Victims of child sexual abuse: you must put an end to this. Stand up for what is right. Speak Out!
WEST ROGERS PARK — A West Rogers Park rabbi charged with sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy in 2006 wasn’t arrested until earlier this month, despite the fact a state agency substantiated abuse allegations involving the boy and seven other victims in 2007.
Police say they couldn’t get cooperation from witnesses at the time, and it wasn’t until recently that the boy, now 22, came forward to detectives to seek the prosecution of his alleged attacker.
Now the accuser says he is frustrated and embittered by the slow road to justice in the case. He said he spoke to authorities at the time, although he acknowledged his family did not call police immediately.
He’s also upset with members of the Orthodox Jewish community, who he said pushed him not to pursue formal charges. He and his father said community leaders allowed Rabbi Aryeh “Larry” Dudovitz, 45, to remain at a West Rogers Park synagogue and continue working with Jewish families.
“Everyone told me to back off: ‘You’re not going to get anything done. It’s just going to stress you out. It’s going to complicate things. It could turn against you,’ ” the man said in an interview with DNAinfo.com Chicago. “I just want to know the truth — who doesn’t want to know the truth?”
In 2006, the accuser, then 15 years old, and his family worshipped with Dudovitz at a small storefront synagogue, the Moshiach Center, in West Rogers Park. The center adheres to Chabad messianism, a controversial belief that late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who died in 1994, was the messiah, or savior, of the Jewish people.
The accuser looked up to Dudovitz, who he said mentored him before his Bar Mitzvah, and the two spent lots of time together.
“I didn’t have a really close relationship with my father, and you know, [Dudovitz] was always there,” he said.
One night in October 2006, Dudovitz came back with the family to their West Rogers Park home after celebrating the Jewish holiday Sukkot at a mutual friend’s home.
The accuser said he and Dudovitz went to the teen’s basement room, where they drank beer. At some point, he said he felt sick and planned to go to bed, and he told Dudovitz to sleep on a couch.
But after falling asleep, the accuser said he was awakened by Dudovitz. Court documents allege Dudovitz gave “the victim oral copulation while the victim was sleeping.”
‘I felt like I was at fault’
Afterward, the accuser said he felt he was to blame for the incident, thinking, how could his rabbi do something wrong? Initially, he didn’t tell anyone about what had happened.
“I felt like I was at fault and did something inappropriate in front of my rabbi,” he said. “I looked up to him like a father figure. He took advantage of that. I guess that was the hardest thing.”
Dudovitz remained close with the teen’s family, and for months after the incident, the accuser said the rabbi continued to make advances toward him. Dudovitz allegedly did so again three months later just before the teen left Chicago to attend a Jewish high school in Muenster, N.Y.
“He was standing in front of the bed where it happened,” said the accuser, recounting the last interaction he allegedly had with the rabbi. “He was really antsy. As soon as I got down [to the basement bedroom] he just started grabbing me, and, you know, he was telling me how much he loved me, and how much he was going to miss me when I was at school.”
The accuser said he pushed Dudovitz away and ran upstairs to his mother. Dudovitz followed, but left the house.
“She cornered me and made me tell her everything,” he said of his mother.
Dudovitz, who is out of jail after posting 10 percent of a $100,000 bail, could not be reached for comment. Messages left at Dudovitz’s home in the 6400 block of North Albany went unreturned. Dudovitz’s lawyer, Richard Kling, declined to comment.
Dudovitz’s next court appearance is set for Friday.
The accuser said his father wanted to call the police at the time, but his mother decided to call a rabbi at the boy’s school first. His mother didn’t return calls requesting a comment.
“Then everything went to s—,” he said. “We should have called the cops [immediately] — should’ve listened to my dad and called the cops.”
DCFS investigates
But authorities did learn of accusations against Dudovitz. The Department of Children and Family Services received a call on its hotline in December 2006 and concluded an investigation on Oct. 5, 2007, that substantiated one serious allegation and seven lesser allegations of abuse involving other children, said spokesman David Clarkin.
Clarkin said he could not release the identities of Dudovitz’s alleged victims or provide additional details on the specific allegations. DCFS, however, does pass on its findings to law enforcement.
Police then launched an investigation in 2007, but the accuser’s parents “refused to cooperate” with detectives, Chicago Police Department spokesman Adam Collins said last week. Collins said it wasn’t until the accuser came forward as an adult that a case could be made to charge Dudovitz late last month.
The police investigation only involved a single victim, Collins said.
The accuser and his father denied the family wouldn’t cooperate in the police investigation six years ago. The accuser said he recalls talking to a detective as a teen, and his father said his wife “spent months trying to get the detective to respond to her calls.”
Members of the Orthodox Jewish community also were aware of the allegations, the accuser and his father said.
The accuser said he met one-on-one with Rabbi Gedalia Dov Schwartz, the “chief rabbi” of Chicago’s Beth Din, a local Jewish rabbinical court, and outlined the allegations against Dudovitz. He said he also met with other high-ranking rabbis on the council.
Schwartz didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.
Rabbi Moshe Kushner, executive director of the Chicago Rabbinical Council, which administers Chicago’s Beth Din, initially denied Dudovitz came before the Beth Din, which is supposed to deal with issues of Jewish law and conversions, its website says. The website makes no mention of investigating serious allegations of abuse.
“He had nothing to do with us,” Kushner said of Dudovitz.
However, Kushner said Dudovitz’s case might have been heard by an independent Beth Din that hears more serious cases, especially those regarding sexual abuse.
But he said Schwartz would be the only rabbi at the council who could answer questions about the Beth Din.
It’s unclear if the rabbis ever communicated with authorities or took any action regarding the case. The rabbis, like counselors and school teachers, would be considered mandated reporters of child abuse under state law, said Lyn Schollett, an attorney with the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault.
The accuser said he wasn’t aware of any action being taken.
“They do their own thing. It’s a problem, especially when it comes to these types of cases in the community. They still feel like Jews are living in the citadels,” said the accuser, referring to fortifications in ancient Jerusalem.
“Maybe they felt like they didn’t have responsibility to handle the Dudovitz case. It hurts my tongue to say that. That’s why I want to get to the bottom of it.”
The accuser and his father have been told Dudovitz was still a rabbi at the Moshiach Center, an Orthodox synagogue in a storefront at 6738 N. California Ave., at the time of his arrest, but his status there remains unclear. Messages left at the synagogue were unreturned.
Vicki Polin, who runs a nonprofit called The Awareness Centerthat advocates for victims of sexual abuse in the Jewish community, said she had been in touch with the accuser since he first reached out to her when he was 16, when he found her website. She said the family was conflicted and under a lot of pressure to keep the incident quiet.
“What rabbis usually tell parents in cases like this is, it’s better for the kids to go to school and not open any wounds,” she said.
Chicago Rabbi Moshe Soloveichik, who advocates against the insular practice of not reporting sex crimes within Orthodox communities, said a woman who didn’t identify herself called him about seven years ago and told him about Dudovitz.
Soloveichik said the woman contacted him anonymously for advice about whether or not to report the abuse — and said that her son had been acting aggressively after an alleged attack.
‘If you don’t cooperate, you better watch out’
“In this community,” he said, “there is to some degree an implicit reign of terror that if you don’t cooperate [with religious leaders], you better watch out.”
Soloveichik said the rabbis of the Beth Din, when it comes to sex crimes, “do not handle it properly.
“The best way to handle it is when a parent feels sure, or even relatively sure, that the child was molested, the parents should call up the authorities,” said Solveichik.
But often the pressure from the community, he said, forces the abused to stay silent.
The accuser said when he was 18, he started using drugs to deal with emotional pain. Shortly after, he went into rehab, and then a halfway home.
“I was violated, but I was violated by someone that I put all my trust into,” he said.
“It was hurtin’ me. Emotionally, I was a wreck. I mean, I was so young — and I had thoughts of doing, you know, suicide. I won’t forget to this day what I wanted to do.”
In May 2012, the accuser said he returned from Israel where he served a year in the Israeli Defense Forces. He is now back living at home in West Rogers Park, and worked at a restaurant until he was involved in an accident while riding his bicycle.
It was during his time in Israel, he said, that he found the “courage” to reconnect with Polin, the advocate, and push the police department to restart its investigation.
“I came back, and I just wanted to correct things,” said the accuser, who no longer considers himself religious. “We got it done.”
Added his father: “It was a bad situation, and hopefully he’ll be brought to justice and it will be over.”
DNAinfo.com Chicago Reporter/Producer Erin Meyer contributed to this report.
http://www.jewishcommunitywatch.org/rabbis-alleged-sex-assault-victim-speaks-out-i-saw-him-as-father-figure/
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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
Friday, June 14, 2013
“some embarrassing news,” - The Global Cancer - Part Three!
Former Lafayette priest kills himself after victims show up at his door in Virginia
RICHMOND, VA. — When it was found three days after Christmas, the small pickup truck was idling in a secluded spot at a shuttered rock-and-sand plant off a lonesome stretch of state Route 5 in Charles City County. A hose ran from the Mazda’s exhaust pipe through the passenger-side window, where it had been taped in place, according to a report by the Charles City Sheriff’s Office. A wallet and a journal with a 10-page suicide note were clearly visible on the dashboard.
The 62-year-old man lying dead inside was David Primeaux, a Virginia Commonwealth University associate professor respected by his colleagues in the university’s computer science department, where he had taught since 1996, and liked by his students, who offered glowing endorsements of his courses in online reviews.
Primeaux was also well-known for his advocacy of historic preservation in Petersburg, where he and his wife bought and renovated a historic home on West Washington Street nearly 13 years ago and where he served as a chairman and trustee of the Historic Petersburg Foundation.
His wife, Nancy, had called Petersburg police Dec. 27, a day earlier, telling them her husband had left the house, threatening to kill himself after receiving “some embarrassing news,” a Petersburg police report says.
A VCU spokeswoman later called Primeaux’s death a “shock” that was unaccompanied by any reports to the university administration that would have been cause for concern.
Indeed, what few people here could have known was that the story that ended in Charles City began 1,100 miles away in Lafayette, where Primeaux grew up and was ordained in 1975 as a Catholic priest.
Primeaux’s tenure there overlapped with a flood of sexual-abuse litigation against the Diocese of Lafayette that was launched before, during and after the 1985 conviction of the Rev. Gilbert Gauthe, who was at the center of the first of the high-profile sexual-abuse scandals that would engulf the Catholic church in ensuing decades.
(Page 2 of 8)
Gauthe wasn’t alone. In 2004, the diocese acknowledged that 15 priests from 1950 to 2002 were the subject of substantiated sexual-abuse complaints involving 123 victims. Primeaux was one of them, the diocese says.
By 1985, the year he left the priesthood, Primeaux had admitted sexually abusing at least 15 adolescent boys as a deacon, parish priest and seminary teacher, according to psychological reports that were part of a lawsuit filed against the diocese in 1991 on behalf of a boy who was 12 when he said Primeaux began molesting him. And on the day before Primeaux committed suicide, a pair of old ghosts came knocking on his door.
Jarrell recalls former priest : The Diocese of Lafayette, where Primeaux spent the majority of his 10 years as a priest, did not respond to requests seeking interviews with current Lafayette Bishop Michael Jarrell and Monsignor H.A. Larroque, who was vicar general when Primeaux was a priest in the diocese.
However, Jarrell, who also worked directly with Primeaux when both were assigned to the same church parish from 1981 to 1982, remembered him in a written statement to the Richmond Times-Dispatch as an “intelligent, affable priest: easy to get along with.”
“I did not see much of him in the parish because I was very busy and he was away most of the time,” Jarrell wrote. “I consider David Primeaux’s suicide to be a sad and tragic event. He was obviously a troubled man who harmed innocent victims. I pray that God may grant him eternal rest, and I pray that God may grant healing and peace to those he harmed.”
Jarrell did not respond to questions about why Primeaux’s name or the names of other priests who were the subject of substantiated sexual-abuse complaints were not made public. Jarrell also did not answer a request to list the status of those priests with the church.
“As was the practice at the time, the diocese provided counseling/assistance to the victims and families,” Jarrell wrote. “Because of the publicity given to the Gilbert Gauthe cases in 1985 and the outreach to the families, it was widely known that the church was there to help.”
(Page 3 of 8)
Anthony J. Fontana Jr., the lawyer who in 1991 sued Primeaux, the Diocese of Lafayette, the Archdiocese of New Orleans and other church officials on behalf of a boy who was the son of Primeaux’s secretary, also grew up with Primeaux in Abbeville.
“We were close friends,” said Fontana, 63. “He lived down the street from me. … We became altar boys together.”
When Primeaux was ordained in 1975, Fontana and his wife attended his first Mass, and when Primeaux later started working in the diocese, they would run into each other from time to time.
“He was a very educated guy, very smart,” Fontana said.
By the time Fontana had filed suit against Primeaux and the church, southwest Louisiana had been embroiled for years in the massive church sexual-abuse scandal that would lead to Gauthe’s criminal conviction and eventually cost the Diocese of Lafayette what it says was $26 million in legal claims as other priests were implicated.
Fontana also represented Gauthe victims in civil lawsuits.
Gauthe's pleaIn 1985, Gauthe pleaded guilty to 33 counts related to the molestation of 11 children at church parishes in the area. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison, though he wound up serving about half of that sentence.
Ray Mouton, a former Lafayette lawyer who defended Gauthe and has since become a widely interviewed and fierce critic of how the church continues to handle clergy sexual abuse, said those numbers represent a fraction of Gauthe’s actual victims.
“Gauthe had abused boys at every church where he was assigned,” Mouton said, adding that church officials had known Gauthe was a predator since before he was ordained. “When I later learned of this, I believed the bishop belonged in jail with Gauthe, and today I believe every bishop who has once covered up the crime of a priest should be imprisoned.”
Local church officials repeatedly failed to take any meaningful action to prevent Gauthe and other priests from abusing children, said Thomas Doyle, a Catholic priest who was a canon lawyer in the office of the Vatican nuncio, or ambassador, in Washington at the time and met with high-ranking church officials about how to handle the case.
(Page 4 of 8)
“They didn’t do anything about it until it all boiled over in 1983. They transferred him from one place to another, and he just kept abusing kids,” Doyle said. “My job was to just keep the file. … I was coordinating things from Washington for the papal delegate because he was reporting to the Vatican.”
Doyle called the revelations surrounding the Gauthe case “the beginning of the disclosure of widespread sexual abuse by Catholic priests and cover-up by the bishops.”
Through their involvement in the Gauthe case, Doyle, Mouton and the Rev. Michael Peterson, a psychiatrist who founded the St. Luke Institute to treat troubled clergy that is now located in Silver Spring, Md., learned that the diocese had received, and failed to act on, complaints of sexual abuse by numerous other priests, including Primeaux.
“As time went by, I realized there was a hell of a lot more to this than what we saw,” Doyle said. “The way the Lafayette Diocese handled things in the 1980s was they hid them.”
As the Gauthe case unfolded in the early 1980s, the cases against him mounted, said Jason Berry, a New Orleans journalist who covered the Gauthe case and its fallout and compiled it in his book “Lead Us Not Into Temptation.”
In 1985, Doyle, Mouton and Peterson authored “The Problem of Sexual Molestation by Roman Catholic Clergy: Meeting the Problem in a Comprehensive and Responsible Manner,” which came to be known as “The Manual.”
The unsolicited report was intended to help the church confront what the three men foresaw as a “very serious problem developing,” and its recommendations were embraced by Canadian bishops but largely ignored and rejected by their American counterparts for years, said Doyle, who is still a member of the Dominican order but no longer operates in any traditional ministry.
His outspoken advocacy for victims around the world and criticism of the church’s hierarchy has landed him on the “fringes,” where he remains, he said.
“Which is just fine with me,” Doyle said.
Referred for counseling : Church officials had referred Primeaux for psychological counseling as early as 1980, according to documents Fontana obtained as part of his lawsuit. Officials eventually directed Primeaux to attend an inpatient program at the St. Luke Institute in May 1985.
(Page 5 of 8)
Edward Halie Shwery, the Metairie psychologist who examined Primeaux in late 1984 and early 1985, wrote that the examination was intended to form the basis for treatment recommendations and assessing “the impact upon his character structure from reported sexual abuse of children over a several-year period.”
Reached at his office in Louisiana last month, Shwery would not discuss the case nor acknowledge that he treated Primeaux.
However, his reports offer extensive detail on Primeaux’s admitted history of sexual abuse, including that of two eighth-grade boys when Primeaux was a deacon and associate pastor at a church in Lafayette; five students when he taught at St. Joseph Seminary near Covington; and later continuing at church parishes in the Lafayette area, where he acknowledged a sexual relationship with the 14-year-old son of his secretary; and seven altar boys ages 13 to 16.
“I found him to be very open in his disclosure of molestation of children,” Shwery wrote in a report. “Generally when we conduct such an examination of an alleged or confessed perpetrator of sexual victimization of children, it is unlikely that we obtain full disclosure of all instances of molestation.”
