From: Benjamin Aryeh Uchytil
1100 Howe Ave Apt 551
Sacramento, CA 95825
To: Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky
Talmudical Yeshiva of Philadelphia
6063 Drexel Rd.
Philadelphia, PA 19131-1296
August 2, 2011
Dear Rabbi Kamenetsky,
As an adult survivor of severe and unrelenting childhood sexual abuse, I have followed your halachic decisions and media pronouncements regarding this issue with great concern.
I am a Litvak, yeshiva-trained, from Monsey, New York. For many years I taught at Monsey yeshivos, mostly at the mesivta level. Rabbi, from my long-term perspective within the yeshiva velt I confirm:
1. Orthodox Jewish pedophilia is alive and ‘well’ in our communities,
2. The rabbonim actively protect our perpetrators from prosecution, ensuring that even more children will be sexually abused,
3. The rabbonim censure and threaten victims and their families in order to force them to keep quiet about what has occurred,
4. Orthodox Jews are often provoked to violence against victims who report to the police due to the Torah proscription against ‘mesirah’.
Due to your misguided attempts to ‘save the nedon’, to prevent the prosecution of our perpetrators, these recalcitrant individuals are doomed to a high rate of recidivism: they offend repeatedly over the course of their lives. Indeed, a pedophile molests, on average, approximately 140 different children prior to his first arrest.
Rabbi, can you not see what is occurring under your very nose? Orthodox pedophiles are not only defiling but destroying our ‘pirkei kehuna’, our precious children. I cannot believe you consider your current course of action wise and profitable for our community. Saving perpetrators from prosecution: Is it good for the Jews? Most definitely not!
Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky, hear my words: Your halachic interpretations, intended to moderate and mediate between Orthodox pedophiles and their victims, are failing as I write this very letter. While you are busily engaged protecting our perpetrators, Orthodox Jewish victims are fleeing Torah, fleeing Yiddishkeit. We are fleeing left and right. Many, such as myself, have gone frei. Many have chosen baptism and conversion. Others have committed suicide.
You are losing us. Thousands have left the fold. Truly: you seem to care so much about our perpetrators, do you not care for victims? It would seem not. Given this, we are on the move. We are writing, writing to the goyishe papers, the Yiddishe papers, and on the Internet - to whomever will hear us. Every time I meet a Jew - Orthodox or frei - I tell him or her the truth about Orthodox pedophilia and about your frightful course regarding this issue. I tell Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Evangelicals, Muslims....
Rabbi, here is the truth: Although many survivors write you politely, groveling at your feet in the hope that you will change tack, you need to know that we despise you. You have hurt Orthodox survivors so badly, many to most of us will never forgive you for your destructive stance. Personally, I sincerely pray every day that HaShem will convict your heart and serve you a resounding kick in the tukkis.
Very truly,
Benjamin Aryeh Uchytil
EVERY SIGNATURE MATTERS - THIS BILL MUST PASS!
CLICK - GOAL - 100,000 NEW SIGNATURES! 75,000 SIGNATURES HAVE ALREADY BEEN SUBMITTED TO GOVERNOR CUOMO!
EFF Urges Court to Block Dragnet Subpoenas Targeting Online Commenters
CLICK! For the full motion to quash: http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/hersh_v_cohen/UOJ-motiontoquashmemo.pdf
Monday, October 17, 2011
Sunday, October 16, 2011
“This is about protecting children”
MEDIA ADVISORY:
Pennsylvania is seeking to join California and Delaware as states that have created a window year or two for survivors of sexual abuse to come forward and sue their abusers. In the two states that have done so over 350 child predators have been identified through the outcome of the window. Similar legislation is being attempted in New York State but is being fought by the Catholic Church, the Satmar Chasidim and the Agudath Israel of America. They are natural allies in attempting to thwart the exposure of child molesters both because they do not want their schools and institutions to have to pay money even if they have knowingly covered up and protected abusers. They also continue to want to sweep the problem under the carpet, preferring to protect pedophiles rather than children.
