When Sasha Joseph Neulinger was raped by two of his uncles and his
cousin as a child, he didn’t have a Child Advocacy Center to turn to.
Neulinger
told his story as supporters of the Onslow County Child Advocacy Center
(CAC) ate lunch and listened with rapt attention, watching home movies
of Neulinger as a child from a video he put together.
When he was
facing the toughest time of his life, Neulinger said he had no CAC to
back him up, and he praised the work the Onslow County CAC is doing.
An abused child
Neulinger
felt he couldn’t tell anyone what was going on. One uncle promised
death if he breathed a word about the abuse, and the then-4-year-old
little boy felt alienated.
Years passed, and the abuse continued. Neulinger said he thought the abuse was his fault.
“A part of me was starting to believe I deserved the pain,” Neulinger said.
But
that was before, at the age of 7, he found his 4-year-old little sister
walking out of his cousin’s room sobbing, tears streaking down her
blotchy red face.
As he told the gathered Child Advocacy Center
supporters his story Friday afternoon, they gasped at the realization of
just how far the abuse went – and indeed it went even further still
with one of Neulinger’s uncles sodomizing several people within his
family, he said.
“I couldn’t understand how or why anyone could
hurt her,” Neulinger said of his little sister. “I knew she didn’t
deserve to be hurt.”
Seeing his sister facing the same fate he
was, Neulinger said he found courage through his love for her, and he
realized how wrong the abuse was. His sister drew photos when words
wouldn’t come, and he found the voice to tell his story.
Becoming vocal
As
a child Neulinger was an insomniac and so suicidal that he thought
jumping from a moving car was preferable to the death his rapist
promised waited for him if he spoke – so he jumped.
He then went
to therapy and started with drawings, then used his words to explain his
traumatic experiences and he told his story over and over and over
again.
Neulinger spent the next nine years of his life in and out
of courtrooms testifying against his abusers and spoke about the
incredible support system he had behind him, including his parents, his
sister, and the law enforcement officer on his case.
While one uncle and his cousin were convicted, Uncle Howard Nevison
was a well-known member of the largest Jewish synagogue in America and
his congregation so believed in his innocence they raised enough money
to buy him four defense attorneys who tried to discredit Neulinger and
succeeded in dragging the trial on for years.
Eventually, at the
age of 17, Neulinger agreed for his uncle to plead guilty to
misdemeanors, taking all of the felony charges off the table in order
for him to finally be able to move on.
Getting help
Neulinger
said he was emotionally exhausted from reliving his abuse through every
retelling. He spoke of visiting law enforcement and the prosecutor to
talk about one incident or another and how the defense used that to
their advantage in court, catching a slip as little as Neulinger mixing
up the color of his abuser’s shirt on a specific occasion.
That trauma has been erased for children in Onslow County thanks to the CAC.
Neulinger
pulled up photos of a waiting room with a tree painted in the wall’s
corner and notes from other children left behind to make newcomers feel
safe. Some of them were left at the tables for those at the luncheon to
read, including one from a 13-year-old girl who wrote, “Don’t be scared!
Everybody is nice. These people help you get through tough times!”
Kids
leave the CAC with a stuffed animal and handmade quilt, a reminder that
they are safe and loved, and Neulinger explained that in Onslow County,
a child tells their story once, to one person.
“It only takes that one person,” said Dawn Rochelle, the executive director of the Onslow County Partnership for Children.
The
child is taken into a room for the interview where they’re videoed, and
down the hall the prosecutor and others watch it live and give
directions to the interviewer if necessary.
That video can then be
used in the courtroom, said Assistant District Attorney Kaelyn Avery,
who added that it was her “great honor and privilege” to prosecute
sexual abuse cases.
Child sexual abuse should be a topic that’s brought up more often due to how much it occurs, Avery said.
We all pay when we don’t get things right with children, Rochelle said.
“Child abuse is 100 percent preventable,” Rochelle said. “That’s our call to action.”
Reporter Amanda Thames can be reached at 910-219-8467 or Amanda.Thames@JDNews.com
LAKEWOOD, NJ — A Lakewood man has been charged with distributing
child pornography after authorities traced the activity to his home,
authorities said Thursday.
Gershon Biegeleisen, 28, of Lakewood,
was arrested Thursday at his home on charges of second-degree
distribution of child pornography and third-degree possession of child
pornography, Ocean County Prosecutor Joseph D. Coronato and Lakewood
Police Chief Gregory Meyer announced.
The arrest is the result of a
referral from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
through the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force indicating
someone within Ocean County had downloaded and was sharing images of
prepubescent children engaged in sexual acts, said Al Della Fave,
spokesman for the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office.