The reports and other documents indicate church officials knew about his propensities, because Primeaux said he was removed from the seminary, where he started teaching in 1978, after a little more than a year when several students reported him to the rector. He later told other priests in Lafayette that his transfer was the result of “problems of sexual molestation” and he was referred for counseling, a report says.
“David primarily was concerned with the embarrassment and difficulty explaining his removal prior to the end of the semester,” Shwery’s report says, calling Primeaux’s reaction a classic “character defense” for sex offenders. “There was abundant narcissistic concern with little or no empathy for the adolescent victims.”
Primeaux told Shwery his last sexual contact with a child was in the fall of 1983.
(Page 6 of 8)
Primeaux was to report to Peterson, the psychiatrist and founder of St. Luke, at the institute on May 20, 1985, according to another letter from Shwery to then-Lafayette Diocese Bishop Gerald Frey.
Richard Sipe, a former priest and mental health therapist who served on the board of St. Luke from 1986 to 1988, said the institute was founded ostensibly to serve as a treatment center for alcoholic priests. However, by 1985, Peterson had instituted a program specifically for priest sexual offenders and sexual problems.
“The bishops who essentially fund it and send priests there use it as a place to hide these guys until the heat blows over,” said David Clohessy, executive director of the Survivor’s Network of Those Abused by Priests, a victim advocacy group and virulent critic of the church’s handling of sexual abuse by clergy.
A typical stay, Sipe said, was nine months to a year, and during his tenure on the board, the institute’s roughly 70 beds for sexual-abuse patients were always full, with a waiting list.
Sipe said the fact that the institute, which is still in operation today, depended on bishops for referrals and funding could skew the treatment.
Doyle said he was walking through St. Luke in 1985 during a visit with Peterson, who died in 1987, when Peterson pointed out a man seated at a piano.
“That’s David Primeaux,” Doyle said he was told.
Primeaux never returned to ministry or a diocese job.
According to the Diocese of Lafayette, he resigned from the priesthood on June 1, 1985, just a couple of weeks after he was supposed to present himself at St. Luke. It’s unclear if he completed the treatment program.
By 1993, Primeaux was an assistant professor at what was then the Troy State University campus in Montgomery, Ala., and three years later he was working at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. The Times-Dispatch was not able to determine where he lived or worked from 1985 to 1993.
Confrontation : A Louisiana couple, who spoke to The Times-Dispatch on condition of anonymity, said they had sought to confront Primeaux for five years after the suicide of a friend who struggled with depression and substance abuse for years after being molested by Primeaux.
(Page 7 of 8)
After a flight to Richmond, the husband — now a successful southwest Louisiana businessman who said he also was molested by Primeaux when he was a Catholic school student — along with a relative of the friend who committed suicide knocked on the door of the Primeaux home.
It was Dec. 27, the day before Primeaux died.
“My husband and his friends carried this for a long time,” said the wife. “I’m sorry this happened. I’m not sorry they did something to heal themselves.”
Primeaux wasn’t home, but his wife was, the husband said.
He said the two men told her about Primeaux’s past as a priest, including the victims whose lives he had wrecked. They had brought a letter but weren’t able to get it into her hands, he said.
“She asked us to get off the porch,” he said.
Even so, they felt like they had accomplished what they came for and were stunned when they later found out that Primeaux had taken his own life.
“They were really just going to say, ‘Shame on you, look what happened,’” the Louisiana wife said. “No one thought this was how it was going to end. No one wished this on anybody.”
Nancy Primeaux refused to speak with a reporter who knocked on her door last month.
A family friend, Robert White, 70, who knew Primeaux as a neighbor and through the Historic Petersburg Foundation, said he was unaware of Primeaux’s past as a priest and didn’t care to dwell on it.
“I choose to remember him as I knew him,” White said in April. “I choose to remember him as an incredibly intelligent, gifted individual who did everything he could to better Petersburg.”
Data reveals littleClohessy, executive director of the SNAP group, estimates that there are thousands of priests like Primeaux who “quietly left the priesthood and went on to usually find positions where they had access to vulnerable kids or adults, or were helped by church officials to quietly leave the priesthood and get other jobs.”
According to data compiled by Bishopaccountability.org from reports commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, 6,275 priests have been proven, admitted or “credibly accused” of sexually abusing minors from 1950 to 2012, Clohessy said.
(Page 8 of 8)
“The real number is much, much higher,” he said.
Only a fraction have ever faced criminal charges — a result of prosecutorial reluctance, “archaic” statute-of-limitations laws and church leaders’ historic role in shielding problem priests, he said.
He and Doyle said until bishops are disciplined by the Vatican for covering up such cases, little will change.
In 2002, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops adopted the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, a set of procedures for addressing allegations of sexual abuse of minors by clergy and guidelines for “reconciliation, healing, accountability and prevention of future acts of abuse,” according to the conference.
“Since the’70s and ’80s, the church and U.S. society have come a long way in understanding this sin and crime of child sexual abuse and in dealing with it,” Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokeswoman for the conference, wrote in an email. “Child sexual abuse by clerics is virtually nonexistent now given widespread programs of education and prevention.”
She did not respond to a question concerning instituting policies that would require disclosure of the names of credibly accused clergy.
Police in Petersburg said they were unaware of any criminal complaints against Primeaux. A VCU spokeswoman said the university had likewise not received any reports of any improper behavior.
However, part of what motivated one of his victims to seek him out in Virginia was regret over failing to report Primeaux decades ago and the worry that his silence might have allowed others to be victimized.
“He should have been shut down a long time ago but he wasn’t,” said the victim, now nearly 50. “I don’t think about it often, but the fact that my best friend from that time, and still today, he’s troubled about it. My other best friend is dead. … He was so troubled, not about what happened to him, but why didn’t we do the right thing back then? I told him, ‘It’s not on us as a 12- or-13-year-old to do the adults’ job.’”
That same apprehension can haunt victims for years, said Clohessy, who was sexually abused by a priest from age 11 to 16.
“Victims do heal and move forward,” he said, “but it’s very hard when the guy who molested you is still out there and you lay your head down at night and think, ‘What if he’s out there right now doing it to someone else?’”
http://www.theadvertiser.com/article/20130612/NEWS01/306120001/Former-Lafayette-priest-kills-himself-after-confrontation-his-abuse-victims?nclick_check=1
RICHMOND, VA. — When it was found three days after Christmas, the small pickup truck was idling in a secluded spot at a shuttered rock-and-sand plant off a lonesome stretch of state Route 5 in Charles City County. A hose ran from the Mazda’s exhaust pipe through the passenger-side window, where it had been taped in place, according to a report by the Charles City Sheriff’s Office. A wallet and a journal with a 10-page suicide note were clearly visible on the dashboard.
The 62-year-old man lying dead inside was David Primeaux, a Virginia Commonwealth University associate professor respected by his colleagues in the university’s computer science department, where he had taught since 1996, and liked by his students, who offered glowing endorsements of his courses in online reviews.
Primeaux was also well-known for his advocacy of historic preservation in Petersburg, where he and his wife bought and renovated a historic home on West Washington Street nearly 13 years ago and where he served as a chairman and trustee of the Historic Petersburg Foundation.
His wife, Nancy, had called Petersburg police Dec. 27, a day earlier, telling them her husband had left the house, threatening to kill himself after receiving “some embarrassing news,” a Petersburg police report says.
A VCU spokeswoman later called Primeaux’s death a “shock” that was unaccompanied by any reports to the university administration that would have been cause for concern.
Indeed, what few people here could have known was that the story that ended in Charles City began 1,100 miles away in Lafayette, where Primeaux grew up and was ordained in 1975 as a Catholic priest.
Primeaux’s tenure there overlapped with a flood of sexual-abuse litigation against the Diocese of Lafayette that was launched before, during and after the 1985 conviction of the Rev. Gilbert Gauthe, who was at the center of the first of the high-profile sexual-abuse scandals that would engulf the Catholic church in ensuing decades.
(Page 2 of 8)
Gauthe wasn’t alone. In 2004, the diocese acknowledged that 15 priests from 1950 to 2002 were the subject of substantiated sexual-abuse complaints involving 123 victims. Primeaux was one of them, the diocese says.
By 1985, the year he left the priesthood, Primeaux had admitted sexually abusing at least 15 adolescent boys as a deacon, parish priest and seminary teacher, according to psychological reports that were part of a lawsuit filed against the diocese in 1991 on behalf of a boy who was 12 when he said Primeaux began molesting him. And on the day before Primeaux committed suicide, a pair of old ghosts came knocking on his door.
Jarrell recalls former priest : The Diocese of Lafayette, where Primeaux spent the majority of his 10 years as a priest, did not respond to requests seeking interviews with current Lafayette Bishop Michael Jarrell and Monsignor H.A. Larroque, who was vicar general when Primeaux was a priest in the diocese.
However, Jarrell, who also worked directly with Primeaux when both were assigned to the same church parish from 1981 to 1982, remembered him in a written statement to the Richmond Times-Dispatch as an “intelligent, affable priest: easy to get along with.”
“I did not see much of him in the parish because I was very busy and he was away most of the time,” Jarrell wrote. “I consider David Primeaux’s suicide to be a sad and tragic event. He was obviously a troubled man who harmed innocent victims. I pray that God may grant him eternal rest, and I pray that God may grant healing and peace to those he harmed.”
Jarrell did not respond to questions about why Primeaux’s name or the names of other priests who were the subject of substantiated sexual-abuse complaints were not made public. Jarrell also did not answer a request to list the status of those priests with the church.
“As was the practice at the time, the diocese provided counseling/assistance to the victims and families,” Jarrell wrote. “Because of the publicity given to the Gilbert Gauthe cases in 1985 and the outreach to the families, it was widely known that the church was there to help.”
(Page 3 of 8)
Anthony J. Fontana Jr., the lawyer who in 1991 sued Primeaux, the Diocese of Lafayette, the Archdiocese of New Orleans and other church officials on behalf of a boy who was the son of Primeaux’s secretary, also grew up with Primeaux in Abbeville.
“We were close friends,” said Fontana, 63. “He lived down the street from me. … We became altar boys together.”
When Primeaux was ordained in 1975, Fontana and his wife attended his first Mass, and when Primeaux later started working in the diocese, they would run into each other from time to time.
“He was a very educated guy, very smart,” Fontana said.
By the time Fontana had filed suit against Primeaux and the church, southwest Louisiana had been embroiled for years in the massive church sexual-abuse scandal that would lead to Gauthe’s criminal conviction and eventually cost the Diocese of Lafayette what it says was $26 million in legal claims as other priests were implicated.
Fontana also represented Gauthe victims in civil lawsuits.
Gauthe's pleaIn 1985, Gauthe pleaded guilty to 33 counts related to the molestation of 11 children at church parishes in the area. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison, though he wound up serving about half of that sentence.
Ray Mouton, a former Lafayette lawyer who defended Gauthe and has since become a widely interviewed and fierce critic of how the church continues to handle clergy sexual abuse, said those numbers represent a fraction of Gauthe’s actual victims.
“Gauthe had abused boys at every church where he was assigned,” Mouton said, adding that church officials had known Gauthe was a predator since before he was ordained. “When I later learned of this, I believed the bishop belonged in jail with Gauthe, and today I believe every bishop who has once covered up the crime of a priest should be imprisoned.”
Local church officials repeatedly failed to take any meaningful action to prevent Gauthe and other priests from abusing children, said Thomas Doyle, a Catholic priest who was a canon lawyer in the office of the Vatican nuncio, or ambassador, in Washington at the time and met with high-ranking church officials about how to handle the case.
(Page 4 of 8)
“They didn’t do anything about it until it all boiled over in 1983. They transferred him from one place to another, and he just kept abusing kids,” Doyle said. “My job was to just keep the file. … I was coordinating things from Washington for the papal delegate because he was reporting to the Vatican.”
Doyle called the revelations surrounding the Gauthe case “the beginning of the disclosure of widespread sexual abuse by Catholic priests and cover-up by the bishops.”
Through their involvement in the Gauthe case, Doyle, Mouton and the Rev. Michael Peterson, a psychiatrist who founded the St. Luke Institute to treat troubled clergy that is now located in Silver Spring, Md., learned that the diocese had received, and failed to act on, complaints of sexual abuse by numerous other priests, including Primeaux.
“As time went by, I realized there was a hell of a lot more to this than what we saw,” Doyle said. “The way the Lafayette Diocese handled things in the 1980s was they hid them.”
As the Gauthe case unfolded in the early 1980s, the cases against him mounted, said Jason Berry, a New Orleans journalist who covered the Gauthe case and its fallout and compiled it in his book “Lead Us Not Into Temptation.”
In 1985, Doyle, Mouton and Peterson authored “The Problem of Sexual Molestation by Roman Catholic Clergy: Meeting the Problem in a Comprehensive and Responsible Manner,” which came to be known as “The Manual.”
The unsolicited report was intended to help the church confront what the three men foresaw as a “very serious problem developing,” and its recommendations were embraced by Canadian bishops but largely ignored and rejected by their American counterparts for years, said Doyle, who is still a member of the Dominican order but no longer operates in any traditional ministry.
His outspoken advocacy for victims around the world and criticism of the church’s hierarchy has landed him on the “fringes,” where he remains, he said.
“Which is just fine with me,” Doyle said.
Referred for counseling : Church officials had referred Primeaux for psychological counseling as early as 1980, according to documents Fontana obtained as part of his lawsuit. Officials eventually directed Primeaux to attend an inpatient program at the St. Luke Institute in May 1985.
(Page 5 of 8)
Edward Halie Shwery, the Metairie psychologist who examined Primeaux in late 1984 and early 1985, wrote that the examination was intended to form the basis for treatment recommendations and assessing “the impact upon his character structure from reported sexual abuse of children over a several-year period.”
Reached at his office in Louisiana last month, Shwery would not discuss the case nor acknowledge that he treated Primeaux.
However, his reports offer extensive detail on Primeaux’s admitted history of sexual abuse, including that of two eighth-grade boys when Primeaux was a deacon and associate pastor at a church in Lafayette; five students when he taught at St. Joseph Seminary near Covington; and later continuing at church parishes in the Lafayette area, where he acknowledged a sexual relationship with the 14-year-old son of his secretary; and seven altar boys ages 13 to 16.
“I found him to be very open in his disclosure of molestation of children,” Shwery wrote in a report. “Generally when we conduct such an examination of an alleged or confessed perpetrator of sexual victimization of children, it is unlikely that we obtain full disclosure of all instances of molestation.”
The reports and other documents indicate church officials knew about his propensities, because Primeaux said he was removed from the seminary, where he started teaching in 1978, after a little more than a year when several students reported him to the rector. He later told other priests in Lafayette that his transfer was the result of “problems of sexual molestation” and he was referred for counseling, a report says.
“David primarily was concerned with the embarrassment and difficulty explaining his removal prior to the end of the semester,” Shwery’s report says, calling Primeaux’s reaction a classic “character defense” for sex offenders. “There was abundant narcissistic concern with little or no empathy for the adolescent victims.”
Primeaux told Shwery his last sexual contact with a child was in the fall of 1983.
(Page 6 of 8)
Primeaux was to report to Peterson, the psychiatrist and founder of St. Luke, at the institute on May 20, 1985, according to another letter from Shwery to then-Lafayette Diocese Bishop Gerald Frey.
Richard Sipe, a former priest and mental health therapist who served on the board of St. Luke from 1986 to 1988, said the institute was founded ostensibly to serve as a treatment center for alcoholic priests. However, by 1985, Peterson had instituted a program specifically for priest sexual offenders and sexual problems.
“The bishops who essentially fund it and send priests there use it as a place to hide these guys until the heat blows over,” said David Clohessy, executive director of the Survivor’s Network of Those Abused by Priests, a victim advocacy group and virulent critic of the church’s handling of sexual abuse by clergy.
A typical stay, Sipe said, was nine months to a year, and during his tenure on the board, the institute’s roughly 70 beds for sexual-abuse patients were always full, with a waiting list.
Sipe said the fact that the institute, which is still in operation today, depended on bishops for referrals and funding could skew the treatment.
Doyle said he was walking through St. Luke in 1985 during a visit with Peterson, who died in 1987, when Peterson pointed out a man seated at a piano.
“That’s David Primeaux,” Doyle said he was told.
Primeaux never returned to ministry or a diocese job.
According to the Diocese of Lafayette, he resigned from the priesthood on June 1, 1985, just a couple of weeks after he was supposed to present himself at St. Luke. It’s unclear if he completed the treatment program.
By 1993, Primeaux was an assistant professor at what was then the Troy State University campus in Montgomery, Ala., and three years later he was working at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. The Times-Dispatch was not able to determine where he lived or worked from 1985 to 1993.
Confrontation : A Louisiana couple, who spoke to The Times-Dispatch on condition of anonymity, said they had sought to confront Primeaux for five years after the suicide of a friend who struggled with depression and substance abuse for years after being molested by Primeaux.
(Page 7 of 8)
After a flight to Richmond, the husband — now a successful southwest Louisiana businessman who said he also was molested by Primeaux when he was a Catholic school student — along with a relative of the friend who committed suicide knocked on the door of the Primeaux home.