Fortunately, while there are many, many Jewish children in Pennsylvania who are at risk for being abused, Agudah and Satmar are not very powerful there, so the molesters are not as powerful either. But, of course, as the Pope is being investigated by the Hague on charges of crimes against humanity for protecting molesters, the Catholic Church continues to brazenly fight the survivors every step of the way.
The benefit to the Jewish community if this will be passed is great. For example, serious allegations have emerged that Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetsky, the Rosh Yeshiva of the Philadelphia Yeshivah covered up that Moshe Eiseman molested boys in his yeshiva years ago. He instead of publicizing the danger, helped Eiseman to get a job at Ner Yisroel in Baltimore where he went on to abuse many boys over many years. Rabbi Kaminetsky also covered up for a child molester named Rabbis Zusha or Stanley Levitt who is only now being prosecuted in Massachusetts for molesting children in Boston.
While prosecutors are beginning to find ways to criminalize the cover up of child molestation, see the NY TIMES below -- about a Bishop in Kansas City being indicted for what appears to be less of an irresponsible action than Reb Shmuel's, it is already an actionable tort for survivors to sue both their molesters and those who have enabled and protected them putting children in harm's way. I believe that the only way for the rabbis and powerful people in our community to stop protecting molesters and start protecting children is to give the survivors the most options to hold the enablers accountable.
While Agudah has claimed that by allowing such a law and holding the yeshivas accountable for past negligence and tragic damages it will destroy the "financial integrity of the yeshivas", virtually all of the survivors of rabbinic/clergy and school-based abuse I know who want to sue their yeshivas, including those who are suing Torah Temima, are not out for money. Rather they have tried every other way to appeal to Rosh Yeshivas and have been stonewalled and dismissed without any changes in the way our community does business. There is still no acknowledgment of the cover ups, there has been no apology to the victims, no attempt to help them financially to get therapy or other treatments, and perhaps most importantly to the survivors the rabbis have still not begun to report molesters to the authorities, are fighting making rabbis mandated reporters, and do not teach the children in school about appropriate safety protocols.
While financial remuneration for damages suffered can be helpful, what most survivors find most healing in my experience is the validation that the community lead by its rabbis and gedolim understand the damage that was done, take responsibility for it, and take steps to prevent it from happening again. Unfortunately, until enough yeshivas are sued, it seems that it is unlikely for real change to occur.
In fact, it took the possibility of such legislative statute of limitations reform passing in New York to get the Gedolim to even admit that Jewish children were being molested despite the fact that they had been discussing the problem for years (according to an article in the Yated Ne'man and many other sources).
The two goals of helping survivors heal and protecting future vulnerable children go hand in hand. Let's help support this law and any others that create a safer community in which adults take responsibility for children's safety.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/15/us/kansas-city-bishop-indicted-in-reporting-of-abuse-by-priest.html?_r=1&nl=afternoonupdate&emc=aua2
Bishop Indicted; Charge Is Failing to Report Abuse
By A. G. SULZBERGER and LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: October 14, 2011
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A bishop in the Roman Catholic Church has been indicted for failure to report suspected child abuse, the first time in the 25-year history of the church’s sex abuse scandals that the leader of an American diocese has been held criminally liable for the behavior of a priest he supervised.
The indictment of the bishop, Robert W. Finn, and the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph by a county grand jury was announced on Friday. Each was charged with one misdemeanor count involving a priest accused of taking pornographic photographs of girls as recently as this year. They pleaded not guilty.
The case caused an uproar among Catholics in Kansas City this year when Bishop Finn acknowledged that he knew of the photographs last December but did not turn them over to the police until May. During that time, the priest, the Rev. Shawn Ratigan, is said to have continued to attend church events with children, and took lewd photographs of another young girl.
A decade ago the American bishops pledged to report suspected abusers to law enforcement authorities — a policy also recommended last year by the Vatican. Bishop Finn himself had made such a promise three years ago as part of a $10 million legal settlement with abuse victims in Kansas City.