The
prosecutor's office's High Tech Crimes Unit detectives investigated and
that led to a search warrant being executed at a home on Columbus Avenue
in Lakewood, Della Fave said. Evidence collected at the scene led to
Assistant Prosecutor Kristin Pressman approving the charges, he said.
The
Ocean County Prosecutor's High Tech Crime Unit, U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the
Lakewood Police Department teamed up in the case, Della Fave said.
Biegeleisen is being held at the Ocean County Jail pending a first appearance hearing, he said.
Gershon Biegeleisen photo provided by the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office
Catholic Archbishop: ‘I’d Rather Go to Prison Than Report Child Abuse to Police’
One of the highest-ranking officials in the Catholic Church has
stated that he would “rather go to prison” than report pedophilia to
police.
Australia’s most powerful clergy, Archbishop of Melbourne Denis Hart,
says he’s prepared to be jailed for failing to report child sex abuse
by pedophile priests.
He made the shocking statement in response to the Australian Royal
Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse saying
there should be “no excuse, protection nor privilege” for clergy who
failed to alert police of abuse.
Hart insisted that sexual abuse was “a spiritual encounter with God
through the priest” and was “of a higher order” than criminal law.
A new report by the commission proposed 85 sweeping changes to the
criminal justice system and recommended that priests face criminal
charges for failing to report serious crimes such as sexual abuse to the
police.
As the law currently stands, clergy are not legally obliged to report
crimes to the police and disciplinary proceedings for criminal activity
by members of the Catholic Church are handled internally by Canon law,
which operates independently of the regular legal procedure.
Following an investigation by the commission, officials believe that
the Catholic Church is using “confessional confidentiality” as a cover
for not reporting child sex abuse to the authorities.
“We understand the significance of religious confession – in
particular, the inviolability of the confessional seal to people of some
faiths, particularly the Catholic faith”, said the report. “However, we
heard evidence of a number of instances where disclosures of child
sexual abuse were made in religious confession, by both victims and
perpetrators.”
We are satisfied that confession is a forum where Catholic children
have disclosed their sexual abuse and where clergy have disclosed their
abusive behavior in order to deal with their own guilt.”
Independent reports: Asked on Tuesday if he would rather go to prison
than breach the seal of confession, he told ABC Radio Melbourne:
“I’ve said that I would.”I believe that this is an absolutely sacrosanct communication of a higher order.”
Beyond evil - with the full knowledge of his wife ---- How low does it get?
Safed rabbi sentenced to 7.5 years in jail for sexual assault
Ezra Sheinberg, ex-yeshiva head, confessed to using his position as spiritual leader to take advantage of 8 women
Rabbi
Ezra Sheinberg is brought for a court hearing at the Kiryat Shmona
Magistrates Court
A well-known rabbi and yeshiva head from the northern city of
Safed was sentenced Tuesday to seven and a half years in prison for
committing a slew of sexual crimes against eight women, including
multiple counts of sexual assault.
Rabbi Ezra Sheinberg, 49, was convicted last July in Nazareth
District Court as part of a plea deal over a series of crimes committed
against women who came to him for advice and counseling.
The specific charges were not publicized by the court. The criminal
proceedings were under a gag order preventing publication of any details
of the incidents due to the “egregious nature” of the crimes and to
protect the privacy of the victims.
The prosecution had initially demanded that the former head of the
Orot HaAri yeshiva receive a minimum of nine years in jail sentence
after his conviction. But the defense provided “significant proofs which
helped discredit some of the accusations,” according to a Tuesday
Justice Ministry statement, prompting both sides to accept the plea
bargain after several charges of rape were dropped.
Responding to the sentencing, Sara Markovich, who represented three
of the victims, said they were “satisfied” with the ruling, despite
having sought harsher punishment.
“Overall we are satisfied that this criminal who calls himself a
rabbi is not immune from punishment under the law and is going to sit
for many years in prison,” Markovich said. “This man abused the trust of
these women in the most discraceful way possible and deeply damaged
them, some of them members of his own community.”
A total of 14 women made allegations against Sheinberg to a special
investigation team and police suspect that many other victims were
afraid to come forward. The victims were all religious women who had
come to the rabbi for advice or help on various issues including health.
Rabbi Ezra Sheinberg, suspected of sexual
abuse against several women, is seen at the courtroom of the Kiryat
Shmona Magistrates
Sheinberg had been a popular Kabbalist and respected figure in
Israel’s national-religious community and author of several books of
Torah ideas.
He was arrested on July 1, 2015, as he attempted to flee the country
as allegations against him emerged. He has been in prison since that
time.
According to prosecutors at the time,
Sheinberg used his position of prominence and reputation as a powerful
mystic to lure in and take advantage of women who came to him for
religious counsel and blessings for fertility when they struggled to
conceive.
They alleged that the victims shared a number of characteristics:
they were young religious women whose husbands, in most cases, were
Sheinberg’s students at the seminary.