It was Dec. 27, the day before Primeaux died.
“My husband and his friends carried this for a long time,” said the wife. “I’m sorry this happened. I’m not sorry they did something to heal themselves.”
Primeaux wasn’t home, but his wife was, the husband said.
He said the two men told her about Primeaux’s past as a priest, including the victims whose lives he had wrecked. They had brought a letter but weren’t able to get it into her hands, he said.
“She asked us to get off the porch,” he said.
Even so, they felt like they had accomplished what they came for and were stunned when they later found out that Primeaux had taken his own life.
“They were really just going to say, ‘Shame on you, look what happened,’” the Louisiana wife said. “No one thought this was how it was going to end. No one wished this on anybody.”
Nancy Primeaux refused to speak with a reporter who knocked on her door last month.
A family friend, Robert White, 70, who knew Primeaux as a neighbor and through the Historic Petersburg Foundation, said he was unaware of Primeaux’s past as a priest and didn’t care to dwell on it.
“I choose to remember him as I knew him,” White said in April. “I choose to remember him as an incredibly intelligent, gifted individual who did everything he could to better Petersburg.”
Data reveals littleClohessy, executive director of the SNAP group, estimates that there are thousands of priests like Primeaux who “quietly left the priesthood and went on to usually find positions where they had access to vulnerable kids or adults, or were helped by church officials to quietly leave the priesthood and get other jobs.”
According to data compiled by Bishopaccountability.org from reports commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, 6,275 priests have been proven, admitted or “credibly accused” of sexually abusing minors from 1950 to 2012, Clohessy said.
(Page 8 of 8)
“The real number is much, much higher,” he said.
Only a fraction have ever faced criminal charges — a result of prosecutorial reluctance, “archaic” statute-of-limitations laws and church leaders’ historic role in shielding problem priests, he said.
He and Doyle said until bishops are disciplined by the Vatican for covering up such cases, little will change.
In 2002, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops adopted the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, a set of procedures for addressing allegations of sexual abuse of minors by clergy and guidelines for “reconciliation, healing, accountability and prevention of future acts of abuse,” according to the conference.
“Since the’70s and ’80s, the church and U.S. society have come a long way in understanding this sin and crime of child sexual abuse and in dealing with it,” Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokeswoman for the conference, wrote in an email. “Child sexual abuse by clerics is virtually nonexistent now given widespread programs of education and prevention.”
She did not respond to a question concerning instituting policies that would require disclosure of the names of credibly accused clergy.
Police in Petersburg said they were unaware of any criminal complaints against Primeaux. A VCU spokeswoman said the university had likewise not received any reports of any improper behavior.
However, part of what motivated one of his victims to seek him out in Virginia was regret over failing to report Primeaux decades ago and the worry that his silence might have allowed others to be victimized.
“He should have been shut down a long time ago but he wasn’t,” said the victim, now nearly 50. “I don’t think about it often, but the fact that my best friend from that time, and still today, he’s troubled about it. My other best friend is dead. … He was so troubled, not about what happened to him, but why didn’t we do the right thing back then? I told him, ‘It’s not on us as a 12- or-13-year-old to do the adults’ job.’”
That same apprehension can haunt victims for years, said Clohessy, who was sexually abused by a priest from age 11 to 16.
“Victims do heal and move forward,” he said, “but it’s very hard when the guy who molested you is still out there and you lay your head down at night and think, ‘What if he’s out there right now doing it to someone else?’”
http://www.theadvertiser.com/article/20130612/NEWS01/306120001/Former-Lafayette-priest-kills-himself-after-confrontation-his-abuse-victims?nclick_check=1
Thursday, June 13, 2013
The Global Cancer - Part Two!
A Failure on Military Sexual Assaults
The spate of alarming incidents in recent months underscoring the depth of the military’s sexual assault problem did not dissuade Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, from killing the most promising corrective on the table.
Even as he did that, he spoke of the need to address the crisis. “We have a problem with the underreporting of sexual assaults,” he said. “We have a problem with the inadequate investigation of sexual assaults. We have a problem with the lack of support for victims of sexual assaults. We have a problem with retaliation, ostracism and peer pressure against such victims. And we have a problem with a culture that has taken inadequate steps to correct this situation.”
Mr. Levin, a Democrat of Michigan, then proceeded to put forward his amendment to the 2014 defense authorization bill — which passed by a 17-to-9 vote — to strike a bipartisan measure championed by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat of New York. Ms. Gillibrand’s proposal would have given independent military prosecutors, rather than commanders, the power to decide which sexual assault crimes to try, fixing a basic structural flaw in the military justice system that deters people from reporting assaults.
Mr. Levin tried to soften the blow by adding provisions to make retaliation a crime and requiring review by the civilian service chief in the rare cases when a commander declines to follow a recommendation to prosecute made by military lawyers under his supervision. Mr. Levin’s claim that removing prosecution decisions from military commanders — who have no legal training and significant conflicts of interest — would “likely weaken” the response to sexual assault does not square with the evidence.
According to the Defense Department, an estimated 26,000 men and women in the military were subject to some level of unwanted sexual contact in 2012, an increase of about 40 percent over two years. The data suggest that many of the allegations involved rape, aggravated sexual assault or nonconsensual sodomy. Only 3,374 incidents were reported, and a mere 302 of the 2,558 incidents pursued by victims were actually prosecuted.
Cracking down on retaliation, though necessary, does not address the low prosecution rate or the sense among many victims that their claims, especially against someone higher in rank, will not be believed.
It is distressing that two decades of scandals could not persuade Mr. Levin to budge from his decision to support the military brass. Ms. Gillibrand says she will try again to get her measure included when the full Senate takes up the defense spending bill. She has done a diligent job of building a bipartisan coalition pressing for more sweeping change, and further debate about the sexual assault problem and its solutions can help strengthen the result when the Senate negotiates a final bill with the House.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/13/opinion/a-failure-on-military-sexual-assaults.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y
The spate of alarming incidents in recent months underscoring the depth of the military’s sexual assault problem did not dissuade Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, from killing the most promising corrective on the table.
Even as he did that, he spoke of the need to address the crisis. “We have a problem with the underreporting of sexual assaults,” he said. “We have a problem with the inadequate investigation of sexual assaults. We have a problem with the lack of support for victims of sexual assaults. We have a problem with retaliation, ostracism and peer pressure against such victims. And we have a problem with a culture that has taken inadequate steps to correct this situation.”
Mr. Levin, a Democrat of Michigan, then proceeded to put forward his amendment to the 2014 defense authorization bill — which passed by a 17-to-9 vote — to strike a bipartisan measure championed by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat of New York. Ms. Gillibrand’s proposal would have given independent military prosecutors, rather than commanders, the power to decide which sexual assault crimes to try, fixing a basic structural flaw in the military justice system that deters people from reporting assaults.
Mr. Levin tried to soften the blow by adding provisions to make retaliation a crime and requiring review by the civilian service chief in the rare cases when a commander declines to follow a recommendation to prosecute made by military lawyers under his supervision. Mr. Levin’s claim that removing prosecution decisions from military commanders — who have no legal training and significant conflicts of interest — would “likely weaken” the response to sexual assault does not square with the evidence.
According to the Defense Department, an estimated 26,000 men and women in the military were subject to some level of unwanted sexual contact in 2012, an increase of about 40 percent over two years. The data suggest that many of the allegations involved rape, aggravated sexual assault or nonconsensual sodomy. Only 3,374 incidents were reported, and a mere 302 of the 2,558 incidents pursued by victims were actually prosecuted.
Cracking down on retaliation, though necessary, does not address the low prosecution rate or the sense among many victims that their claims, especially against someone higher in rank, will not be believed.
It is distressing that two decades of scandals could not persuade Mr. Levin to budge from his decision to support the military brass. Ms. Gillibrand says she will try again to get her measure included when the full Senate takes up the defense spending bill. She has done a diligent job of building a bipartisan coalition pressing for more sweeping change, and further debate about the sexual assault problem and its solutions can help strengthen the result when the Senate negotiates a final bill with the House.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/13/opinion/a-failure-on-military-sexual-assaults.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
The Global Cancer!
Child sex abuse: Victim advocates needed
Every child making allegations of sexual exploitation should see an independent advisor before interview, MPs have said.
By - Jack Sommers - Police Oracle
Officers should ensure every child who is allegedly a victim of sexual exploitation has an Independent Sexual Violence Advocate assisting them throughout the investigation and prosecution of cases, a report by MPs has said.
The Home Affairs Select Committee made its recommendations after hearing evidence from senior officers, victim charities and representatives of the criminal justice system on the prolonged failure to bring two high-profile child sexual exploitation rings in Rochdale and Rotherham to justice sooner.
The report, which was previewed on PoliceOracle.com yesterday, was published ahead of new guidelines on child sex exploitation that are due to be announced today, June 11, by the Director of Public Prosecutions and the College of Policing.
The Home Affairs Committee report also advocates changes to the criminal justice system – including the setting up of special courts for sexual offences – as well as moves to make the experience of giving evidence less traumatic for victims.
The MPs said all child sex exploitation victims should have the support of an Independent Sexual Violence Advocate (ISVA) from before they undergo an Achieving Best Evidence (ABE) interview. The ISVA should be trained in court processes and continue supporting the victim throughout the trial and beyond, they added.
The MPs heard evidence that ISVAs were important for securing effective victim court testimony. The advocates are specialists commissioned by Baroness Scotland through the Home Office Violent Crime Unit in 2005.
When she appeared before the MPs giving evidence, Det Ch Supt Mary Doyle of Greater Manchester Police described the role as “absolutely key” in supporting victims and witnesses through the criminal justice system.
The MPs’ report said: “Support through the prosecution process is vital as it can mitigate circumstances which may lead to evidence being withdrawn by the victim at short notice.”
Charity Victim Support gave evidence about the value of ISVAs to MPs, highlighting: “To have the same supporting individual present from ABE interview till the end of the process will allow a young person to develop trust and confidence to share more details of abusers as time goes on.
“Young people will often share their worst experiences at a very late stage so it is important that this relationship is constant and is maintained.”
The report also said the Police Service had a duty to challenge Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decisions not to prosecute if it disagreed.
DCS Doyle said it would have been “appropriate” for South Yorkshire Police officers to challenge the CPS decision not to prosecute the Rotherham case in 2009 because they found the witnesses unreliable.
“It is necessary for the police and the CPS to work together but that relationship must not preclude professional challenge,” the MPs said in their report.
“The ability to constructively challenge a decision taken by either party will strengthen the response of the criminal justice system to cases such as these and ought to be actively encouraged by senior management in the CPS and across all police forces.”
Elsewhere in the report, the MPs said that there needed to be a further package of reforms to allow victims to be able give clear and effective evidence.
While they accepted that a defendant must have the right to to test evidence, committee members felt current balance was currently skewed too strongly in favour of protecting the rights of a suspect – and that distressed victims giving evidence in court was not in the interests of justice.
They suggested that the Lord Chief Justice could consider recommending to the Judicial College that further training be developed for legal professionals involved in dealing with sex abuse cases, recommending that the Ministry of Justice provide relevant funding for any work.
The report added: “We also recommend that the Ministry of Justice introduce specialist courts, similar to the domestic violence courts currently in existence, for child sexual abuse or sexual offences as a whole.
“We do not mean that new buildings or new bureaucracies should be created, merely that in each region, one court room should be designated as the preferred court for the most serious child sexual exploitation cases.
“This court room should be selected on the basis that it has the most up to date technology and appropriate access and waiting facilities…We will write to the Ministry of Justice requesting periodic updates on this piece of work and will revisit the issue in 18 months time,” the document added.
http://www.policeoracle.com/news/Crime/2013/Jun/11/Child-sex-abuse-Victim-advocates-needed_66458.html
Every child making allegations of sexual exploitation should see an independent advisor before interview, MPs have said.
By - Jack Sommers - Police Oracle
Officers should ensure every child who is allegedly a victim of sexual exploitation has an Independent Sexual Violence Advocate assisting them throughout the investigation and prosecution of cases, a report by MPs has said.
The Home Affairs Select Committee made its recommendations after hearing evidence from senior officers, victim charities and representatives of the criminal justice system on the prolonged failure to bring two high-profile child sexual exploitation rings in Rochdale and Rotherham to justice sooner.
The report, which was previewed on PoliceOracle.com yesterday, was published ahead of new guidelines on child sex exploitation that are due to be announced today, June 11, by the Director of Public Prosecutions and the College of Policing.
The Home Affairs Committee report also advocates changes to the criminal justice system – including the setting up of special courts for sexual offences – as well as moves to make the experience of giving evidence less traumatic for victims.
The MPs said all child sex exploitation victims should have the support of an Independent Sexual Violence Advocate (ISVA) from before they undergo an Achieving Best Evidence (ABE) interview. The ISVA should be trained in court processes and continue supporting the victim throughout the trial and beyond, they added.
The MPs heard evidence that ISVAs were important for securing effective victim court testimony. The advocates are specialists commissioned by Baroness Scotland through the Home Office Violent Crime Unit in 2005.
When she appeared before the MPs giving evidence, Det Ch Supt Mary Doyle of Greater Manchester Police described the role as “absolutely key” in supporting victims and witnesses through the criminal justice system.
The MPs’ report said: “Support through the prosecution process is vital as it can mitigate circumstances which may lead to evidence being withdrawn by the victim at short notice.”
Charity Victim Support gave evidence about the value of ISVAs to MPs, highlighting: “To have the same supporting individual present from ABE interview till the end of the process will allow a young person to develop trust and confidence to share more details of abusers as time goes on.
“Young people will often share their worst experiences at a very late stage so it is important that this relationship is constant and is maintained.”
The report also said the Police Service had a duty to challenge Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decisions not to prosecute if it disagreed.
DCS Doyle said it would have been “appropriate” for South Yorkshire Police officers to challenge the CPS decision not to prosecute the Rotherham case in 2009 because they found the witnesses unreliable.
“It is necessary for the police and the CPS to work together but that relationship must not preclude professional challenge,” the MPs said in their report.
“The ability to constructively challenge a decision taken by either party will strengthen the response of the criminal justice system to cases such as these and ought to be actively encouraged by senior management in the CPS and across all police forces.”
Elsewhere in the report, the MPs said that there needed to be a further package of reforms to allow victims to be able give clear and effective evidence.
While they accepted that a defendant must have the right to to test evidence, committee members felt current balance was currently skewed too strongly in favour of protecting the rights of a suspect – and that distressed victims giving evidence in court was not in the interests of justice.
They suggested that the Lord Chief Justice could consider recommending to the Judicial College that further training be developed for legal professionals involved in dealing with sex abuse cases, recommending that the Ministry of Justice provide relevant funding for any work.
The report added: “We also recommend that the Ministry of Justice introduce specialist courts, similar to the domestic violence courts currently in existence, for child sexual abuse or sexual offences as a whole.
“We do not mean that new buildings or new bureaucracies should be created, merely that in each region, one court room should be designated as the preferred court for the most serious child sexual exploitation cases.
“This court room should be selected on the basis that it has the most up to date technology and appropriate access and waiting facilities…We will write to the Ministry of Justice requesting periodic updates on this piece of work and will revisit the issue in 18 months time,” the document added.
http://www.policeoracle.com/news/Crime/2013/Jun/11/Child-sex-abuse-Victim-advocates-needed_66458.html
Sunday, June 09, 2013
"There is NOT ONE DAY That Goes By That I Don't Think About It!"...
Childhood Sexual Abuse is a crime that strikes the young and the innocent. It’s all too common and can go unreported for a very long time, if ever at all. The law isn’t always there to protect victims. One local survivor shares her story and what’s being done to try and change PA’s Statute of Limitations.
Food Addiction In Women Tied To Sexual, Physical Abuse During Childhood!
What makes people fat? All sorts of things have been blamed, from too much eating and too little exercise to slow metabolisms and fast food—even air conditioning. But a shocking new study suggests that some cases of obesity grow out of sexual or physical abuse during childhood.
The study, conducted by scientists at Harvard Medical School, showed that women with a personal history of abuse are much more likely than other women to develop a food addiction.
For the study, a team led by Dr. Susan M. Mason, a postdoctoral fellow at the Connors Center for Women's Health and Gender Biology, studied the link between childhood abuse and adult food addiction in 57,321 women enrolled in the Nurses' Health Study II.
(Food addiction involves behaviors such as repeated episodes of eating despite the absence of hunger and experiencing withdrawal symptoms when cutting back on certain foods, Dr. Mason told The Huffington Post in an email.)
Dr. Mason's team found that food addiction was almost twice as common among women who indicated that they had experienced sexual or physical abuse before age 18 than among women with no history of childhood abuse, according to a written statement released in conjunction with the research. Women who had experienced both sexual and physical abuse were even more likely to have food addiction.
Overall, the prevalence of food addiction ran from 6 percent in women with no history of childhood abuse all the way to 16 percent among women who had experienced both sexual and physical abuse.