Though the charge is only a misdemeanor, victims’ advocates immediately hailed the indictment as a breakthrough, saying that until now American bishops have avoided prosecution despite documents showing that in some cases they were aware of abuse.
“This is huge for us,” said Michael Hunter, director of the Kansas City chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, and a victim of sexual abuse by a priest. “It’s something that I personally have been waiting for years to see, some real accountability. We’re very pleased with the prosecuting attorney here to have the guts to do it.” The bishop signaled he would fight the charges with all his strength. He said in a statement: “We will meet these announcements with a steady resolve and a vigorous defense.”
The indictment announced on Friday by the Jackson County prosecutor, Jean Peters Baker, had been under seal since Oct. 6 because the bishop was out of the country. He returned on Thursday night.
In a news conference, Ms. Baker said the case was not religiously motivated, but was about the obligation under state law to report child abuse.
“This is about protecting children,” she said.
If convicted Bishop Finn would face a possible fine of up to $1,000 and a jail sentence of up to a year. The diocese faces a possible fine of up to $5,000.
Ms. Baker said that secrecy rules for grand jury proceedings prohibited her from discussing whether other charges were considered, such as child endangerment, a felony. But she said the fact that the bishop faces a single misdemeanor count should not diminish the seriousness.
“To my knowledge a charge like this has not been leveled before,” she said.
It also may not mark the end of the legal troubles facing the diocese in the case, which includes civil and criminal cases in federal court. Last month Bishop Finn and Msgr. Robert Murphy testified before another grand jury in neighboring Clay County. A spokesman for the prosecutor’s office there declined to comment.
The priest accused of taking the lewd photos, Father Ratigan, was a frequent presence in a Catholic elementary school next to his parish. The principal there sent a letter to the diocese in May 2010 complaining about Father Ratigan’s behavior with children. Then, last December, a computer technician discovered the photos on the priest’s laptop and turned the computer in to the diocese. A day later Father Ratigan tried to kill himself. The diocese said that Monsignor Murphy described — but did not share — a single photo of a young girl, nude from the waist down, to a police officer who served on an independent sexual abuse review board for the diocese. The officer said that based on the description it might meet the definition of child pornography, but he did not think it would, the diocese said.
Bishop Finn sent Father Ratigan to live in a convent and told him to avoid contact with minors. But until May the priest attended children’s parties, spent weekends in the homes of parish families, hosted an Easter egg hunt and presided, with the bishop’s permission, at a girl’s First Communion, according to interviews with parishioners and a civil lawsuit filed by a victim’s family.
Parents in the school and parishioners — told only that Father Ratigan had fallen sick from carbon monoxide poisoning — were stunned when he was arrested in May after the diocese called the police. He was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of taking indecent photographs of young girls.
The new indictment released on Friday said that Bishop Finn and the diocese had reason to suspect that Father Ratigan might subject a child to abuse.
It cited “previous knowledge of concerns regarding Father Ratigan and children; the discovery of hundreds of photographs of children on Father Ratigan’s laptop, including a child’s naked vagina, upskirt images and images focused on the crotch; and violations of restrictions placed on Father Ratigan.”
Bishop Finn said in his statement on Friday that he and the diocese had given “complete cooperation” to law enforcement. He also pointed to steps he had taken since the scandal first became public, including commissioning a report to look into the case, and reinforcing procedures for handling allegations of abuse.
That report found that the diocese did not follow its own procedures. It also found that Bishop Finn was “too willing to trust” Father Ratigan.
The case has generated fury at the bishop, a staunch theological conservative who was already a polarizing figure in his diocese. Since the Ratigan case came to light, there have been widespread calls for him to resign.
Contributing to the sense of betrayal is the fact that only three years ago, Bishop Finn settled lawsuits with 47 plaintiffs in sexual abuse cases for $10 million and agreed to a list of 19 preventive measures, among them to immediately report anyone suspected of being a pedophile to the law enforcement authorities.