Part of his modus operandi involved convincing the victims that only
he could provide a solution to their problems, through a treatment he
dubbed “relaxation.”
During those sessions, Sheinberg fraudulently obtained his victims’
consent to commit sexual acts, prosecutors said, adding that the
defendant used innocent young women who trusted him as a tool to satisfy
his sexual desires.
Some of the women had originally approached a rabbinic council with
the allegations. A team of local rabbis, led by Safed Chief Rabbi Shmuel
Eliyahu, began investigating the accusations in mid-June 2015, and
later reported them to the police.
Sheinberg’s wife told Eliyahu that she knew her husband had sex with the women, but that the sex was part of their therapy.
Sheinberg has eight children and several grandchildren.
....In recent times, in some of the most populous centers of Hasidism,
notably the domain of the Satmar Hasidic community in Brooklyn and
elsewhere, the more sinister cultish side of Hasidism has been on
prominent display. With their notorious history of closing ranks around
male community members guilty of sexual abuse, domestic violence, and
various types of financial criminality, the Satmars have, in effect,
revised the Besht’s cardinal insight that everything can become a route
to God to something more like, “Everything outside our community is
irrelevant, exploitable, or a path to mortal sin.” It’s a dramatic
retreat from the Besht’s world-embracing, profoundly joyous vision of
Judaism. But as Hasidism reveals, some of the dangerous, structural tensions in the Hasidic project were there from the start....
The tsaddikim “served as intercessors,” write the authors, “providing
the channels through which their followers could commune with the
divine.” Indeed, the Besht himself supposedly remarked of the Maggid:
“He doesn’t just know the Torah, he is the Torah.”
It’s hardly surprising that the veneration such a stature inspired could
veer close to idolatrous reverence. Some of the Hasidic tsaddikim were
altruistic, theologically dynamic community advocates; others were
crooks, charlatans, and vainglorious petty despots. The institution of
the tsaddik was only as benign as the character of its individual
representatives.....
In time, most Hasidic leaders came to identify all forms of
innovation with corruption. As Rabbi Simcha Yisakhar Halberstam remarked
at the start of the 20th century,
experience has taught us much, that all
those who sought to innovate and to eliminate any item from the ancient
practice have brought upon us an erosion and destruction of the
fundamentals of the faith, and consequently we must not shift even in the slightest and only conduct ourselves as our ancestors have.
It no longer mattered that the ideal behavior of the ancestors was
itself quasi-mythical, or that the movement defending this ancient,
imaginary essence of the religion was itself a product of modernity.
The
end result was chillingly intolerant.
Much of Hasidism’s rich variegation was lost in the aggressive
campaign to reach a state of total fundamentalism. As the movement
became increasingly aligned with Ultraorthodoxy, which shared its
cultural antipathies, if not always its approach to prayer or study,
Hasidism grew more homogenous still. The tremendous losses suffered by
the Hasidic community in the Holocaust reinforced the movement’s most
reactionary tendencies.
Hadisim’s radical conservatism plays out on the family front in
dictatorial control of sexuality and a rigid gender segregation that
usually relegates women to the role of childbearing facilitators for the
temple-and-study centered lives of the men. When Hasidic women leave
home to work for money, as is increasingly necessary in this
poverty-stricken community, it’s so that Hasidic men can perform the
real work of service to God. Beyond the longstanding social constraints,
Hasidism also describes a “one-upmanship” that’s taken hold in
some quarters whereby community members flaunt their respective
fundamentalist credentials. If all Hasidic men wear side-locks, some
today grow their side-locks longer and longer. If all women are required
to cover their hair and bodies with maximal modesty, some women in
Hasidic neighborhoods of Jerusalem now wear a burka-like veil over their
clothes, in imitation of Islamist female garb.
It’s difficult to
believe that the lure of the outside world has not grown in tandem with
the increasingly punitive approach to piety and life as such. Yet, with
its high fertility rate, the Hasidic population continues to grow at a
rate well above average. And leaving the folds of the community has
proven to be a challenge few people can successfully accomplish.....
Letter Suggests Pope Knew About Abuse Complaints, Despite Denials
Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican last week.Credit
Vincenzo Pinto/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Things keep getting worse for Pope Francis.
Late last month, the pope reiterated his defense of a Chilean bishop,
contending that he had never received any complaints that the prelate
knew of abuse by the country’s most notorious pedophile priest.
But
on Monday, The Associated Press reported that the pope personally
received an eight-page letter in 2015 from one of the victims. The
letter explicitly detailed abuses the victim said were witnessed by
other clerics, including Juan Barros Madrid, who was appointed bishop of
Osorno, Chile, that year.