That's shocking stuff—especially since national surveys indicate that more than a third of American women endured such abuse before reaching age 18, according to the statement. More than two out of three U.S. adults are overweight or obese.
Does the same phenomenon affect men? The study didn't say, of course, as it included only women. But studies have turned up links between childhood abuse and obesity in men, Dr. Mason told The Huffington Post. One 2009 study of more than 15,000 adolescents found that men with a history of childhood sexual abuse were 66 percent more likely to be obese than other men, Time.com reported in 2010.
Dr. Mason's observational study doesn't show that childhood abuse actually causes food addiction or obesity in women. But it's not much of a stretch to believe that there is a causal link.
"We do think that a causal link between childhood abuse and food addiction is plausible," Dr. Mason said in the email, adding that animal and clinical research suggests that people in "stressful environments may overeat so-called 'comfort foods'—these are high-fat and high-sugar foods that can blunt feelings of distress by stimulating reward systems in the brain."
If the study is confirmed by additional research, Dr. Mason said, the next step would be "to identify effective strategies for preventing and treating addiction-like eating behaviors in women with abuse histories."
One potential obstacle to identifying and implementing such strategies is the persistent stigma associated with abuse. As Dr. Vincent Felitti, co-principal investigator of the California-based Adverse Childhood Experiences Study and an expert on the connection between childhood trauma and adult health problems, told Syracuse.com in 2010, "the relationship between childhood sexual abuse and obesity later in life is major, but, since childhood sexual abuse is a topic protected by shame and social taboo, it is concealed by time and by secrecy."
Dr. Mason's study was published in the journal Obesity.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/07/food-addiction-women-sexual-physical-abuse-childhood_n_3398173.html
Friday, June 07, 2013
The Tendlers Go To China - Part Deuce!
American teacher held in Shanghai over allegations of child sex abuse
Suspect said to have been a friend of former instructor at same school who was extradited to the US on similar charges, school admits
The Shanghai kindergarten teacher was seized by police last month after seven families filed formal accusations against him, alleging sexual abuse and rape of students of both sexes, several parents said.
A former instructor at the school, also an American, was extradited to the US on similar charges.
Education authorities have stepped up supervision of foreign teachers since April following two child sex scandals, in Beijing and Nanjing . Local schools on the mainland have also been mired in a series of child molestation cases exposed recently.
"As parents we are devastated," said the mother of one pupil, who requested anonymity to protect her child's privacy.
Shanghai police yesterday confirmed that they detained the teacher, a 32-year-old surnamed McMahon, on May 13 and said he was suspected of molesting "several" children, Xinhua reported. In one case, the suspect had allegedly molested a student "several times", Xinhua said.
Management at the Lycee Francais de Shanghai said: "Families have lodged complaints with the Chinese police against a teacher at the French school of Shanghai over assaults on their children. The investigation is being carried out by the Chinese police and is ongoing."
The mother said her child started behaving oddly soon after they moved to China.
"My daughter was having nervous breakdowns, she was scratching herself on her face and thighs," she said. "As we had just arrived in China I figured it was exhaustion from moving countries; I didn't worry about it."
Only later did she link the unusual behaviour to abuse.
The fee-paying school declined to provide precise details of the accusations against the teacher, nor over what period they allegedly took place. A notice addressed to families referred to "sexual assaults".
Another mother said she suspected her daughter had been abused over a period of months, and that cases of abuse of other children went back as far as five years.
"We are living a nightmare," she said.
The second teacher, a friend of the first, was "extradited by Chinese authorities to the US in December 2012 following an investigation into sexual touching and violence against minors", the school said in an e-mail.
From 2005 until last year he worked alternately at the French and German schools, which share a campus. He left the French school in 2011 and its management said his alleged actions took place during individual classes at a private home when he was no longer on staff.
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1254869/us-teacher-held-over-shanghai-french-school-sex-abuse
.
Suspect said to have been a friend of former instructor at same school who was extradited to the US on similar charges, school admits
The Shanghai kindergarten teacher was seized by police last month after seven families filed formal accusations against him, alleging sexual abuse and rape of students of both sexes, several parents said.
A former instructor at the school, also an American, was extradited to the US on similar charges.
Education authorities have stepped up supervision of foreign teachers since April following two child sex scandals, in Beijing and Nanjing . Local schools on the mainland have also been mired in a series of child molestation cases exposed recently.
"As parents we are devastated," said the mother of one pupil, who requested anonymity to protect her child's privacy.
Shanghai police yesterday confirmed that they detained the teacher, a 32-year-old surnamed McMahon, on May 13 and said he was suspected of molesting "several" children, Xinhua reported. In one case, the suspect had allegedly molested a student "several times", Xinhua said.
Management at the Lycee Francais de Shanghai said: "Families have lodged complaints with the Chinese police against a teacher at the French school of Shanghai over assaults on their children. The investigation is being carried out by the Chinese police and is ongoing."
The mother said her child started behaving oddly soon after they moved to China.
"My daughter was having nervous breakdowns, she was scratching herself on her face and thighs," she said. "As we had just arrived in China I figured it was exhaustion from moving countries; I didn't worry about it."
Only later did she link the unusual behaviour to abuse.
The fee-paying school declined to provide precise details of the accusations against the teacher, nor over what period they allegedly took place. A notice addressed to families referred to "sexual assaults".
Another mother said she suspected her daughter had been abused over a period of months, and that cases of abuse of other children went back as far as five years.
"We are living a nightmare," she said.
The second teacher, a friend of the first, was "extradited by Chinese authorities to the US in December 2012 following an investigation into sexual touching and violence against minors", the school said in an e-mail.
From 2005 until last year he worked alternately at the French and German schools, which share a campus. He left the French school in 2011 and its management said his alleged actions took place during individual classes at a private home when he was no longer on staff.
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1254869/us-teacher-held-over-shanghai-french-school-sex-abuse
.
Thursday, June 06, 2013
Responding to Abuse: Should We Ask Gedolim?
The welfare of the child requires that every allegation be investigated.
By: Rabbi Yosef Blau
As the scandals and the chillul Hashem increase, Rabbi William Handler, in a recent op-ed article on JewishPress.com, attempts to justify not reporting abuse to secular authorities.
He asserts that one should go to a gadol who has “siyata deshmaya.” The fact that there is no evidence that this has reduced abuse in the past is far less significant than its assertion of frumkeit. Not one of the major poskim who analyze the level of certainty needed before calling the police has ever made the claim that he is better equipped to deal with abuse. Victims can only be further traumatized when told to go to the very rabbis who failed to acknowledge their pain and hurt in the first place.
The Talmud in Yoma (83a) discusses the role of doctors in determining whether a person is permitted to eat on Yom Hakippurim. It’s clear the Talmud recognizes expertise and trusts the knowledge of a person in his field. Even non-Jewish experts are trusted to determine taste in a mixture of kosher and non-kosher ingredients.
Most troubling is the argument that there is a group of so-called experts working for the state agency protecting children who are looking to take Jewish children from their parents and have the parents prosecuted. In this scenario, if they don’t find the Jewish parents guilty of abuse they will lose their jobs.
Rabbi Handler apparently is not aware that there are not enough social workers available to deal with the many abuse victims in the general community; this renders moot his claim that social workers are looking for victims because they want to keep their jobs. The reality is exactly the opposite – the child protection agencies in fact need more social workers.
It will be unpleasant for parents when unusual injuries of infants treated in emergency rooms are investigated, but children’s lives will be saved. The police are not quick to arrest, and it takes many such incidents before a child is taken away from his parents.
Even when charges are made by one parent against the other in a divorce dispute – a circumstance ripe for false accusation – the welfare of the child requires that every allegation be investigated.
We do not live in a country where the social agencies or police are prejudiced against Jews. Yes, mistakes are made, as in every judicial system, but the solution cannot be anarchy. We read about faulty prosecutions, but no one has suggested the correct response is to let all offenders go free. Sexual abusers, who often are chronic offenders, have to be separated from potential victims. The proper approach would be for the Orthodox community, especially the day schools, to work with the state agencies.
It is no longer the time for this sterile debate. We do little to prevent abuse and less to help those who have been victimized. The cries of the survivors can no longer be ignored.
Where is the support for those who struggle to overcome the double trauma of having been abused and not believed when they came forward? The recent case in Lakewood where the rabbinic leadership defended an abuser (who was convicted after other victims came forward and he admitted guilt) and hounded the victim’s family has produced not one apology from the rabbis involved.
We have seen case after case, conviction after conviction, but there has been no change. What is needed is a discussion about how to get the Orthodox community to acknowledge the extent of the crisis. We must stop trying to protect our image and start protecting our children.
About the Author: Rabbi Yosef Blau is mashgiach ruchani at Yeshiva University and an advocate for survivors of abuse.
By: Rabbi Yosef Blau
As the scandals and the chillul Hashem increase, Rabbi William Handler, in a recent op-ed article on JewishPress.com, attempts to justify not reporting abuse to secular authorities.
He asserts that one should go to a gadol who has “siyata deshmaya.” The fact that there is no evidence that this has reduced abuse in the past is far less significant than its assertion of frumkeit. Not one of the major poskim who analyze the level of certainty needed before calling the police has ever made the claim that he is better equipped to deal with abuse. Victims can only be further traumatized when told to go to the very rabbis who failed to acknowledge their pain and hurt in the first place.
The Talmud in Yoma (83a) discusses the role of doctors in determining whether a person is permitted to eat on Yom Hakippurim. It’s clear the Talmud recognizes expertise and trusts the knowledge of a person in his field. Even non-Jewish experts are trusted to determine taste in a mixture of kosher and non-kosher ingredients.
Most troubling is the argument that there is a group of so-called experts working for the state agency protecting children who are looking to take Jewish children from their parents and have the parents prosecuted. In this scenario, if they don’t find the Jewish parents guilty of abuse they will lose their jobs.
Rabbi Handler apparently is not aware that there are not enough social workers available to deal with the many abuse victims in the general community; this renders moot his claim that social workers are looking for victims because they want to keep their jobs. The reality is exactly the opposite – the child protection agencies in fact need more social workers.
It will be unpleasant for parents when unusual injuries of infants treated in emergency rooms are investigated, but children’s lives will be saved. The police are not quick to arrest, and it takes many such incidents before a child is taken away from his parents.
Even when charges are made by one parent against the other in a divorce dispute – a circumstance ripe for false accusation – the welfare of the child requires that every allegation be investigated.
We do not live in a country where the social agencies or police are prejudiced against Jews. Yes, mistakes are made, as in every judicial system, but the solution cannot be anarchy. We read about faulty prosecutions, but no one has suggested the correct response is to let all offenders go free. Sexual abusers, who often are chronic offenders, have to be separated from potential victims. The proper approach would be for the Orthodox community, especially the day schools, to work with the state agencies.
It is no longer the time for this sterile debate. We do little to prevent abuse and less to help those who have been victimized. The cries of the survivors can no longer be ignored.
Where is the support for those who struggle to overcome the double trauma of having been abused and not believed when they came forward? The recent case in Lakewood where the rabbinic leadership defended an abuser (who was convicted after other victims came forward and he admitted guilt) and hounded the victim’s family has produced not one apology from the rabbis involved.
We have seen case after case, conviction after conviction, but there has been no change. What is needed is a discussion about how to get the Orthodox community to acknowledge the extent of the crisis. We must stop trying to protect our image and start protecting our children.
About the Author: Rabbi Yosef Blau is mashgiach ruchani at Yeshiva University and an advocate for survivors of abuse.
Child sexual abuse advocacy group launches in Sydney
Tzedek has announced its inaugural NSW event, an information session on ‘Child Sexual Abuse in the Jewish Community’ The event will be chaired by Amelia Frid, an experienced psychologist and Tzedek Board member, and feature two speakers: Dr Cathy Kezelman, president of Adult Survivors of Childhood Abuse and Manny Waks, founder and CEO of Tzedek.
Tzedek (Hebrew for Justice) is Australia’s only dedicated advocacy group for Jewish victims/survivors of child sexual abuse.
Ms Frid says: “Having worked with clients who have victimisation issues across a range of settings, I understand how endemic the issue of abuse is, and how far reaching its effects. Tzedek, a not for profit organization, aims to advocate for victim survivors of child sexual abuse and educate the broader Jewish community on matters concerning child safety, the importance of maintaining accountability, and broaching the matter with sensitivity and integrity.”
The event, on Wednesday 12 June, 7.30-9pm at 3 Saber Street Woolhara (JewishCare), is free but places are limited and bookings are essential. Light food and beverages will be provided. Please
RSVP to: nsw@tzedek.org.au or Amelia Frid – 0411 746 322.
http://www.jwire.com.au/news/child-sexual-abuse-advocacy-group-launches-in-sydney/34897
Tzedek (Hebrew for Justice) is Australia’s only dedicated advocacy group for Jewish victims/survivors of child sexual abuse.
Ms Frid says: “Having worked with clients who have victimisation issues across a range of settings, I understand how endemic the issue of abuse is, and how far reaching its effects. Tzedek, a not for profit organization, aims to advocate for victim survivors of child sexual abuse and educate the broader Jewish community on matters concerning child safety, the importance of maintaining accountability, and broaching the matter with sensitivity and integrity.”
The event, on Wednesday 12 June, 7.30-9pm at 3 Saber Street Woolhara (JewishCare), is free but places are limited and bookings are essential. Light food and beverages will be provided. Please
RSVP to: nsw@tzedek.org.au or Amelia Frid – 0411 746 322.
http://www.jwire.com.au/news/child-sexual-abuse-advocacy-group-launches-in-sydney/34897
Wednesday, June 05, 2013
Brain Changes from Child Abuse Tied to Adult Mental Illness, Sexual Problems
Different types of childhood abuse can increase the risk of mental illness as well as sexual dysfunction, experts say, but the biological mechanism by which this occurs has been unknown.
New research may provide an answer with the discovery that sexually abused and emotionally mistreated children exhibit specific and differential changes in the architecture of their brain.
In the study, an international team of researchers discovered that brain changes reflect the nature of the mistreatment.
Researchers have known that victims of childhood abuse often suffer from psychiatric disorders later in life, including sexual dysfunction following sexual abuse.
The underlying mechanisms facilitating this association have been poorly understood.
Charles B. Nemeroff, M.D., Ph.D. and a group of scientists hypothesized that brain or cortical changes during segments of mistreatment played a role.
Investigators used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to examine the brains of 51 adult women who were exposed to various forms of childhood abuse.
The results showed a correlation between specific forms of maltreatment and thinning of the cortex in precisely the regions of the brain that are involved in the perception or processing of the type of abuse.
Specifically, the somatosensory cortex in the area in which the female genitals are represented was significantly thinner in women who were victims of sexual abuse in their childhood.
Similarly, victims of emotional mistreatment were found to have a reduction of the thickness of the cerebral cortex in specific areas associated with self-awareness, self-evaluation and emotional regulation.
“This is one of the first studies documenting long-term alterations in specific brain areas as a consequence of child abuse and neglect,” said Nemeroff.
“The finding that specific types of early life trauma have discrete, long lasting effects on the brain that underlie symptoms in adults is an important step in developing novel therapies to intervene to reduce the often lifelong psychiatric/psychological burden of such trauma.”
The scientists speculate that a regional thinning of the cortex may serve as a protective mechanism, immediately shielding the child from the experience of the abuse by gating or blocking the sensory experience.
However, that thinning of the cortical sections may lay the groundwork for the development of behavioral problems in adulthood.
Experts say this study expands knowledge on neural plasticity and shows that cortical representation fields can be smaller when certain sensory experiences are damaged or developed inappropriate.
Source: University of Miami
http://psychcentral.com/news/2013/06/03/brain-changes-from-child-abuse-tied-to-adult-mental-illness-sexual-problems/55556.html
New research may provide an answer with the discovery that sexually abused and emotionally mistreated children exhibit specific and differential changes in the architecture of their brain.
In the study, an international team of researchers discovered that brain changes reflect the nature of the mistreatment.
Researchers have known that victims of childhood abuse often suffer from psychiatric disorders later in life, including sexual dysfunction following sexual abuse.
The underlying mechanisms facilitating this association have been poorly understood.
Charles B. Nemeroff, M.D., Ph.D. and a group of scientists hypothesized that brain or cortical changes during segments of mistreatment played a role.
Investigators used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to examine the brains of 51 adult women who were exposed to various forms of childhood abuse.
The results showed a correlation between specific forms of maltreatment and thinning of the cortex in precisely the regions of the brain that are involved in the perception or processing of the type of abuse.
Specifically, the somatosensory cortex in the area in which the female genitals are represented was significantly thinner in women who were victims of sexual abuse in their childhood.
Similarly, victims of emotional mistreatment were found to have a reduction of the thickness of the cerebral cortex in specific areas associated with self-awareness, self-evaluation and emotional regulation.
“This is one of the first studies documenting long-term alterations in specific brain areas as a consequence of child abuse and neglect,” said Nemeroff.