France may be the only country where a bishop has been convicted for his failure to supervise a priest accused of abuse, said Terrence McKiernan, president of BishopAccountability.org, a victims’ advocacy group that tracks abuse cases.
A grand jury in Philadelphia indicted a top official in the archdiocese there, Msgr. William Lynn, for mishandling cases of abuse. The former archbishop, Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, was not indicted, but he has been called to testify.
Monday, October 03, 2011
The Jews and Their Catholic Priest Problem!
Stop Supporting Orthodox Jewish Clergy Child Molesters
Greetings,
I just signed the following petition to: Agudath Israel of America.
Stop Supporting Orthodox Jewish Clergy Child Molesters
Goal: To protect ALL children in the Jewish communities worldwide.
Sincerely,
UOJ
PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION BELOW - ASERET Y'MEI TESHUVA IS THE APPROPRIATE TIME TO BEG HASHEM FOR FORGIVENESS FOR THE JEWISH COMMUNITY TO HAVE LET THIS TRAVESTY GO UNADDRESSED FOR SO LONG!
https://www.change.org/petitions/the-jews-and-their-catholic-priest-problem
Friday, September 23, 2011
S'licha U'mechila - Am Yisroel Chai!
M'mamakim kiratichah Hashem - Hashem shema b'koli!
CHAZAK - KLAL YISROEL - CHAZAK!
B'AHAVAT YISROEL B'LEV SHALEM, K'SIVA V'CHATIMA TOVA!
UOJ
CHAZAK - KLAL YISROEL - CHAZAK!
B'AHAVAT YISROEL B'LEV SHALEM, K'SIVA V'CHATIMA TOVA!
UOJ
Sunday, September 18, 2011
...But the awe, respect and fear the Vatican once commanded have given way to something new — rage, disgust and defiance...
after a long series of horrific revelations about decades of abuse of children entrusted to the church’s care by a reverential populace.
While similar disclosures have tarnished the Vatican’s image in other countries, perhaps nowhere have they shaken a whole society so thoroughly or so intensely as in Ireland. And so when the normally mild-mannered prime minister, Enda Kenny, unexpectedly took the floor in Parliament this summer to criticize the church, he was giving voice not just to his own pent-up feelings, but to those of a nation.
His remarks were a ringing declaration of the supremacy of state over church, in words of outrage and indignation that had never before been used publicly by an Irish leader.
“For the first time in Ireland, a report into child sexual abuse exposed an attempt by the Holy See to frustrate an inquiry into a sovereign, democratic republic as little as three years ago, not three decades ago,” Mr. Kenny said, referring to the Cloyne Report, which detailed abuse and cover-ups by church officials in southern Ireland through 2009.
Reiterating the report’s claim that the church had encouraged bishops to ignore child-protection guidelines the bishops themselves had adopted, the prime minister attacked “the dysfunction, the disconnection, the elitism” that he said “dominate the culture of the Vatican.”
He continued: “The rape and torture of children were downplayed, or ‘managed,’ to uphold instead the primacy of the institution — its power, its standing and its reputation.” Instead of listening with humility to the heartbreaking evidence of “humiliation and betrayal,” he said, “the Vatican’s response was to parse and analyze it with the gimlet eye of a canon lawyer.”
A MUST READ IN ITS ENTIRETY: CLICK ON LINK
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/world/europe/ireland-recalibrates-ties-to-roman-catholic-church.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
While similar disclosures have tarnished the Vatican’s image in other countries, perhaps nowhere have they shaken a whole society so thoroughly or so intensely as in Ireland. And so when the normally mild-mannered prime minister, Enda Kenny, unexpectedly took the floor in Parliament this summer to criticize the church, he was giving voice not just to his own pent-up feelings, but to those of a nation.
His remarks were a ringing declaration of the supremacy of state over church, in words of outrage and indignation that had never before been used publicly by an Irish leader.