The
report that one of the pope’s top advisers had personally handed him
the letter has revived accusations by advocates for abuse victims that
the 81-year-old pontiff cannot, or will not, understand an issue that
has long roiled the Roman Catholic Church.
“There
is what you might call a willful blindness,” said Peter Saunders, a
former member of the pope’s Commission for the Protection of Minors,
whose mandate expired in December. “It’s almost angry unwillingness to
accept what in front of him, because to acknowledge it is to acknowledge
that the church still has to clean up its act. He’s been behaving like a
spouse who is told that their spouse is abusing their kids, and can’t
believe it.”
A
copy of the letter was provided to The New York Times by its author,
Juan Carlos Cruz, who has accused the Rev. Fernando Karadima, once one
of Chile’s most prominent Catholic priests, of abuse. The church has
found Father Karadima guilty of abusing minors from 1980 to 1995 and penalized him in 2011.
In the letter, Mr. Cruz wrote that Bishop Barros, who was a priest at the time, witnessed the abuse.
Pope Francis has repeatedly discounted the accusations against Bishop Barros as slander, and his defense of him cast a shadow over a trip he made to Chile in January. Last week, facing mounting criticism for siding with clergy members over victims, the pope sent the Vatican’s top sex crimes investigator to Chile to hear their accusations.
The disclosure of the letter has raised difficult questions for the pope.
Did
he read the letter and decide not to tell reporters about it? Did he
choose to believe Bishop Barros over Mr. Cruz? Or did he never read the
letter, or perhaps read it but forget about it.
The bishop of Osorno, Chile,
Juan Barros Madrid, center, has been accused of helping to cover up the
sexual abuse of minors by a priest.Credit
Esteban Garay/European Pressphoto Agency
For Mr. Cruz, the pope has become “just like the others.”
“He covers up and doesn’t listen to the victims,” he said.
Some veteran Vatican analysts said that perhaps the pope had information not available to other people.
Marco
Politi, a Vatican expert and the author of the book “Pope Francis Among
the Wolves,” said the pope’s continued belief in the innocence of
Bishop Barros must have been based on an internal investigation. If the
pope erred, Mr. Politi said, “it was that he did not send Bishop Charles
Scicluna earlier.” Bishop Scicluna is the investigator the pope sent to
Chile.
The
case against Bishop Barros erupted in 2015 when the pope named him, a
former chaplain in the Chilean armed forces, to lead the Osorno diocese
amid widespread protest. Bishop Barros has denied knowing about the
abuse until 2010, when accounts emerged in the news media.
Concerned
by the accusations against the Chilean bishop, members of the
Commission for the Protection of Minors traveled to Rome so that they
could deliver Mr. Cruz’s letter to the pope.
“We
all felt that the Barros appointment had been a mistake, and when Juan
Carlos told me he had been trying to be heard, we thought that this was
an opportunity to get the details directly to the pope,” said Marie
Collins, a survivor of abuse who resigned from the commission
last year in frustration over its inaction. “If Barros hadn’t
recognized abuse when it had happened under his eyes, it was difficult
to see how those in his diocese would be properly protected,” she said.
In
April 2015, four members of the commission met with Cardinal Sean
O’Malley, who led the commission, in the Casa Santa Marta, where the
pope lives. Ms. Collins asked him to personally deliver the letter to
Francis.
They
commemorated the moment when they delivered Mr. Cruz’s letter with a
photograph. “We thought it would be nice for the survivors of abuse to
know that we were doing the best that we could do for them,” Ms. Collins
said.
The Rev. Fernando Karadima has been accused of sexually abusing children in Chile from 1980 to 1995.Credit
Luis Hidalgo/Associated Press
The
working group issued a statement at the time saying that it was
essential for a bishop to enact effective policies and monitor
compliance, “in the light that sexual abuse is so common,” but did not
mention Mr. Cruz’s letter.
At
the commission’s next meeting several weeks later, Cardinal O’Malley
confirmed that he had delivered the letter to the pope, Ms. Collins
said. Mr. Cruz said Cardinal O’Malley had told him that he delivered the
letter himself.
Last
month, after the pope’s remarks dismissing allegations against Bishop
Barros as “slander,” Cardinal O’Malley issued a remarkable defense of
the victims.
Delivering
the letter was the only time, as far as Ms. Collins knows, that members
of the commission tried to speak to the pope about a specific case, she
said. But she also said that while she is convinced that the letter was
given to the pope, she cannot be sure if he read it.
“I
have no idea because he has continued to support Barros over three
years, and never met with the survivors,” she said. “I can’t judge. The
pope is a good man. I have no idea why he wouldn’t have considered the
concerns of the members of his commission.”
The
new commission for the protection of minors — whose members have not
been announced — is expected to hold its first plenary session in April.
Mr. Saunders, who was dismissed from the commission in 2016
for being too outspoken, was also present at the April 2015 meeting.
