187403.1635417108-1229034299.1617710680&utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=NASA%2C+Israelis+reveal+in-depth+measurement+of+Jupiter+s+red+spot&utm_campaign=October+28%2C+2021+Night&vgo_ee=Jn367jKILnpErXAAhCpdDovy7T5YEJ8ohjC9vauJg30%3D

He Has My Vote For The Most Ignorant, Low-Class & Vile Rebbe of Bnei Brak, Possibly All Of Israel! Pathetic & Disgraceful!!! What happens if someone is broke and has no money to put in his plate? האדמור ר' ישראל מויזניץ מקבל אנשים עם קערת כסף.

 Grubba Ying - Scam Artist -  Vishnitz Shnorrer - No Problem Shaming People Who Do Not Have The Ability To Put Money In His Plate! FEH!

 

But The Beat Goes On....Jailed rabbi Berland arrested in connection with murders linked to Hasidic cult

 

Jailed rabbi Berland arrested in connection with murders linked to Hasidic cult

 

Convicted sex offender currently serving time for fraud; he is detained in prison over alleged link to decades-old murder of man and suspected murder of missing teen

 

 

 Eliezer Berland shrouds himself with his talit (prayer shawl) at the Magistrates Court in Jerusalem, as he is put on trial for sexual assault charges

 

Jailed sex offender Rabbi Eliezer Berland was arrested Monday in connection with decades-old homicide cases linked to his extremist ultra-Orthodox sect, according to multiple Hebrew-language reports.

Berland entered prison last week after he was convicted of fraud in June, in a plea deal that saw him sentenced to 18 months.

He was arrested and questioned at the Nitzan Prison in Ramle.

His wife, Tehillah Berland, was later also detained by police for questioning in Jerusalem.

The rabbi, who has not been formally identified by authorities as the individual arrested on Monday, becomes the 11th person detained recently over the suspected murder of a teenage boy and the unsolved murder of a man in the 1980s and 1990s.

Most details of the investigation are under a gag order that is in place until the end of the year.

The investigation into the disappearance and suspected murder of 17-year-old Nissim Shitrit and the murder of 41-year-old Avi Edri is tied to the Shuvu Bonim sect, run by Berland.

 

Nissim Shitrit (L) and Avi Edri in undated photos 

 

One of those arrested earlier this month was the husband of a woman who has told police she was forced by sect members to lure one of the victims to a specific location. An attorney for the woman has said that her client was a victim of the extremist sect, and is cooperating with police in order to see justice done.

Another suspect is reportedly the son of a former senior government minister.

Police have previously said that some of those arrested were questioned over allegations of kidnapping, murder, and conspiracy to commit a crime. Not all are suspected of direct involvement in the killings.

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

Edri was found beaten to death in Ramot Forest in the north of Jerusalem in 1990.

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

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

 

Berland fled Israel in 2013 amid allegations that he had sexually assaulted several female followers. After evading arrest for three years and slipping through various countries, Berland returned to Israel and was sentenced to 18 months in prison in November 2016, on two counts of indecent acts and one case of assault, as part of a plea deal that included seven months of time served. He was freed just five months later, in part due to his ill health.

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

The 18-month sentence he is currently serving was set to include the year he spent in jail before being released to house arrest in February of this year.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/jailed-rabbi-berland-arrested-in-connection-with-murders-linked-to-hasidic-cult/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2021-11-01&utm_medium=email

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

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

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

PITTSBURGH — 

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

University of San Francisco vice president of operations Donald Heller

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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