“For the first time in Ireland, a report into child sexual abuse exposed an attempt by the Holy See to frustrate an inquiry into a sovereign, democratic republic as little as three years ago, not three decades ago,” Mr. Kenny said, referring to the Cloyne Report, which detailed abuse and cover-ups by church officials in southern Ireland through 2009.
Reiterating the report’s claim that the church had encouraged bishops to ignore child-protection guidelines the bishops themselves had adopted, the prime minister attacked “the dysfunction, the disconnection, the elitism” that he said “dominate the culture of the Vatican.”
He continued: “The rape and torture of children were downplayed, or ‘managed,’ to uphold instead the primacy of the institution — its power, its standing and its reputation.” Instead of listening with humility to the heartbreaking evidence of “humiliation and betrayal,” he said, “the Vatican’s response was to parse and analyze it with the gimlet eye of a canon lawyer.”
A MUST READ IN ITS ENTIRETY: CLICK ON LINK
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/world/europe/ireland-recalibrates-ties-to-roman-catholic-church.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
Thursday, September 15, 2011
...."Missing out on some serious parts of what it means to be a successful human.”
"For the headmaster of an intensely competitive school, Randolph, who is 49, is surprisingly skeptical about many of the basic elements of a contemporary high-stakes American education. He did away with Advanced Placement classes in the high school soon after he arrived at Riverdale; he encourages his teachers to limit the homework they assign; and he says that the standardized tests that Riverdale and other private schools require for admission to kindergarten and to middle school are “a patently unfair system” because they evaluate students almost entirely by I.Q. “This push on tests,” he told me, “is missing out on some serious parts of what it means to be a successful human.”
The most critical missing piece, Randolph explained as we sat in his office last fall, is character — those essential traits of mind and habit that were drilled into him at boarding school in England and that also have deep roots in American history. “Whether it’s the pioneer in the Conestoga wagon or someone coming here in the 1920s from southern Italy, there was this idea in America that if you worked hard and you showed real grit, that you could be successful,” he said. “Strangely, we’ve now forgotten that. People who have an easy time of things, who get 800s on their SAT’s, I worry that those people get feedback that everything they’re doing is great. And I think as a result, we are actually setting them up for long-term failure. When that person suddenly has to face up to a difficult moment, then I think they’re screwed, to be honest. I don’t think they’ve grown the capacities to be able to handle that.”
CLICK ON LINK BELOW FOR ENTIRE AMAZING ARTICLE:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/magazine/what-if-the-secret-to-success-is-failure.html?em&exprod=myyahoo
The most critical missing piece, Randolph explained as we sat in his office last fall, is character — those essential traits of mind and habit that were drilled into him at boarding school in England and that also have deep roots in American history. “Whether it’s the pioneer in the Conestoga wagon or someone coming here in the 1920s from southern Italy, there was this idea in America that if you worked hard and you showed real grit, that you could be successful,” he said. “Strangely, we’ve now forgotten that. People who have an easy time of things, who get 800s on their SAT’s, I worry that those people get feedback that everything they’re doing is great. And I think as a result, we are actually setting them up for long-term failure. When that person suddenly has to face up to a difficult moment, then I think they’re screwed, to be honest. I don’t think they’ve grown the capacities to be able to handle that.”
CLICK ON LINK BELOW FOR ENTIRE AMAZING ARTICLE:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/magazine/what-if-the-secret-to-success-is-failure.html?em&exprod=myyahoo
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Clergy Abuse Victims File International Complaint Against Vatican!
In a related story: UOJ will request prosecution of the Agudah this Rosh HaShanah from the Bais Din shel Maala
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/world/europe/14vatican.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
CLICK ABOVE AND BELOW:
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/09/13/clergy-abuse-victims-file-international-complaint-against-vatican/?mod=djemlawblog_t#
September 13, 2011
By Nathan Koppel
A group of victims of clergy sexual abuse has asked the International Criminal Court in the Hague to investigate the Vatican for alleged crimes against humanity.