The commission members had hoped to speak directly with the pope, but
instead met with Cardinal O’Malley, he recalled.
“O’Malley said the letter would be handed to Francis, who I think was literally in the next room,” he said.
Exposé leads to suicide, but media won’t play blame game
Pundits have a lot to say about Boaz Arad's
death in the wake of a report detailing his sexual misconduct, and it's
almost all in defense of the real victims and the fourth estate
Days after artist, teacher and accused sex offender Boaz Arad
ended his life following a news report about his alleged misdeeds, there
is the appearance of hand-wringing in the press, though it all leads to
the same conclusion: The journalists who outed him did nothing wrong.
The Arad suicide makes the front page of all three major dailies
Sunday morning, and is accompanied by a goodly amount of commentary over
the “hard questions” that followed, in Israel Hayom’s language.
Yedioth Ahronoth leads off with the story, which
takes up almost the whole front page and the next three pages of the
tabloid. One might think that the prominence the paper gives to what
amounts to a very personal and domestic story is indicative of it seeing
a larger scandal within, but the paper makes clear it has no truck with
sympathy for the devil.
“Crime and punishment,” reads the headline of the paper’s main news
story, which is accompanied by self-portraits from Arad of him shooting
himself. The story notes that he was the third teacherin the Telma
Yellin school in Givatayim to be accused in just two weeks, but mostly
focuses on Arad and how the story on him led to his death. (Two
complementary stories from the paper delve into the allegations of a
wider harassment culture at the art school.)
As for the supposed hard questions, two of the papers’ commentators
come to the same conclusion: He’s not a victim and the journalists were
doing their job.
Artist Boaz Arad
“The media did its job and uncovered. Arad was the one who was quick
to pass judgment, to convict and sentence himself to death,” Ra’anan
Shaked writes.
At the same time, the paper’s Hen Arzi-Srour links the death to the #MeToo movement.
“The level of suicide and physical and emotional damage among the
victims of violence is unbearable. They, unlike those who hurt them,
have no power or standing. They are the ones who are taken advantage of
and always brought down. They cry in the dark, alone, out of sight. The
victims die in secret. They have no name or face or identity,”she
writes. “This isn’t shaming here since the article was well-founded,
truthful and to the point: a man who admitted to his deeds. The time has
come to say that in the age of #MeToo, the rules have changed. The
victim has a voice, and the voice will no longer be quiet.”
Haaretz relegates most of its coverage of the
suicide to its arts section, but the same general gist as in Yedioth
comes through, including columnist Roni Bar calling the death a tragedy,
but one that should not be on the head of Mako, the website that
published the allegations.
“Mako journalists did their jobs and gave a voice to victims of
sexual misconduct. From reading the investigation and without knowing
what went on behind the scenes, it seems they worked carefully, in a
well-founded and professional way. Once they became worried over Arad’s
mental state they even sent a police car to his house. It’s easy to
judge off the cuff, but they could not have known he would actually
follow through with his threats,” Bar writes.
But in the same paper, Doron Koren writes that the journalists were
out of line and too zealous in trying to join the #MeToo crowd, listing
as their sins the fact that the sexual misdeeds were 25 years old and
involved a consensual relationship, in his telling. “The media is still not built to differentiate the severity of
different sexual misdeeds,” he writes. “So maybe they will be more
careful next time.”
NOT YAD L'ACHIM BELOW: DO NOT THROW YOUR MONEY INTO SCAMS!
To
our dear supporters, after many requests, we have arranged a free
tefillah to take place in Amuka on Tu B'Shvat. To submit your names
simply CLICK HERE.
(To join for free, simply enter .00 in the donation box)
Join theTefillah (prayer) for SHIDDUCHIM (MARRIAGE) & All Yeshuos
(Parnassah, Children, Health & All Personal Requests)
On the DAYofSEGULAHofTU B'SHVAT (4 FREE,CLICK HERE)
As a Minyan Talmidei Chachamim, Messengers of Yad L'Achim Will Pray For You & Your Loved Ones in
AMUKA - The Resting Place of the Holy Tanna Yonasan Ben Uziel
IMPORTANT
NOTE: We appreciate any support possible in rescuing Jewish women &
children trapped in Arab Villages & every bit counts.
The ARIZAL says that Tu B'Shvat is a day of segulah for all yeshuos & to merit finding a shidduch
(YOU will be saving the life of a Jewish child trapped in a village at the same time)
JOIN THE MANY WHOSE PRAYERS WERE ANSWERED AFTER LAST YEAR'S TEFILLAH!
"My stomach hurts," Michoel
complained.
His mother looked at him in concern. Michoel was not the type of kid who
complained about aches and pains all the time, but this was the third
time in the past day and a half that she was hearing about his stomach
ache.