“The finding that specific types of early life trauma have discrete, long lasting effects on the brain that underlie symptoms in adults is an important step in developing novel therapies to intervene to reduce the often lifelong psychiatric/psychological burden of such trauma.”
The scientists speculate that a regional thinning of the cortex may serve as a protective mechanism, immediately shielding the child from the experience of the abuse by gating or blocking the sensory experience.
However, that thinning of the cortical sections may lay the groundwork for the development of behavioral problems in adulthood.
Experts say this study expands knowledge on neural plasticity and shows that cortical representation fields can be smaller when certain sensory experiences are damaged or developed inappropriate.
Source: University of Miami
http://psychcentral.com/news/2013/06/03/brain-changes-from-child-abuse-tied-to-adult-mental-illness-sexual-problems/55556.html
Tuesday, June 04, 2013
Love No Matter What - The "Different" Child!
What is it like to raise a child who's different from you in some fundamental way? In this quietly moving talk, writer Andrew Solomon shares what he learned from talking to dozens of parents -- asking them: What's the line between unconditional love and unconditional acceptance?
Monday, June 03, 2013
China child sex abuse: Sleep with me, not kids say outraged citizens!
THE TENDLERS GO TO CHINA:
Suddenly all kinds of people in China are offering to sleep with the headmaster. The unusual outpouring is in response to a recent spate of sex abuse cases, including that of a school principal who spent the night in a hotel room with four underage girls. Artists, activists, university students and police officers are photographing themselves, some nude and provocatively posed, some angry and menacing with the message: "Principal, get a room with me. Leave the young students alone.'' The online campaign mixing performance art, satire and outrage has tapped into public anger over sexual abuse against children. It's a problem in China partly because of lack of sex education and partly because Chinese society has become unmoored from traditional strictures after decades of rapid economic change and social change.
Attitudes toward sex have become more lax, especially noticeable among powerful officials, often found to be cavorting with very young mistresses and prostitutes. Children are prone to the abuse because they have not been adequately prepared, and can be easily intimidated by teachers and other authority figures.
"Schools and parents have failed to instill in our children the sense of rights and to teach them how to protect themselves,'' Xiong Bingqi, a deputy director of the Beijing-based education think tank 21st Century Education Research Institute. "If the children know about their rights, know they can call police if they are sexually assaulted and have the assaulters punished, it will sure deter the criminals.''
Recent sex abuse cases against children that have become public should be a wake-up call for Chinese families and schools, Xiong said, noting they may only be a tip of the iceberg.
"The students may not know they have been sexually abused,'' Xiong said. "Or if they know, they don't tell their parents. Sometimes, schools settle those cases without telling the police.''
In a recent survey by Beijing News, 37.4 percent of the respondents said they do not know how to teach their children to protect themselves from sexual abuse.
The national debate on the problem began in early May, when a primary school principal was caught spending a night with four schoolgirls all under the age of 14 in a hotel room in southern China's Hainan province. Chen Zaipeng, the principal, has been fired and charged with rape.
Members of the public reacted with astonishment to the high-profile case, and have been reading with fury as at least seven more cases of sexual abuse by school teachers or employees against young girls have come to light over the past three weeks from different parts of China. Some victims were as young as 8.
In the past several years, there have been occasional reports of government officials hiring young girls as prostitutes. The cases are typically handled as prostitution, even when the girls are underage. Critics have demanded such culprits be prosecuted with the crime of raping children, which can carry harsher punishments.
China's Supreme People's Court this week vowed to crack down on crimes against children. The Education Ministry has demanded that sex criminals must be "firmly'' cleaned out from the teaching staff and that those who help with cover-ups must be prosecuted. And the All-China Women's Federation has called for severe punishment in all crimes against girls.
The public, however, has found an unconventional way of speaking up. Late last month, Ye Haiyan, a feminist and advocate for the rights of sex workers, went to Chen's former elementary school to lend support to his alleged victims. There, she held up a large piece of paper offering to "get a room'' with Chen and telling him to leave the students alone, and gave a contact number, which was for China's rights hotline for women and children.
Her offer prompted many others to follow suit. One is Beijing-based poet Wang Zang, who last Wednesday uploaded naked photos of himself with his back scribbled with the offer. In one photo, Wang holds a children's toy in one hand and a liquor bottle in the other.
"I am protesting the frequent criminal acts of school sex abuse against young students,'' Wang said. "And I also want to raise the public awareness in protecting the girls.''
Wang said he believes the recent cases are only a small part of the problem because many cases have been covered up by powerful people. Corruption in the education system has put unfit teachers in classrooms, and China's laws have failed to adequately prosecute sexual crimes against children, Wang said.
Sociologist Li Yinhe sees the offers as a public statement. "I think it's a way for people to express their anger,'' she said. "It is also a kind of black humor.''
An editorial in Beijing News said the ridicule has a serious message: "In each and every `get a room with me' call, you should hear the public anxiety of saving our children.''
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/china-child-sex-abuse-sleep-with-me-not-kids-say-outraged-citizens/1124337/3
Suddenly all kinds of people in China are offering to sleep with the headmaster. The unusual outpouring is in response to a recent spate of sex abuse cases, including that of a school principal who spent the night in a hotel room with four underage girls. Artists, activists, university students and police officers are photographing themselves, some nude and provocatively posed, some angry and menacing with the message: "Principal, get a room with me. Leave the young students alone.'' The online campaign mixing performance art, satire and outrage has tapped into public anger over sexual abuse against children. It's a problem in China partly because of lack of sex education and partly because Chinese society has become unmoored from traditional strictures after decades of rapid economic change and social change.
Attitudes toward sex have become more lax, especially noticeable among powerful officials, often found to be cavorting with very young mistresses and prostitutes. Children are prone to the abuse because they have not been adequately prepared, and can be easily intimidated by teachers and other authority figures.
"Schools and parents have failed to instill in our children the sense of rights and to teach them how to protect themselves,'' Xiong Bingqi, a deputy director of the Beijing-based education think tank 21st Century Education Research Institute. "If the children know about their rights, know they can call police if they are sexually assaulted and have the assaulters punished, it will sure deter the criminals.''
Recent sex abuse cases against children that have become public should be a wake-up call for Chinese families and schools, Xiong said, noting they may only be a tip of the iceberg.
"The students may not know they have been sexually abused,'' Xiong said. "Or if they know, they don't tell their parents. Sometimes, schools settle those cases without telling the police.''
In a recent survey by Beijing News, 37.4 percent of the respondents said they do not know how to teach their children to protect themselves from sexual abuse.
The national debate on the problem began in early May, when a primary school principal was caught spending a night with four schoolgirls all under the age of 14 in a hotel room in southern China's Hainan province. Chen Zaipeng, the principal, has been fired and charged with rape.
Members of the public reacted with astonishment to the high-profile case, and have been reading with fury as at least seven more cases of sexual abuse by school teachers or employees against young girls have come to light over the past three weeks from different parts of China. Some victims were as young as 8.
In the past several years, there have been occasional reports of government officials hiring young girls as prostitutes. The cases are typically handled as prostitution, even when the girls are underage. Critics have demanded such culprits be prosecuted with the crime of raping children, which can carry harsher punishments.
China's Supreme People's Court this week vowed to crack down on crimes against children. The Education Ministry has demanded that sex criminals must be "firmly'' cleaned out from the teaching staff and that those who help with cover-ups must be prosecuted. And the All-China Women's Federation has called for severe punishment in all crimes against girls.
The public, however, has found an unconventional way of speaking up. Late last month, Ye Haiyan, a feminist and advocate for the rights of sex workers, went to Chen's former elementary school to lend support to his alleged victims. There, she held up a large piece of paper offering to "get a room'' with Chen and telling him to leave the students alone, and gave a contact number, which was for China's rights hotline for women and children.
Her offer prompted many others to follow suit. One is Beijing-based poet Wang Zang, who last Wednesday uploaded naked photos of himself with his back scribbled with the offer. In one photo, Wang holds a children's toy in one hand and a liquor bottle in the other.
"I am protesting the frequent criminal acts of school sex abuse against young students,'' Wang said. "And I also want to raise the public awareness in protecting the girls.''
Wang said he believes the recent cases are only a small part of the problem because many cases have been covered up by powerful people. Corruption in the education system has put unfit teachers in classrooms, and China's laws have failed to adequately prosecute sexual crimes against children, Wang said.
Sociologist Li Yinhe sees the offers as a public statement. "I think it's a way for people to express their anger,'' she said. "It is also a kind of black humor.''
An editorial in Beijing News said the ridicule has a serious message: "In each and every `get a room with me' call, you should hear the public anxiety of saving our children.''
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/china-child-sex-abuse-sleep-with-me-not-kids-say-outraged-citizens/1124337/3
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Police overwhelmed by tsunami of child sex abuse images!
The latest figures from the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) make depressing reading. The volume of child abuse images being reported and detected on the internet continues to increase and not in small steps but in huge ones.
In their latest report the IWF recorded 40% growth year on year and the proportion of material featuring the sexual abuse of children under the age of 10 is also up, from 81% to 88% of all the illegal images examined. 61% of these images depicted images of rape or torture.
While technological changes may account for some of the increased level of reports the overall trajectory is abundantly clear. Things are not getting better.
Moreover it’s important to remember the IWF only deals with parts of the internet not all of it. There are huge swathes of cyberspace where the IWF has no writ, where only the police can act. I’m thinking in particular about peer-to-peer networks.
In my travels around the world I meet law enforcement officers from lots of countries and they all say the same thing: they are overwhelmed by the volume of child abuse images, and that’s only the ones they know about. They cannot investigate all of it. They are managing a crisis.
Every day police officers are making triage decisions as a means of determining which cases to take up next. The most urgent or maybe sometimes the easiest will be selected while the rest get stuck in that great invisible inbox in the sky. Returning to Britain the police are cagey about how well they are coping with the tsunami of online child abuse images but in times of austerity, with police cutbacks, it is impossible to imagine we are completely on top of it.
Occasionally we get glimpses of the scale of the problem that the UK has to face in the 21st Century. The NSPCC issued freedom of information requests to police forces in England and Wales asking them to disclose how many child abuse images they had seized in a two year period up to April, 2012. Only five forces replied.
Between them they had seized 26 million. If those numbers were ramped up across the whole country this means anywhere between 150 and 360 million images may have been seized by all forces in the same timeframe.
These are truly mind-boggling numbers, particularly when set against the grand total of 7,000 images the UK police knew about in 1995, arguably the Internet’s Year Zero.
How many people are trading in child abuse images?
Peter Davies, CEO of the UK’s specialist policing unit for online crimes against children, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, (CEOP) last year revealed that they were aware of between 50,000 and 60,000 individuals swapping or downloading child abuse images over peer to peer networks.
We were assured these people would be “hunted down” and maybe they will, be but we should note that in no year since records began have the police in England and Wales ever arrested more than 2,500 individuals for child abuse image related offences.
Who are they?
What do we know about these 50,000-60,000 people? Again according to CEOP, aside from the crime they have committed by downloading a child abuse image in the first place, each person has to be regarded as a potential child abuser in the future.
Now it is exceptionally unlikely that even half of the given total will go so far as to molest their own or anyone else’s children but we just do not yet have sophisticated enough tools to identify the most likely individuals.
Conservatively around 15% may go that far but it may well be higher. Thus, the police have in their hands right now the identities of, at least, somewhere between 7,500 and 9,000 individuals who will probably commit a hands on sexual offence against a child but I see no serious signs of anything like that number being pinpointed and arrested any time soon. I’m amazed there aren't demonstrations in Trafalgar Square about this shocking state of affairs.
Stop the first crime being committed
As with any and every area of criminal activity the single most important objective of policy has to be stopping a person from committing their first crime, the one that sets them off on a pathway to further crimes. This is particularly true in the case of child abuse image offences where undoubtedly there is a highly opportunistic element to the crime of downloading. People working psychotherapeutically with men convicted of child abuse images offences reckon that at least half of them would never have got involved with the images in the first place if there had been even the most minimal barriers, diversions or warnings put in their way.
In the UK if someone tries to use the internet to reach an internet address that is known to contain child abuse images, depending on the access provider, they may well find they receive a message which reads something like this. You have attempted to reach an address which contains illegal child abuse images. This may have been accidental but if it was not and you persist you should know that the police may be able to discover who you are and where you live.
A substantial proportion of people reading that message will get the fright of their lives and a high percentage of them will never try it again, not least because they will know that any illusions about them being able to shelter behind the internet’s anonymity are simply that, illusions. I think we need to find ways to get more messages like this to the right people at the right time.
“You have attempted to reach an address which contains illegal child abuse images. This may have been accidental but if it was not and you persist you should know that the police may be able to discover who you are and where you live.
Here’s my suggestion: all the search engine companies have a lexicon of paedophilic search terms. The IWF compiles it. Every time anyone enters a query which indicates they are looking for child abuse images a message of the sort I have just shown should flash up on their screen.
We shouldn’t wait until they happen upon or find an illegal address. Then it’s probably too late. The crime has been committed. We should try to knock them off course before then.
Norton has constructed a wonderful tool that warns you if a web site you might be thinking about visiting has got poor security or may contain malware of various kinds. Maybe they could find a way to utilise the child abuse dictionary to warn people that this or that site may contain illegal child abuse content? Again this would strip away the naïve belief that you can surf without consequences. As a result children would be saved from the ordeal of abuse.
Finally I think all of the search engine companies should either take a great deal more care about the sort of ostensibly legal porn sites they provide access to e.g. only allow sites within the .xxx domain, or they should set themselves up as being entirely porn free by default.
Obviously the search engines will rarely if ever provide anyone with a direct path to a site providing child abuse images but they will often take to you hard core porn sites which, through links, will almost certainly eventually get you to such sites.
We cannot solve this problem through conventional policing methods.
The high tech industries need to get on board or face ever more strident calls for tighter internet regulation.
http://www.itv.com/news/2013-05-28/police-overwhelmed-by-tsuanami-of-child-sex-abuse-images/
In their latest report the IWF recorded 40% growth year on year and the proportion of material featuring the sexual abuse of children under the age of 10 is also up, from 81% to 88% of all the illegal images examined. 61% of these images depicted images of rape or torture.
While technological changes may account for some of the increased level of reports the overall trajectory is abundantly clear. Things are not getting better.
Moreover it’s important to remember the IWF only deals with parts of the internet not all of it. There are huge swathes of cyberspace where the IWF has no writ, where only the police can act. I’m thinking in particular about peer-to-peer networks.
In my travels around the world I meet law enforcement officers from lots of countries and they all say the same thing: they are overwhelmed by the volume of child abuse images, and that’s only the ones they know about. They cannot investigate all of it. They are managing a crisis.
Every day police officers are making triage decisions as a means of determining which cases to take up next. The most urgent or maybe sometimes the easiest will be selected while the rest get stuck in that great invisible inbox in the sky. Returning to Britain the police are cagey about how well they are coping with the tsunami of online child abuse images but in times of austerity, with police cutbacks, it is impossible to imagine we are completely on top of it.
Occasionally we get glimpses of the scale of the problem that the UK has to face in the 21st Century. The NSPCC issued freedom of information requests to police forces in England and Wales asking them to disclose how many child abuse images they had seized in a two year period up to April, 2012. Only five forces replied.
Between them they had seized 26 million. If those numbers were ramped up across the whole country this means anywhere between 150 and 360 million images may have been seized by all forces in the same timeframe.
These are truly mind-boggling numbers, particularly when set against the grand total of 7,000 images the UK police knew about in 1995, arguably the Internet’s Year Zero.
How many people are trading in child abuse images?
Peter Davies, CEO of the UK’s specialist policing unit for online crimes against children, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, (CEOP) last year revealed that they were aware of between 50,000 and 60,000 individuals swapping or downloading child abuse images over peer to peer networks.
We were assured these people would be “hunted down” and maybe they will, be but we should note that in no year since records began have the police in England and Wales ever arrested more than 2,500 individuals for child abuse image related offences.
Who are they?
What do we know about these 50,000-60,000 people? Again according to CEOP, aside from the crime they have committed by downloading a child abuse image in the first place, each person has to be regarded as a potential child abuser in the future.
Now it is exceptionally unlikely that even half of the given total will go so far as to molest their own or anyone else’s children but we just do not yet have sophisticated enough tools to identify the most likely individuals.
Conservatively around 15% may go that far but it may well be higher. Thus, the police have in their hands right now the identities of, at least, somewhere between 7,500 and 9,000 individuals who will probably commit a hands on sexual offence against a child but I see no serious signs of anything like that number being pinpointed and arrested any time soon. I’m amazed there aren't demonstrations in Trafalgar Square about this shocking state of affairs.
Stop the first crime being committed
As with any and every area of criminal activity the single most important objective of policy has to be stopping a person from committing their first crime, the one that sets them off on a pathway to further crimes. This is particularly true in the case of child abuse image offences where undoubtedly there is a highly opportunistic element to the crime of downloading. People working psychotherapeutically with men convicted of child abuse images offences reckon that at least half of them would never have got involved with the images in the first place if there had been even the most minimal barriers, diversions or warnings put in their way.