"Where does it hurt?" she asked.
His mother looked at him in concern. Michoel was not the
type of kid who complained about aches and pains all the time, but this
was the third time in the past day and a half that she was hearing about
his stomach ache.
"Where does it hurt?" she asked.
Michoel pointed to his right side.
"Should I massage you there?" she asked, taking a step toward him.
"Nooo," six-year-old Michoel protested. "It hurts if you touch. It hurts really badly." His face told the same story.
"When did the pain get that bad?" his mother asked, seriously worried now.
"It keeps getting a little worse than before," he replied. "And if I cough, it hurts unbearably."
"I think we're heading to the hospital," his mother
informed him, all her plans changing instantaneously. "Pain on the right
side of the stomach that keeps getting worse, and hurts most of all
when you cough… I don't like the sound of it. Not at all."
"What do you think is the matter?" Michoel asked in alarm.
She explained to him about appendicitis and the fear that
the appendix could burst, beginning to pack a bag as she spoke. She
called her husband and asked him to come to the hospital directly after kollel.
They arrived at the hospital, where, after a preliminary examination, they were scheduled for emergency surgery.
"The inflammation is quite severe," said the emergency-room
doctor. "We're afraid of the appendix bursting; you know we want to
avoid that at all costs." Michoel and his parents sat down to wait for
an OR to free up.
"The room just became available," the nurse told them a
short while later. "They're cleaning it up and you're next." Michoel's
parents whispered chapters of Tehillim and Michoel tried to daven as
well. Just as the orderly was about to take him to the operating room, a
nurse came hurrying down the corridor.
"Don't take him," she told the orderly. "They just brought
in someone who's hovering between life and death. The appendix will have
to wait an hour."
Michoel was in pain and very nervous, and his parents were tense, too.
"We've got to do something," his mother said quietly. "Our
child is in urgent need of surgery; we can't just wait for the hospital
to get its act together. A burst appendix is life-threatening, too."
"What do you suggest?" her husband asked, lines of worry etched into his face.
"A contribution to Kupat Ha'ir," she said. They agreed on a sum and contributed.
The nurse came to tell them that the emergency surgery was
taking longer than expected, and that another emergency was lined up
immediately thereafter. Since it would be nearly morning by the time
that surgery was over, they were best off waiting for the morning shift
to begin, as the staff would certainly be more alert and refreshed than
the night shift.
"I thought Kupat Ha'ir worked more quickly and efficiently," Michoel's mother said sadly. In the meantime, Michoel fell asleep.
Morning arrived and the surgeon examined Michoel. I don't think it's his appendix at all," he said, palpating Michoel's abdomen.
More tests were taken. "He has a virus in his digestive
system," was the new diagnosis. Give him acetaminophen for a day or two.
He'll feel better tomorrow and forget the whole thing by the end of the
week."
They left the hospital with shining faces. How close Michoel had come to being operated on – for nothing!
"And to think I was complaining about Kupat Ha'ir,"
Michoel's mother said, shaking her head. "It didn't even occur to us to
daven that he not undergo surgery. It seemed so clear to us that this
was what he needed. But when you contribute to Kupat Ha'ir, sometimes
you get a greater miracle than you even dreamed of asking for!"
Jeff Bezos,
the world’s richest man, added another couple of billion to his fortune
on Thursday as Amazon, the company he founded, announced it had made
close to $2bn in profits in the three months running up to Christmas.
Dear Ramaz Upper School Faculty, Parents, Students, and Recent Alumni,
It is with great difficulty that I inform you that Dr. Ari Sclar is no longer an employee of Ramaz.
We understand that you may have questions about Dr.
Sclar's departure, but because this is an ongoing investigation, we can
only say that it is due to a serious violation of Ramaz's standards of conduct.
Dr. Jon Jucovy, Chair of the History Department,
will be supervising the grading of Dr. Sclar's final exams and
the calculation of semester grades. Dr. Jay Stone, a veteran member of
the history department who retired last year, will begin to teach Dr.
Sclar's second semester junior history classes starting on Thursday and until further notice.
As this is a sensitive matter, we ask that you
please respect the privacy of Dr. Sclar and not contact him. We will
share relevant information, as appropriate.
As we previously communicated, if anyone has any
information regarding a violation of Ramaz's standards of conduct,
please contact the law firm, Debevoise & Plimpton LLP. You can reach out to Helen Cantwell at hcantwell@debevoise.com or 212-909-6312, or Andrew Ceresney at aceresney@debevoise.com or 212-909-6947.
SAR is more than a
school - we are a community. We pride ourselves on the combination of
excellence in education, love of Israel and commitment to mitzvot which
have been transmitted to generations of students. We strive to
instill in our students the midah of kol yisrael arevim ze laze, and take seriously this commitment to watch out for each other.
It is our
commitment to these principles that makes this letter so difficult.
There has been significant media attention recently highlighting sexual
abuse at private schools. Much of the abuse that has been brought to the
forefront by the press took place many years ago and has only been
uncovered recently. Sadly, it has come to our attention
that SAR students may have been subject to sexual abuse at the hands of a
former teacher/administrator in the 1970s.
A
recent email from a former student reported abuse that was perpetrated
by Stanley Rosenfeld, a former SAR Academy teacher and administrator.
Rosenfeld was the Assistant Principal for General Studies at SAR Academy
in the 1970s. In 2001, many years after Rosenfeld left SAR Academy, he
pleaded no contest to two counts of second-degree child molestation with
no known connection to SAR.
As
painful as this is for our school community, the pain for any of the
victims of abuse is far greater. We are committed to being supportive to
any victims of abuse, to understanding the abuse they suffered and the
harm it has caused them, and to learning from our past experiences and
using them to inform our present practices to protect our community.
In
order to ensure that we can properly understand the scope of abuse and
support the victims of abuse, SAR has hired T&M Protection Resources
to conduct an external investigation of claims of sexual abuse. T&M
is an investigative firm, comprised of former prosecutors with
extensive experience investigating allegations of sexual misconduct. In
order for T&M to conduct this investigation, we are encouraging all
members of our community to please report any information regarding
abuse that may have been perpetrated by Stanley Rosenfeld. Reports may
be made directly to either of us or to T&M. Contact information is
listed below.
SAR is committed
to our students- past and present. Beyond the reported incident, we
encourage anyone who has information regarding any abuse, past or
current, to report to either of us or to T&M through the contact
channels listed below.
We
expect that the investigation by T&M will take at least several
months and we want you to know that while the privacy of survivors is
central to this process, we do intend to communicate our findings at the
conclusion of the investigation.
We
are fully committed to the safety of our students and to continuing to
implement best practices in these areas. As our students, parents and
staff are aware, in recent years, SAR has implemented policies and
training regarding sexual abuse and sexual harassment. Our commitment to
our current students and the protections we have implemented does not
minimize the commitment to understanding and addressing a painful past.
We thank you for your assistance in this effort and in being responsible for the well-being of all of those in our community.
When
Judge Rosemarie Aquilina handed down her sentence on Larry Nassar last
week, she spoke to and of him as a kind of monster we rarely see. She
was wrong.
I
know this because I remember Penn State, where an assistant football
coach named Jerry Sandusky worked his way through boy after boy across
year after year.
I know this because I haven’t forgotten what happened in the Boy Scouts of America decades ago.
And
I know this from the extensive time that I once spent studying and even
interviewing men who, like Nassar, were serial child molesters, except
that none of them had the lofty title — “Dr.” — that he did.
No, they had loftier ones.
The honorific “Rev.” came before their written names. People addressed them as “Father.” They were Roman Catholic priests.
In
researching and publishing a book about them, I learned a great deal
about child sexual abuse — enough to recognize that as horrifying as
Nassar’s violation of young female athletes was, he and his crime spree
weren’t anomalous. They snugly fit a pattern. And taking full and proper
note of that is the best way — the only way — to protect children from
the other Nassars out there.
In Nassar’s case there were two primary institutions, U.S.A. Gymnastics and Michigan State University. Both behaved unconscionably.
In the cases of the scores of priests whom I investigated, it was the
Roman Catholic Church: its individual congregations, its dioceses, all
the way up to the Vatican. The Boy Scouts organization was deemed so
irresponsible that in 2010, a jury ordered it to pay $18.5 million
to a former scout who had been abused in the 1980s. Athletic officials
at Penn State, including the legendary head football coach Joe Paterno, disregarded warnings about Sandusky. In the short term, taking action is infinitely more uncomfortable and harder than simply wishing it all away.
It’s
interesting that Sandusky’s name wasn’t more prevalent over the past
week, as the attention to Nassar’s story and the efforts to wring some
meaning from it intensified. The parallels are striking and instructive.
Although Sandusky’s victims were boys, he, like Nassar, constructed his
professional life so that he had steady access to children and appeared
to be an altruist in their midst. He started a foster home, which
evolved into a nonprofit group for troubled youth so large and well
regarded that it received one of President George H. W. Bush’s “Points
of Light” awards.
“Children
constantly surrounded Sandusky, so much so that they became part of his
persona,” Joe Posnanski wrote in his book “Paterno.” That same
description applies to Nassar. It also applies to many of the abusive
priests who went undetected and unpunished before the Catholic Church
finally owned up to its failures and instituted necessary reforms.
Nassar
had girls stretched out and pliant on his examining table. Sandusky
roughhoused, wrestled and showered with boys in the name of sports.