In the UK if someone tries to use the internet to reach an internet address that is known to contain child abuse images, depending on the access provider, they may well find they receive a message which reads something like this. You have attempted to reach an address which contains illegal child abuse images. This may have been accidental but if it was not and you persist you should know that the police may be able to discover who you are and where you live.
A substantial proportion of people reading that message will get the fright of their lives and a high percentage of them will never try it again, not least because they will know that any illusions about them being able to shelter behind the internet’s anonymity are simply that, illusions. I think we need to find ways to get more messages like this to the right people at the right time.
“You have attempted to reach an address which contains illegal child abuse images. This may have been accidental but if it was not and you persist you should know that the police may be able to discover who you are and where you live.
Here’s my suggestion: all the search engine companies have a lexicon of paedophilic search terms. The IWF compiles it. Every time anyone enters a query which indicates they are looking for child abuse images a message of the sort I have just shown should flash up on their screen.
We shouldn’t wait until they happen upon or find an illegal address. Then it’s probably too late. The crime has been committed. We should try to knock them off course before then.
Norton has constructed a wonderful tool that warns you if a web site you might be thinking about visiting has got poor security or may contain malware of various kinds. Maybe they could find a way to utilise the child abuse dictionary to warn people that this or that site may contain illegal child abuse content? Again this would strip away the naïve belief that you can surf without consequences. As a result children would be saved from the ordeal of abuse.
Finally I think all of the search engine companies should either take a great deal more care about the sort of ostensibly legal porn sites they provide access to e.g. only allow sites within the .xxx domain, or they should set themselves up as being entirely porn free by default.
Obviously the search engines will rarely if ever provide anyone with a direct path to a site providing child abuse images but they will often take to you hard core porn sites which, through links, will almost certainly eventually get you to such sites.
We cannot solve this problem through conventional policing methods.
The high tech industries need to get on board or face ever more strident calls for tighter internet regulation.
http://www.itv.com/news/2013-05-28/police-overwhelmed-by-tsuanami-of-child-sex-abuse-images/
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Worse than blaming victims!
By Dr. Michael Salamon
Zelig (not his real name), a man in his 20′s, arrived to his therapy appointment with me yesterday with tears streaming down his cheeks. He was clearly in distress. At the age of twelve Zelig was molested by a teacher, a rabbi who was giving him “special” attention at the yeshiva he was attending at the time. Zelig had been groomed by this man for close to a year before anything happened. “For a long time he gave me little presents like chocolate or a rubber ball” and “ he told me to tell my parents that he was teaching me so that I could be the smartest kid in his class. My parents never questioned why, they just thought he was being super nice to me. Maybe they were even flattered by it.” The actual touching did not begin until this teacher was hired by Zelig’s parents to give bar-mitzvah lessons to Zelig. Once the touching started it quickly progressed to penetration. Zelig was told by the man that if Zelig ever told anyone about it his parents would both die. He was also told that it was “so pleasurable that such pleasures were meant to be kept a secret between us because that is the way G-d wants it.”
Zelig told me the details of his abuse at the hands of this teacher several months ago. These memories were not the cause for his tears yesterday. The cause was an article he read in the American paper the Jewish Press written by a Rabbi William Handler. The article entitled Molestation cases must be handled by g’dolim, not by experts, begins with a diatribe that says that there is “a new danger: the existence of a clique of pseudo-experts who are working among us in the field of “Criminal Molestation.”’ He goes on to state that g’dolim are better equipped to evaluate and perhaps even adjudicate these cases than the “so-called experts” and professionals who operate in the secular realm. It is an argument that even the editors of the paper indicate, is not well made and in my estimation it is not even an argument worthy of being made by a reasonable individual.
Zelig’s response was to tell me yet again that when he turned 16 and told his principal what his abuser had done he was warned that if he did not put it in the past he would “ruin all my chances and my sister’s chances for getting married or getting into the right schools.” Zelig asked me, rhetorically, “And these are the people that should be trusted to take care of the problem? My principal is considered a gadol. See how he took care of it! What would happen if they had such power to take care of things?”
Zelig went on “And it’s not just him. There is an even bigger gadol who wrote a letter saying that the rabbi in Lakewood who just admitted in open court that he abused someone – that gadol Rabbi who wrote the letter claims that he did an investigation and there was no abuse. The authorities investigated. The authorities did what had to be done and the ba_ _ _ _ _ admitted he was an abuser. That someone who is seen as a gadol can write a letter to the public the charges against the abuser are not true – this is worse than blaming the victims it is re-abusing them.”
Zelig was feeling a very palpable sense of being re-abused by what he read and was then recounting to me and we had to use the session for the sole purpose of helping him regain his composure and focus - but he was absolutely correct. The article in the Jewish Press is one level of absurdity and illogic but if it is true that a gadol sent out a letter denying charges proven and admitted to in court that casts an entirely new light on how the leadership views cases of reported abuse. Blaming victims is horrible and still so common. It is however, even worse to deny that abuse exists and then to turn the powers of investigations, prosecution, even validation over to the hands of individuals who feign knowledge but have none, using their status to intimidate and dismiss people with problems that these leaders are not willing to acknowledge exist in their communities. We are only beginning to adress the problem. We need forward moving leaders to help us uproot the abusers, not seek excuses or ways to protect them allowing them to continue and re-abuse.
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/worse-than-blaming-victims/
Dr Michael Salamon, a fellow of the American Psychological Association, is the founder and director of ADC Psychological Services in New York… [More]. He is the author of numerous articles, several psychological tests and books including "The Shidduch Crisis: Causes and Cures" (Urim Publications) and "Every Pot Has a Cover" (University Press of America). His newest book is called "Abuse in the Jewish Community: Religious and Communal Factors that Undermine the Apprehension of Offenders and the Treatment of Victims.".
Zelig (not his real name), a man in his 20′s, arrived to his therapy appointment with me yesterday with tears streaming down his cheeks. He was clearly in distress. At the age of twelve Zelig was molested by a teacher, a rabbi who was giving him “special” attention at the yeshiva he was attending at the time. Zelig had been groomed by this man for close to a year before anything happened. “For a long time he gave me little presents like chocolate or a rubber ball” and “ he told me to tell my parents that he was teaching me so that I could be the smartest kid in his class. My parents never questioned why, they just thought he was being super nice to me. Maybe they were even flattered by it.” The actual touching did not begin until this teacher was hired by Zelig’s parents to give bar-mitzvah lessons to Zelig. Once the touching started it quickly progressed to penetration. Zelig was told by the man that if Zelig ever told anyone about it his parents would both die. He was also told that it was “so pleasurable that such pleasures were meant to be kept a secret between us because that is the way G-d wants it.”
Zelig told me the details of his abuse at the hands of this teacher several months ago. These memories were not the cause for his tears yesterday. The cause was an article he read in the American paper the Jewish Press written by a Rabbi William Handler. The article entitled Molestation cases must be handled by g’dolim, not by experts, begins with a diatribe that says that there is “a new danger: the existence of a clique of pseudo-experts who are working among us in the field of “Criminal Molestation.”’ He goes on to state that g’dolim are better equipped to evaluate and perhaps even adjudicate these cases than the “so-called experts” and professionals who operate in the secular realm. It is an argument that even the editors of the paper indicate, is not well made and in my estimation it is not even an argument worthy of being made by a reasonable individual.
Zelig’s response was to tell me yet again that when he turned 16 and told his principal what his abuser had done he was warned that if he did not put it in the past he would “ruin all my chances and my sister’s chances for getting married or getting into the right schools.” Zelig asked me, rhetorically, “And these are the people that should be trusted to take care of the problem? My principal is considered a gadol. See how he took care of it! What would happen if they had such power to take care of things?”
Zelig went on “And it’s not just him. There is an even bigger gadol who wrote a letter saying that the rabbi in Lakewood who just admitted in open court that he abused someone – that gadol Rabbi who wrote the letter claims that he did an investigation and there was no abuse. The authorities investigated. The authorities did what had to be done and the ba_ _ _ _ _ admitted he was an abuser. That someone who is seen as a gadol can write a letter to the public the charges against the abuser are not true – this is worse than blaming the victims it is re-abusing them.”
Zelig was feeling a very palpable sense of being re-abused by what he read and was then recounting to me and we had to use the session for the sole purpose of helping him regain his composure and focus - but he was absolutely correct. The article in the Jewish Press is one level of absurdity and illogic but if it is true that a gadol sent out a letter denying charges proven and admitted to in court that casts an entirely new light on how the leadership views cases of reported abuse. Blaming victims is horrible and still so common. It is however, even worse to deny that abuse exists and then to turn the powers of investigations, prosecution, even validation over to the hands of individuals who feign knowledge but have none, using their status to intimidate and dismiss people with problems that these leaders are not willing to acknowledge exist in their communities. We are only beginning to adress the problem. We need forward moving leaders to help us uproot the abusers, not seek excuses or ways to protect them allowing them to continue and re-abuse.
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/worse-than-blaming-victims/
Dr Michael Salamon, a fellow of the American Psychological Association, is the founder and director of ADC Psychological Services in New York… [More]. He is the author of numerous articles, several psychological tests and books including "The Shidduch Crisis: Causes and Cures" (Urim Publications) and "Every Pot Has a Cover" (University Press of America). His newest book is called "Abuse in the Jewish Community: Religious and Communal Factors that Undermine the Apprehension of Offenders and the Treatment of Victims.".
Monday, May 27, 2013
Jewish Rabbis Fail at Stopping Child Abuse!
Good people cannot accept the evil and sick deeds that are done by some in our community.
On Sunday we published an article by Rabbi William Handler, warning against automatically turning over cases of suspected child abuse to the authorities, where he argues that said authorities had been incompetent at handling these cases and, in fact, had a vested interest in spotting abuse where there may be none.
The discussion of that article has been exemplary in terms of the civility and seriousness of the comments. Not one reader agreed with the author’s opinion, and still the discussion was—and is—being conducted among adults, who are able to distinguish between message and messenger. It made me proud to serve our readers.
Since we encouraged response articles, we received a few, which we’re in the process of processing, so to speak (line editor, heal thyself?). The one you’ve clicked to, was submitted by Moshe Handler (no idea if the two authors are related) who hosts a weekly talk show at jewishtalkradio.com.
Interestingly, while this author rebukes the yeshiva system for shuffling their “perv” rebbes from one location to another, his recommendation is to improve and enhance the yeshivas’ ability to dig up their bad apples, rather than to turn abuse cases to the authorities. To be fair, he was focusing on the failures of the system, but it is interesting that calling in outside agencies is not part of his solution.
Your submitted articles are welcome, and I urge everyone to continue and maintain the civil conduct which have become synonymous with The Jewish Press online.
Too many Jewish Rabbis and institutions turn a blind eye towards child abuse even when it’s obvious that it’s occurred. I know this from experience not opinion.
When I was a young counselor working in Camp Kol Ree Nah (a great camp run by Rabbi Yaakov Greenwald), I was warned that on my days off, when I would visit another popular camp, I should stay away from its head counselor who was a known child abuser. Remarkably, even though it was virtually public knowledge that this man was a creep who should have never been allowed near children, he was not exposed until more than thirty years had passed and parents complained about his behavior around their children.
Just last week, that same Rabbi’s nephew admitted his guilt in court as a child molester in a Lakewood Yeshiva. The Sunday before his admission, a very prominent rabbi released a public letter declaring that he investigated the case and declared Rabbi Yosef Kolko to be 100% innocent. Even more, he accused the parents of the child of being the actual molesters and of trying to get Rabbi Kolko in trouble to cover up their misdeeds.
I understand how it is that good people cannot accept the evil and sick deeds that are done by some in our community. When you yourself are a good person you think of others as good. Unfortunately, in real life defending creeps without investigating the facts is a dangerous road to travel. When the creeps are not punished and are actually defended, you are not doing anyone a favor. Worse, these people will molest others and those victims may be damaged for life. For the sake of these victims, it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee.
Rabbi Kolko used to be a rebbe in a much respected Yeshiva in Brooklyn. When his true character came to light, they got rid of the problem by promising him a letter of recommendation if he would resign. That’s how he got to be a rebbe in Lakewood. This case is not an exception. I know of many yeshivot that shifted their problems this way.
It’s sort of like a game we used to play called “Bomb.” You would wind up a Plastic “bomb” and it would start ticking. The game players would stand in a circle and keep throwing the toy bomb to one another. If you dropped the bomb or if the bell would go off while it was in your hands, you lost the game. The yeshivot are, unfortunately, busy protecting their reputations by playing “bomb” with dangerous, live pervert rebbes who are destructive even when they are still ticking. But they quickly pass these rebbes around before it is revealed they have such a person on their staff.
It’s time for yeshivot to stop the game of Bomb and start playing Whack-a-Mole. Get rid of the rebbes who are perverts right away. Notify every other Yeshiva to stay away from these guys, so that no more children have to suffer.
Our community leaders need to appoint a group of Rabbis who would be trained to recognize true child molestation cases. If a child molester is revealed, he must be kept away from children immediately. If there is unquestionable evidence of guilt, let the molester rot in jail. I must remind the reader that if a man sets out to murder you, you are allowed to stop him by any means necessary. That’s Halacha.
More important, we have to take steps never to allow abuse to happen in the first place. When I worked in Camp Kol Ree Nah, I was amazed that every single bunk had no doors. They were removed to prevent any immoral incidents. Bravo to Rabbi Yaakov Greenwald for recognizing the potential problem and doing everything in his power to protect the kids.
We must acknowledge that the problem exists and that we have to keep our kids away from rebbes who are perverts. Not to do so is an insult to the vast majority of rebbes who are dedicated to the welfare of their kids. Our leaders must lead by showing a zero tolerance policy to those who think our children are personal playthings. A leader’s job is to stand up and protect our future no matter how uncomfortable that may feel.
http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/jewish-rabbis-fail-at-stopping-child-abuse/2013/05/27/2/
On Sunday we published an article by Rabbi William Handler, warning against automatically turning over cases of suspected child abuse to the authorities, where he argues that said authorities had been incompetent at handling these cases and, in fact, had a vested interest in spotting abuse where there may be none.
The discussion of that article has been exemplary in terms of the civility and seriousness of the comments. Not one reader agreed with the author’s opinion, and still the discussion was—and is—being conducted among adults, who are able to distinguish between message and messenger. It made me proud to serve our readers.
Since we encouraged response articles, we received a few, which we’re in the process of processing, so to speak (line editor, heal thyself?). The one you’ve clicked to, was submitted by Moshe Handler (no idea if the two authors are related) who hosts a weekly talk show at jewishtalkradio.com.
Interestingly, while this author rebukes the yeshiva system for shuffling their “perv” rebbes from one location to another, his recommendation is to improve and enhance the yeshivas’ ability to dig up their bad apples, rather than to turn abuse cases to the authorities. To be fair, he was focusing on the failures of the system, but it is interesting that calling in outside agencies is not part of his solution.
Your submitted articles are welcome, and I urge everyone to continue and maintain the civil conduct which have become synonymous with The Jewish Press online.
Too many Jewish Rabbis and institutions turn a blind eye towards child abuse even when it’s obvious that it’s occurred. I know this from experience not opinion.
When I was a young counselor working in Camp Kol Ree Nah (a great camp run by Rabbi Yaakov Greenwald), I was warned that on my days off, when I would visit another popular camp, I should stay away from its head counselor who was a known child abuser. Remarkably, even though it was virtually public knowledge that this man was a creep who should have never been allowed near children, he was not exposed until more than thirty years had passed and parents complained about his behavior around their children.
Just last week, that same Rabbi’s nephew admitted his guilt in court as a child molester in a Lakewood Yeshiva. The Sunday before his admission, a very prominent rabbi released a public letter declaring that he investigated the case and declared Rabbi Yosef Kolko to be 100% innocent. Even more, he accused the parents of the child of being the actual molesters and of trying to get Rabbi Kolko in trouble to cover up their misdeeds.
I understand how it is that good people cannot accept the evil and sick deeds that are done by some in our community. When you yourself are a good person you think of others as good. Unfortunately, in real life defending creeps without investigating the facts is a dangerous road to travel. When the creeps are not punished and are actually defended, you are not doing anyone a favor. Worse, these people will molest others and those victims may be damaged for life. For the sake of these victims, it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee.
Rabbi Kolko used to be a rebbe in a much respected Yeshiva in Brooklyn. When his true character came to light, they got rid of the problem by promising him a letter of recommendation if he would resign. That’s how he got to be a rebbe in Lakewood. This case is not an exception. I know of many yeshivot that shifted their problems this way.
It’s sort of like a game we used to play called “Bomb.” You would wind up a Plastic “bomb” and it would start ticking. The game players would stand in a circle and keep throwing the toy bomb to one another. If you dropped the bomb or if the bell would go off while it was in your hands, you lost the game. The yeshivot are, unfortunately, busy protecting their reputations by playing “bomb” with dangerous, live pervert rebbes who are destructive even when they are still ticking. But they quickly pass these rebbes around before it is revealed they have such a person on their staff.