Nassar’s victims and their parents were awestruck
by his ties to Olympic athletes, his floor passes to elite
competitions, the mementos on his office walls. Sandusky’s victims were
dazzled by his position smack in the middle of all of those football
stars and all of that football glory.
In an article about Sandusky in The New Yorker,
Malcolm Gladwell observed that he “built a sophisticated,
multimillion-dollar, fully integrated grooming operation, outsourcing to
child-care professionals the task of locating vulnerable children.”
Change “child-care professionals” to gymnastics coaches and Gladwell
could have been analyzing Nassar.
Grooming.
Such a chilling word. Such an apt one. Abusers introduce themselves as
instructors and allies. They can lift your score. They can improve your
grades. They can provide the guidance that you lack or the fun that
you’re missing. Bit by bit, they ask for bigger chunks of your time and
suggest increasingly private encounters. The pace of the journey varies,
but not its arc or its destination.
And
they concoct justifications for what they’re doing, trying to persuade
their victims of its righteousness as they simultaneously persuade
themselves. Nassar’s so-called medical treatments exemplified this, as
did the actions of many priests. I recall one who told a boy that the
touching was part of his confession and his purification. I recall
another who told a girl that she’d been assigned the task of helping
him, a professed celibate, to better understand human sexuality so that
he could minister more effectively to his flock.
Many abusive priests invoked the permission of God. Nassar cited the demands of science.
An
overwhelming majority of adults who treat, teach, coach and counsel
children are nothing like these men. To distrust all of them would be a
terrible mistake and grievous disservice, both to them and to the kids
who stand to benefit mightily from their attention.
But
to find easy reassurance in the station that an adult possesses, the
privileges that he bestows and the cause that he serves would be a
greater mistake still.
The reckoning last week in that Michigan courtroom — where survivors of Nassar’s abuse emerged from silence and isolation to confront him
and the world with the damage that he had done — wasn’t like anything
I’d previously witnessed. But Nassar? There were similar monsters before
him. And there will be similar monsters after.
If there is anyone that would care to share their stories with me dating back some 30-35 years to the present time, please contact me: a_unorthodoxjew@yahoo.com
The Arad suicide makes the front page of all three major dailies Sunday morning, and is accompanied by a goodly amount of commentary over the “hard questions” that followed, in Israel Hayom’s language.
Yedioth Ahronoth leads off with the story, which takes up almost the whole front page and the next three pages of the tabloid. One might think that the prominence the paper gives to what amounts to a very personal and domestic story is indicative of it seeing a larger scandal within, but the paper makes clear it has no truck with sympathy for the devil.
“Crime and punishment,” reads the headline of the paper’s main news story, which is accompanied by self-portraits from Arad of him shooting himself. The story notes that he was the third teacher in the Telma Yellin school in Givatayim to be accused in just two weeks, but mostly focuses on Arad and how the story on him led to his death. (Two complementary stories from the paper delve into the allegations of a wider harassment culture at the art school.)
As for the supposed hard questions, two of the papers’ commentators come to the same conclusion: He’s not a victim and the journalists were doing their job.
At the same time, the paper’s Hen Arzi-Srour links the death to the #MeToo movement.
“The level of suicide and physical and emotional damage among the victims of violence is unbearable. They, unlike those who hurt them, have no power or standing. They are the ones who are taken advantage of and always brought down. They cry in the dark, alone, out of sight. The victims die in secret. They have no name or face or identity,” she writes. “This isn’t shaming here since the article was well-founded, truthful and to the point: a man who admitted to his deeds. The time has come to say that in the age of #MeToo, the rules have changed. The victim has a voice, and the voice will no longer be quiet.”
Haaretz relegates most of its coverage of the suicide to its arts section, but the same general gist as in Yedioth comes through, including columnist Roni Bar calling the death a tragedy, but one that should not be on the head of Mako, the website that published the allegations.
“Mako journalists did their jobs and gave a voice to victims of sexual misconduct. From reading the investigation and without knowing what went on behind the scenes, it seems they worked carefully, in a well-founded and professional way. Once they became worried over Arad’s mental state they even sent a police car to his house. It’s easy to judge off the cuff, but they could not have known he would actually follow through with his threats,” Bar writes.
But in the same paper, Doron Koren writes that the journalists were out of line and too zealous in trying to join the #MeToo crowd, listing as their sins the fact that the sexual misdeeds were 25 years old and involved a consensual relationship, in his telling.
“The media is still not built to differentiate the severity of different sexual misdeeds,” he writes. “So maybe they will be more careful next time.”
https://www.timesofisrael.com/expose-leads-to-suicide-but-media-wont-play-blame-game/?utm_source=The+Times+of+Israel+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=049f02dd32-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_02_04&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_adb46cec92-049f02dd32-55186525