It’s time for yeshivot to stop the game of Bomb and start playing Whack-a-Mole. Get rid of the rebbes who are perverts right away. Notify every other Yeshiva to stay away from these guys, so that no more children have to suffer.
Our community leaders need to appoint a group of Rabbis who would be trained to recognize true child molestation cases. If a child molester is revealed, he must be kept away from children immediately. If there is unquestionable evidence of guilt, let the molester rot in jail. I must remind the reader that if a man sets out to murder you, you are allowed to stop him by any means necessary. That’s Halacha.
More important, we have to take steps never to allow abuse to happen in the first place. When I worked in Camp Kol Ree Nah, I was amazed that every single bunk had no doors. They were removed to prevent any immoral incidents. Bravo to Rabbi Yaakov Greenwald for recognizing the potential problem and doing everything in his power to protect the kids.
We must acknowledge that the problem exists and that we have to keep our kids away from rebbes who are perverts. Not to do so is an insult to the vast majority of rebbes who are dedicated to the welfare of their kids. Our leaders must lead by showing a zero tolerance policy to those who think our children are personal playthings. A leader’s job is to stand up and protect our future no matter how uncomfortable that may feel.
http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/jewish-rabbis-fail-at-stopping-child-abuse/2013/05/27/2/
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Police Reopen Case About Death Of 15 Year Old Chaim Weiss!
Police are reopening a cold case regarding the death of a 15-year-old rabbinical student from Staten Island.
Chaim Weiss was found dead by a dormitory supervisor at the Mesivta of Long Island, an Orthodox Jewish high school, in 1986.
At first, police said Weiss was bludgeoned to death, but the next day they said he died of multiple stab wounds to the head, neck and face.
No murder weapon was found and the case went cold more than 20 years ago.
Police are expected to hold a press conference with the family next week and raise the reward for information leading to an arrest.
MORE: http://bronx.news12.com/news/police-reopen-cold-case-about-death-of-staten-island-15-year-old-chaim-weiss-1.5317420?firstfree=yes
Chaim Weiss was found dead by a dormitory supervisor at the Mesivta of Long Island, an Orthodox Jewish high school, in 1986.
At first, police said Weiss was bludgeoned to death, but the next day they said he died of multiple stab wounds to the head, neck and face.
No murder weapon was found and the case went cold more than 20 years ago.
Police are expected to hold a press conference with the family next week and raise the reward for information leading to an arrest.
MORE: http://bronx.news12.com/news/police-reopen-cold-case-about-death-of-staten-island-15-year-old-chaim-weiss-1.5317420?firstfree=yes
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Sex Offender Village - Build One In Jewish New York
WATCH VIDEO: http://nyti.ms/10kRIAD
For this Op-Doc video, we visited a small community in Florida known as “Miracle Village,” where more than 100 registered sex offenders have settled since 2009. Surrounded by sugar cane fields, the community has become a rare refuge for them as they try to rebuild their lives in one of the only communities that will have them: stringent residency requirements make it almost impossible for them to live anywhere else.
We come to this documentary from two very different perspectives. Lisa has spent years examining sex crimes from the victim’s point of view, making documentaries that try to de-stigmatize the survivors and argue for their access to justice. David spent his years as a public defender in Brooklyn, Harlem and the Bronx, defending people accused of doing the victimizing. These contrasting perspectives have made for a lively collaboration in which we have found common ground.
We live in a society that is terrified of sex offenders, sometimes with good reason. But in some cases the perpetrators, and not just the victims, are denied justice. Every high-profile sex crime spawns a rush to do something about the “predators” among us. Unfortunately, these so-called solutions are doing more harm than good. In the past 25 years, the laws governing sex offenses have gone from punitive to draconian to senseless. The term “sex offender” simply covers too wide a range now, painting the few truly heinous crimes and the many relatively innocuous ones with the same broad brush. This overly broad approach wastes resources that could be better spent, for instance, on clearing the huge and unforgivable backlog of untested rape evidence kits.
We see even deeper problems: the explosion of sex offender registries, stringent yet demonstrably ineffective residency restrictions, and the bizarre world of “civil commitment,” where we punish what someone might do rather than what he or she has done. All of this suggests that our entire approach to dealing with sex offenders has gone tragically off the rails.
Lisa F. Jackson is an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker based in New York. Her last film, “Sex Crimes Unit,” chronicled prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney’s office and “The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo” won a special jury prize for documentary at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.
David Feige, a television writer and former Trial Chief of the Bronx Defenders, is the co-creator of the T.N.T. series “Raising the Bar” and the author of “Indefensible: One Lawyer’s Journey Into the Inferno of American Justice.” He has written about law for The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and Slate.
Any argument that seeks to treat violent sex offense as if it were similar to lesser crimes, for which a perpetrator might reasonably expect a second chance once a prison debt is paid to society, likely will not find a large, sympathetic audience.
Sexual predation is not like other crimes, particularly when its victims are the very young, as they often are. They suggest not so much a choice by the perpetrator but a pathology that we haven't yet as a society been willing to treat as such, separating its sufferers from society at large in order to protect that society; at least until competent psychologists pronounce the sufferer sufficiently "cured" that he no longer presents an acute threat.
And a "sex offender village" is unlikely to reassure the population, as it gives the impression of a bunch of seriously troubled people seeking to cure themselves of a psychosis with minimal help -- where that same population becomes victim to any failure to find an individual cure.
Residency restrictions that compel former offenders into such a "village" are understandable given rational fears. But the only real solution is to approach violent sexual predation as a disease and treat it as such, perhaps for life; instead of a crime of choice that merely needs to be punished. Until we do this, we're not helping the predators and we're not protecting our communities.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/22/opinion/sex-offender-village.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y
For this Op-Doc video, we visited a small community in Florida known as “Miracle Village,” where more than 100 registered sex offenders have settled since 2009. Surrounded by sugar cane fields, the community has become a rare refuge for them as they try to rebuild their lives in one of the only communities that will have them: stringent residency requirements make it almost impossible for them to live anywhere else.
We come to this documentary from two very different perspectives. Lisa has spent years examining sex crimes from the victim’s point of view, making documentaries that try to de-stigmatize the survivors and argue for their access to justice. David spent his years as a public defender in Brooklyn, Harlem and the Bronx, defending people accused of doing the victimizing. These contrasting perspectives have made for a lively collaboration in which we have found common ground.
We live in a society that is terrified of sex offenders, sometimes with good reason. But in some cases the perpetrators, and not just the victims, are denied justice. Every high-profile sex crime spawns a rush to do something about the “predators” among us. Unfortunately, these so-called solutions are doing more harm than good. In the past 25 years, the laws governing sex offenses have gone from punitive to draconian to senseless. The term “sex offender” simply covers too wide a range now, painting the few truly heinous crimes and the many relatively innocuous ones with the same broad brush. This overly broad approach wastes resources that could be better spent, for instance, on clearing the huge and unforgivable backlog of untested rape evidence kits.
We see even deeper problems: the explosion of sex offender registries, stringent yet demonstrably ineffective residency restrictions, and the bizarre world of “civil commitment,” where we punish what someone might do rather than what he or she has done. All of this suggests that our entire approach to dealing with sex offenders has gone tragically off the rails.
Lisa F. Jackson is an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker based in New York. Her last film, “Sex Crimes Unit,” chronicled prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney’s office and “The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo” won a special jury prize for documentary at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.
David Feige, a television writer and former Trial Chief of the Bronx Defenders, is the co-creator of the T.N.T. series “Raising the Bar” and the author of “Indefensible: One Lawyer’s Journey Into the Inferno of American Justice.” He has written about law for The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and Slate.
Any argument that seeks to treat violent sex offense as if it were similar to lesser crimes, for which a perpetrator might reasonably expect a second chance once a prison debt is paid to society, likely will not find a large, sympathetic audience.
Sexual predation is not like other crimes, particularly when its victims are the very young, as they often are. They suggest not so much a choice by the perpetrator but a pathology that we haven't yet as a society been willing to treat as such, separating its sufferers from society at large in order to protect that society; at least until competent psychologists pronounce the sufferer sufficiently "cured" that he no longer presents an acute threat.
And a "sex offender village" is unlikely to reassure the population, as it gives the impression of a bunch of seriously troubled people seeking to cure themselves of a psychosis with minimal help -- where that same population becomes victim to any failure to find an individual cure.
Residency restrictions that compel former offenders into such a "village" are understandable given rational fears. But the only real solution is to approach violent sexual predation as a disease and treat it as such, perhaps for life; instead of a crime of choice that merely needs to be punished. Until we do this, we're not helping the predators and we're not protecting our communities.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/22/opinion/sex-offender-village.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y
Monday, May 20, 2013
Series: Education is key to prevention of child sex abuse
This is the third in a four-part series on child sexual abuse. On Tuesday, a victim tells her story in the Aiken Standard.
Nelson Mandela, who was South Africa's first black president, once described education as “the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Education also is an important tool in the prevention of child sexual abuse.
Series: Advocacy center aids victims of child abuse“Children are taught to obey adults, and that is a good thing,” said Gayle Lofgren, executive director of the Child Advocacy Center of Aiken County. “But kids also need to know there are times when it's appropriate for them to say no.”
According to Lofgren, parents need tow warn their offspring about the threat of sexual abuse and teach them how to protect themselves from being molested.
“Sit down and talk with them about what kind of touching is OK and what kind of touching is not OK,” she said. “Tell them a hug is OK if it's from somebody they want it from. But if they don't want a hug from someone, and they feel uncomfortable, tell them it's OK to say no. Then teach them how to say no in a nice way and let them do some role-playing exercises involving different situations.”
Lofgren recommended a book called “The Swimsuit Lesson” to parents who are uneasy about discussing sexual abuse with their children. Written by Jon Holsten, a retired police sergeant and child sex crimes investigator in Colorado, the book teaches youngsters that it is inappropriate for someone to touch the parts of their bodies that are covered by their bathing suits. It also has a parents' guide offering advice about talking to children about sexual abuse.
“There are some really good pointers,” Lofgren said.
Copies of “The Swimsuit Lesson” are available online at www.amazon.com.
In the Aiken County Public School District, guidance counselors are responsible for educating children about protecting themselves from sexual abuse, according to Gina Bassford, who is the district's liaison for counseling services. She said they follow a set of standards known as “The South Carolina Comprehensive Developmental Guidance and Counseling Program Model.” Under those standards, counselors identify and explain appropriate and inappropriate touching to prekindergarten through fifth grade students as part of their efforts to teach them safety and survival skills.
“There is no mandate to specify how counselors cover that, so it gives them the freedom to tailor their guidance to their students; they are the ones who know their students best,” Bassford said. “I know they particularly talk to children a lot about safety before they go home from school for the summer because the structure of their schedules change. They're with different caregivers and things like that.”
At least two bills that address child sexual abuse education in the public schools have been introduced in the South Carolina House of Representatives.
One of those bills would make changes to South Carolina law to require school districts to provide age-appropriate instruction in sexual abuse and assault awareness. It also would require the State Board of Education to select or develop the instructional units that would be used in such education. Those units, according to the bill, should be appropriate for each age level from 4-year-old kindergarten through 12th grade.
The other bill would require the State Board of Education to develop curricula and other written materials to educate students, school personnel and parents and guardians about child sexual abuse. It also would require local school districts to maintain a list of school and community resources that provide services for children who may be victims of sexual abuse.
Both bills were referred to the House Education and Public Works Committee. The next step would be for those bills to be considered by that committee's K-12 Subcommittee, but that hadn't happened as of the end of last week, said Bill Taylor, a representative from Aiken County. The 2013 regular session of the 120th South Carolina General Assembly is scheduled to end June 6. There will be another regular session in 2014.
“Given the crunch of time, they probably won't be heard this year, but they could be heard starting next year,” said Taylor, who is the 1st Vice Chairman of the Education and Public Works Committee and also is a member of the K-12 Subcommittee. “Because we're only in the first year of a two-year legislative meeting, bills can stay alive and keep moving or keep not moving as the case may be. It's not until the end of the second year that they all die.”
While Taylor said he considers child sexual abuse education an important issue and he supports it, he wasn't sure bills addressing it were needed. According to Taylor, the State Department of Education provided him with information that many teachers in South Carolina had received training involving child sexual abuse education in recent years from an organization called Darkness to Light.
“I sometimes question whether it's necessary for the State Department of Education to develop curriculum; that's not really its job,” Taylor said. “What is there to prevent the local school districts from taking this on and enhancing their programs if they don't think they're up to full speed? I thoroughly embrace home rule.”
Read more: Series: Education is key to prevention of child sex abuse
Aiken Standard
Follow us: @aikenstandard on Twitter
aikenstandard on Facebook
Nelson Mandela, who was South Africa's first black president, once described education as “the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Education also is an important tool in the prevention of child sexual abuse.
Series: Advocacy center aids victims of child abuse“Children are taught to obey adults, and that is a good thing,” said Gayle Lofgren, executive director of the Child Advocacy Center of Aiken County. “But kids also need to know there are times when it's appropriate for them to say no.”
According to Lofgren, parents need tow warn their offspring about the threat of sexual abuse and teach them how to protect themselves from being molested.
“Sit down and talk with them about what kind of touching is OK and what kind of touching is not OK,” she said. “Tell them a hug is OK if it's from somebody they want it from. But if they don't want a hug from someone, and they feel uncomfortable, tell them it's OK to say no. Then teach them how to say no in a nice way and let them do some role-playing exercises involving different situations.”
Lofgren recommended a book called “The Swimsuit Lesson” to parents who are uneasy about discussing sexual abuse with their children. Written by Jon Holsten, a retired police sergeant and child sex crimes investigator in Colorado, the book teaches youngsters that it is inappropriate for someone to touch the parts of their bodies that are covered by their bathing suits. It also has a parents' guide offering advice about talking to children about sexual abuse.
“There are some really good pointers,” Lofgren said.
Copies of “The Swimsuit Lesson” are available online at www.amazon.com.
In the Aiken County Public School District, guidance counselors are responsible for educating children about protecting themselves from sexual abuse, according to Gina Bassford, who is the district's liaison for counseling services. She said they follow a set of standards known as “The South Carolina Comprehensive Developmental Guidance and Counseling Program Model.” Under those standards, counselors identify and explain appropriate and inappropriate touching to prekindergarten through fifth grade students as part of their efforts to teach them safety and survival skills.
“There is no mandate to specify how counselors cover that, so it gives them the freedom to tailor their guidance to their students; they are the ones who know their students best,” Bassford said. “I know they particularly talk to children a lot about safety before they go home from school for the summer because the structure of their schedules change. They're with different caregivers and things like that.”
At least two bills that address child sexual abuse education in the public schools have been introduced in the South Carolina House of Representatives.
One of those bills would make changes to South Carolina law to require school districts to provide age-appropriate instruction in sexual abuse and assault awareness. It also would require the State Board of Education to select or develop the instructional units that would be used in such education. Those units, according to the bill, should be appropriate for each age level from 4-year-old kindergarten through 12th grade.
The other bill would require the State Board of Education to develop curricula and other written materials to educate students, school personnel and parents and guardians about child sexual abuse. It also would require local school districts to maintain a list of school and community resources that provide services for children who may be victims of sexual abuse.
Both bills were referred to the House Education and Public Works Committee. The next step would be for those bills to be considered by that committee's K-12 Subcommittee, but that hadn't happened as of the end of last week, said Bill Taylor, a representative from Aiken County. The 2013 regular session of the 120th South Carolina General Assembly is scheduled to end June 6. There will be another regular session in 2014.
“Given the crunch of time, they probably won't be heard this year, but they could be heard starting next year,” said Taylor, who is the 1st Vice Chairman of the Education and Public Works Committee and also is a member of the K-12 Subcommittee. “Because we're only in the first year of a two-year legislative meeting, bills can stay alive and keep moving or keep not moving as the case may be. It's not until the end of the second year that they all die.”
While Taylor said he considers child sexual abuse education an important issue and he supports it, he wasn't sure bills addressing it were needed. According to Taylor, the State Department of Education provided him with information that many teachers in South Carolina had received training involving child sexual abuse education in recent years from an organization called Darkness to Light.
“I sometimes question whether it's necessary for the State Department of Education to develop curriculum; that's not really its job,” Taylor said. “What is there to prevent the local school districts from taking this on and enhancing their programs if they don't think they're up to full speed? I thoroughly embrace home rule.”
Read more: Series: Education is key to prevention of child sex abuse
Aiken Standard
Follow us: @aikenstandard on Twitter
aikenstandard on Facebook
Monday, May 13, 2013
Could Be Titled - "I Was Groped By A Rabbi"!
I Was Groped on the Subway
I was late as usual, weaving through the 72nd Street subway station, rushing down the stairs to catch a departing train, and managed to squeeze into one of the packed cars just in time. It was Friday, a few weeks after my 29th birthday. I was on my way downtown to my job at my family’s taxi business, casually dressed in leggings and a striped orange dress. I pushed my still wet hair out of my face and found a sliver of space to stand. As the doors were closing, one more person shoved his way in and the car let out a collective groan.
As the train pulled away from the platform, I felt a man pressing harder and harder against my backside. I tried to evade him but couldn’t move an inch in any direction. I looked over my shoulder thinking the buckle of his bag must have been digging into me but there was no bag. Only his navy sweat pants. Is that what I think it is? It can’t be.
I shifted my hip to the right and then the left, but his body shifted with me. My eyes darted to each of the commuters around me, mutely asking for help. When none of their eyes met mine, I wanted to say something but no words came out. I held my breath until we got to the next stop.
When we arrived at Times Square, I pushed passed him with the force of the other riders behind me. I said nothing as I glanced down to see the bulge below his waist.
A woman approached me as I made my way to the exit, relieved to finally be off the train. She flashed a badge. “Can I ask you some questions?”
“Oh, no, ” I said, reflexively panicking the same way I do when I pass a cop car parked on the side of a highway, even if I’m driving 5 miles below the speed limit.
We stepped to the side as people rushed past.
“I think something happened back there,” she said. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
I knew that she knew and I just started talking.
“I froze. I had no room to move. If I made a scene he could have taken out a knife,” I said, looking at my feet and feeling like a coward with a bunch of excuses.
Why hadn’t I yelled, or elbowed him? Why didn’t I ask the people around me for help? I thought for a moment that I might be crazy, that I was making it all up.
The undercover officer asked if I would give her a written statement right there. I nodded, and she handed me a piece of paper. My hand shook as I wrote, my words jumbled. Finally, I handed her the sheet filled with crossed out inappropriate words replaced by slightly less inappropriate words. She said her partner would come talk to me in a minute and pointed toward a bench. There was the man in the navy sweat pants. He sat calmly, hands cuffed behind his back with a plastic zip tie. I hadn’t even realized they had stopped him, let alone that they were arresting him.
The other officer, a man wearing camouflage cargo shorts and a ripped T-shirt, told me they were watching for pickpockets, but that groping was “the real epidemic.”
“I saw your face first,” he said. “I have daughters and a wife, so I knew right away what that look meant. Makes me sick.” He assured me there was little I could have done, that my groper had picked the busiest train at the peak of rush hour for that very reason. I clung onto his words, grateful for his empathy.
He asked if I rode the train often and if it had happened before. It had, but I had never reported the incidents and had only defended myself once, calling the guy disgusting and moving to the other side of the car.
He asked me to walk by the bench to identify the man. I hesitated, afraid to have the groper see my face, but the officer stayed by my side. I nodded my head and quickly turned in the opposite direction.
Later, when I told my friends what had happened, they hugged me and a few shared their own similar experiences. Mostly, though, they were sure they would have been tougher: they would have kicked the abuser, screamed, pushed their way through the layers of fellow riders.
My husband and I practiced how I would react if it happened again: I would use my voice. Get away from me! Back off! Maybe I would toss a few expletives in. Except I didn’t intend for it to happen again. I wasn’t planning on taking the subway anymore, at least during peak hours. When I told my husband this, he was surprised. He was used to a resilient, strong wife. He knows I come across strange characters often in my male-dominated business and he was always proud to hear how I handled myself. When a client called me Honey or Sugar Lips I’d say, “I prefer to be called Kim.” I had no problem putting my hand up to interrupt a client who was being rude to one of the other women in the office.
But the truth is, I’ve always been secretly skittish, especially when I’m by myself. When I walked down the dark, empty industrial streets near my Long Island City office, I imagined being dragged into one of the dark warehouses, and held my keys in between my fingers in my pocket for protection. Even in my Upper West Side doorman building, I scurry from the elevator into my apartment each night.
Now I am just as anxious underground. Partly, it’s because I’m terrified to see my groper, but I’m also uncertain whether I’ll be able to muster the courage to stand up to a future assaulter.
When the district attorney’s office called to review the charges of sexual assault in the third degree and forcible touching, I asked if my name could be removed from the report. He already has your name from the arraignment, they said. But, don’t worry — he probably didn’t pay attention. I worried he might come after me seeking revenge. I knew the district attorney had no case without my signature. If I wanted any chance of stopping or punishing the guy, I had to give my name and sign a formal complaint and deposition.
I couldn’t be a coward again.
My fears may have immobilized me before, but this seemed like my chance to be a braver version of myself. I signed my name and instantly felt stronger. Almost strong enough to commute by subway again.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/i-was-groped-on-the-subway/?hp
I was late as usual, weaving through the 72nd Street subway station, rushing down the stairs to catch a departing train, and managed to squeeze into one of the packed cars just in time. It was Friday, a few weeks after my 29th birthday. I was on my way downtown to my job at my family’s taxi business, casually dressed in leggings and a striped orange dress. I pushed my still wet hair out of my face and found a sliver of space to stand. As the doors were closing, one more person shoved his way in and the car let out a collective groan.
As the train pulled away from the platform, I felt a man pressing harder and harder against my backside. I tried to evade him but couldn’t move an inch in any direction. I looked over my shoulder thinking the buckle of his bag must have been digging into me but there was no bag. Only his navy sweat pants. Is that what I think it is? It can’t be.
I shifted my hip to the right and then the left, but his body shifted with me. My eyes darted to each of the commuters around me, mutely asking for help. When none of their eyes met mine, I wanted to say something but no words came out. I held my breath until we got to the next stop.
When we arrived at Times Square, I pushed passed him with the force of the other riders behind me. I said nothing as I glanced down to see the bulge below his waist.
A woman approached me as I made my way to the exit, relieved to finally be off the train. She flashed a badge. “Can I ask you some questions?”
“Oh, no, ” I said, reflexively panicking the same way I do when I pass a cop car parked on the side of a highway, even if I’m driving 5 miles below the speed limit.
We stepped to the side as people rushed past.
“I think something happened back there,” she said. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
I knew that she knew and I just started talking.
“I froze. I had no room to move. If I made a scene he could have taken out a knife,” I said, looking at my feet and feeling like a coward with a bunch of excuses.
Why hadn’t I yelled, or elbowed him? Why didn’t I ask the people around me for help? I thought for a moment that I might be crazy, that I was making it all up.
The undercover officer asked if I would give her a written statement right there. I nodded, and she handed me a piece of paper. My hand shook as I wrote, my words jumbled. Finally, I handed her the sheet filled with crossed out inappropriate words replaced by slightly less inappropriate words. She said her partner would come talk to me in a minute and pointed toward a bench. There was the man in the navy sweat pants. He sat calmly, hands cuffed behind his back with a plastic zip tie. I hadn’t even realized they had stopped him, let alone that they were arresting him.
The other officer, a man wearing camouflage cargo shorts and a ripped T-shirt, told me they were watching for pickpockets, but that groping was “the real epidemic.”
“I saw your face first,” he said. “I have daughters and a wife, so I knew right away what that look meant. Makes me sick.” He assured me there was little I could have done, that my groper had picked the busiest train at the peak of rush hour for that very reason. I clung onto his words, grateful for his empathy.
He asked if I rode the train often and if it had happened before. It had, but I had never reported the incidents and had only defended myself once, calling the guy disgusting and moving to the other side of the car.
He asked me to walk by the bench to identify the man. I hesitated, afraid to have the groper see my face, but the officer stayed by my side. I nodded my head and quickly turned in the opposite direction.
Later, when I told my friends what had happened, they hugged me and a few shared their own similar experiences. Mostly, though, they were sure they would have been tougher: they would have kicked the abuser, screamed, pushed their way through the layers of fellow riders.
My husband and I practiced how I would react if it happened again: I would use my voice. Get away from me! Back off! Maybe I would toss a few expletives in. Except I didn’t intend for it to happen again. I wasn’t planning on taking the subway anymore, at least during peak hours. When I told my husband this, he was surprised. He was used to a resilient, strong wife. He knows I come across strange characters often in my male-dominated business and he was always proud to hear how I handled myself. When a client called me Honey or Sugar Lips I’d say, “I prefer to be called Kim.” I had no problem putting my hand up to interrupt a client who was being rude to one of the other women in the office.
But the truth is, I’ve always been secretly skittish, especially when I’m by myself. When I walked down the dark, empty industrial streets near my Long Island City office, I imagined being dragged into one of the dark warehouses, and held my keys in between my fingers in my pocket for protection. Even in my Upper West Side doorman building, I scurry from the elevator into my apartment each night.
Now I am just as anxious underground. Partly, it’s because I’m terrified to see my groper, but I’m also uncertain whether I’ll be able to muster the courage to stand up to a future assaulter.
When the district attorney’s office called to review the charges of sexual assault in the third degree and forcible touching, I asked if my name could be removed from the report. He already has your name from the arraignment, they said. But, don’t worry — he probably didn’t pay attention. I worried he might come after me seeking revenge. I knew the district attorney had no case without my signature. If I wanted any chance of stopping or punishing the guy, I had to give my name and sign a formal complaint and deposition.
I couldn’t be a coward again.
My fears may have immobilized me before, but this seemed like my chance to be a braver version of myself. I signed my name and instantly felt stronger. Almost strong enough to commute by subway again.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/i-was-groped-on-the-subway/?hp
Yosef Kolko Pleads Guilty In Plea-Deal!
1:16 PM EST
Kolko agrees to a 10 year sentence according to multiple reliable sources!
***
UPDATED & CONFIRMED:
Former NJ yeshiva teacher, camp counselor pleads guilty to sexually assaulting boy, is jailed!
Two more victims come forward over the weekend!
AP - TOMS RIVER, N.J. — A former yeshiva teacher has pleaded guilty to charges he sexually assaulted a 12-year-old boy he met while working as a counselor for a camp run by a religious school in Lakewood, N.J.
Rabbi Yosef Kolko on Monday entered the pleas on what was to have been the third day of his trial in Toms River, N.J., and his bail was revoked.
The abuse occurred from 2008 to early 2009, when the boy told his father, also a rabbi.
His father had initially wanted the case handled within Lakewood’s Orthodox Jewish community but decided in mid-2009 to take the case to authorities.
Kolko’s attorney says he is extremely remorseful and apologizes to the victim and his family.
He pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual assault, attempted aggravated sex assault, sexual assault and child endangerment.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/former-nj-yeshiva-teacher-camp-counselor-pleads-guilty-to-sexually-assaulting-boy-is-jailed/2013/05/13/a9c0ce54-bbfa-11e2-b537-ab47f0325f7c_story.html
Kolko agrees to a 10 year sentence according to multiple reliable sources!
***
UPDATED & CONFIRMED:
Former NJ yeshiva teacher, camp counselor pleads guilty to sexually assaulting boy, is jailed!
Two more victims come forward over the weekend!
AP - TOMS RIVER, N.J. — A former yeshiva teacher has pleaded guilty to charges he sexually assaulted a 12-year-old boy he met while working as a counselor for a camp run by a religious school in Lakewood, N.J.
Rabbi Yosef Kolko on Monday entered the pleas on what was to have been the third day of his trial in Toms River, N.J., and his bail was revoked.
The abuse occurred from 2008 to early 2009, when the boy told his father, also a rabbi.
His father had initially wanted the case handled within Lakewood’s Orthodox Jewish community but decided in mid-2009 to take the case to authorities.
Kolko’s attorney says he is extremely remorseful and apologizes to the victim and his family.
He pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual assault, attempted aggravated sex assault, sexual assault and child endangerment.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/former-nj-yeshiva-teacher-camp-counselor-pleads-guilty-to-sexually-assaulting-boy-is-jailed/2013/05/13/a9c0ce54-bbfa-11e2-b537-ab47f0325f7c_story.html
Do everything to protect your family against child molesters!
By Susan H. Oliva \ Guest columnist
If you have a radio, television or Internet access, I guarantee you have heard the about the recent Cleveland child abduction case that involves three young women. As a nation, we should find this case very disturbing.
Every hour, more details are disclosed by the three young women held captive. These young women are survivors of both physical and sexual abuse. It is horrible to imagine 10 years of tragic abuse happening right next door. Child sexual abuse is a community problem and happens next door every day.
Everyone must be aware, and do their part, to prevent, report and protect our children. Child molesters are someone you know -- but you don't really know -- because they hide who they really are.
Stranger child abductions do happen, and it makes the headlines, but far more often children are sexually assaulted by their own family members or someone they know really well.
Where do we find, and who is, a child molester? Research demonstrates that the child sexual offender is a family friend or one of the many professionals or volunteer staff who come in contact with our children every day. Sex offenders work very hard to seduce and silence their victims, but they also work very hard to deceive adults, and pretend they are model citizens.
Child molesters do their best to appear stable, employed and respectable. They live in nice houses, go to church, eat in restaurants, and pay their taxes. In the Cleveland case one of the neighbors stated they knew the alleged offender "all of their life, and believed he was a good person."
As hard as it is to believe, three out of four sexual offenders were already preying on victims before they reached their 18th birthday. They want to be perceived as "good people."
Talk to your children. It is essential that you believe and support your child. If your child tells you about "inappropriate touching," do not automatically make excuses for the adult your child disclosed about. If they say they do not want to go to someone's house, ask why.
The child is telling you because they trust you, and they want the abuse to stop. Children need to know you will believe them, as well as protect them. They may feel they have let you down because they were touched and never told, despite your warnings.
Unless we step-up and pay attention, we will be no match for child molesters. A child molester is active in the child's life through family, school, neighborhood or church. They are very good at convincing people that the child is mistaken, or that they were "just wrestling or playing." The molester may know you (the parent) and without a doubt, they believe that you will believe them, and not your child.
Let your child know that if something happens it is not their fault, and they will not be in trouble. Let your child know that if they cannot tell you, they should tell another adult, perhaps a relative or school counselor.
Child abuse prevention programs help, but they cannot do it alone. As parents you must talk to your children. Let them know that they are able to tell you anything. Listen, communicate and believe. Child abuse is an extremely underreported crime. Tragically, most child abuse cases will never be reported. Nationally it is believed for every one child abuse victim identified, 10 additional children are being victimized that no one will ever know about.
If you suspect that a child is being victimized, call 911 or report to the Child Protective Services hotline (800) 252-5400. Visit the Advocacy Center for the Children of El Paso's website: advocacycenterep.org on tips on child abuse prevention and awareness.
It's the law. Do your part and protect El Paso's children.
Susan H. Oliva is executive director, Advocacy Center for the Children of El Paso.
If you have a radio, television or Internet access, I guarantee you have heard the about the recent Cleveland child abduction case that involves three young women. As a nation, we should find this case very disturbing.
Every hour, more details are disclosed by the three young women held captive. These young women are survivors of both physical and sexual abuse. It is horrible to imagine 10 years of tragic abuse happening right next door. Child sexual abuse is a community problem and happens next door every day.
Everyone must be aware, and do their part, to prevent, report and protect our children. Child molesters are someone you know -- but you don't really know -- because they hide who they really are.
Stranger child abductions do happen, and it makes the headlines, but far more often children are sexually assaulted by their own family members or someone they know really well.
Where do we find, and who is, a child molester? Research demonstrates that the child sexual offender is a family friend or one of the many professionals or volunteer staff who come in contact with our children every day. Sex offenders work very hard to seduce and silence their victims, but they also work very hard to deceive adults, and pretend they are model citizens.
Child molesters do their best to appear stable, employed and respectable. They live in nice houses, go to church, eat in restaurants, and pay their taxes. In the Cleveland case one of the neighbors stated they knew the alleged offender "all of their life, and believed he was a good person."
As hard as it is to believe, three out of four sexual offenders were already preying on victims before they reached their 18th birthday. They want to be perceived as "good people."
Talk to your children. It is essential that you believe and support your child. If your child tells you about "inappropriate touching," do not automatically make excuses for the adult your child disclosed about. If they say they do not want to go to someone's house, ask why.
The child is telling you because they trust you, and they want the abuse to stop. Children need to know you will believe them, as well as protect them. They may feel they have let you down because they were touched and never told, despite your warnings.
Unless we step-up and pay attention, we will be no match for child molesters. A child molester is active in the child's life through family, school, neighborhood or church. They are very good at convincing people that the child is mistaken, or that they were "just wrestling or playing." The molester may know you (the parent) and without a doubt, they believe that you will believe them, and not your child.
Let your child know that if something happens it is not their fault, and they will not be in trouble. Let your child know that if they cannot tell you, they should tell another adult, perhaps a relative or school counselor.
Child abuse prevention programs help, but they cannot do it alone. As parents you must talk to your children. Let them know that they are able to tell you anything. Listen, communicate and believe. Child abuse is an extremely underreported crime. Tragically, most child abuse cases will never be reported. Nationally it is believed for every one child abuse victim identified, 10 additional children are being victimized that no one will ever know about.
If you suspect that a child is being victimized, call 911 or report to the Child Protective Services hotline (800) 252-5400. Visit the Advocacy Center for the Children of El Paso's website: advocacycenterep.org on tips on child abuse prevention and awareness.
It's the law. Do your part and protect El Paso's children.
Susan H. Oliva is executive director, Advocacy Center for the Children of El Paso.
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