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) filed a complaint today with the international court alleging that Vatican officials have tolerated and enabled the concealing of “child sex crimes,” according to this statement by SNAP’s attorneys at the Center for Constitutional Rights.
“SNAP wants to prevent even one more child from being raped or sexually assaulted by a priest,” the group’s president Barbara Blaine said in a statement.
“We hope that victims around the world will know today that they are not alone and that it is safe to speak up and report their abuse.”
Counsel for the Vatican have said that there has never been a Holy See policy requiring concealment of child sexual abuse.
The Vatican did not respond to an immediate request for comment from WSJ about today’s filing with the International Criminal Court.
The ICC filing marks the most substantive effort yet to hold the pope and Vatican accountable in an international court for sexual abuse by priests, according to this report in the New York Times.
Experts in international law, the Times reports, consider it unlikely the court will agree to prosecute the case, but it might investigate whether the matter is within its jurisdiction, which could elevate the issue internationally.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/world/europe/14vatican.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
CLICK ABOVE AND BELOW:
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/09/13/clergy-abuse-victims-file-international-complaint-against-vatican/?mod=djemlawblog_t#
September 13, 2011
By Nathan Koppel
A group of victims of clergy sexual abuse has asked the International Criminal Court in the Hague to investigate the Vatican for alleged crimes against humanity.
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) filed a complaint today with the international court alleging that Vatican officials have tolerated and enabled the concealing of “child sex crimes,” according to this statement by SNAP’s attorneys at the Center for Constitutional Rights.
“SNAP wants to prevent even one more child from being raped or sexually assaulted by a priest,” the group’s president Barbara Blaine said in a statement.
“We hope that victims around the world will know today that they are not alone and that it is safe to speak up and report their abuse.”
Counsel for the Vatican have said that there has never been a Holy See policy requiring concealment of child sexual abuse.
The Vatican did not respond to an immediate request for comment from WSJ about today’s filing with the International Criminal Court.
The ICC filing marks the most substantive effort yet to hold the pope and Vatican accountable in an international court for sexual abuse by priests, according to this report in the New York Times.
Experts in international law, the Times reports, consider it unlikely the court will agree to prosecute the case, but it might investigate whether the matter is within its jurisdiction, which could elevate the issue internationally.
Monday, September 12, 2011
GETTING TO KNOW MOETZES/AGUDATH ISRAEL MEMBER AARON SCHECHTER!
MEL KAMINSKY AKA MEL BROOKS: "ITS GOOD TO BE A GADOL"
By Tropper is Troubled:
Documents from the UOJ Archives:
The signed letter from Monsey that was kvetched out by Tropper on February 15th, in point 3, names Rabbi Aaron Schechter of yeshiva Chaim Berlin as one of three recommended names that Tropper would like to see -- NOT to rebuke Tropper -- but to "help" appoint a new rosh yeshiva for his totally ruined (by him) Kol Yaakov outfit. The other two names are Wachtfogel and Wolpin who carry no power in Agudath Israel of America's vaunted Moetzes, simply because it is Aaron Schechter who wields all the power at Agudah with the help of real estate manipulator/loan shark Abe Fruchthandler, who is also Chaim Berlin's chief honcho money man.
Now, why would Tropper want to bring in Aaron Schechter? The answer is actually very simple, as has been explained a few times in depth to those who have been reading the Tropper is Troubled chronicles for the past number of months: Aaron Schechter is the one big shot rabbi who IRRATIONALLY LOVES TROPPER and put Tropper on his feet, helped him build his hole in the wall yeshiva and stood by him when Tropper was divorcing his first wife while cavorting with his future second wife, and all the while Schechter also knew all about Tropper's fatal attractions and weakness for womanizing, and much worse yet, Schechter -- did NOT stop Tropper -- he rather emboldened him and built him up, and now look what's happened.
But all that Tropper did wrong was always forgiven and overlooked by Schechter because Tropper was able to furnish Schechter with something he prized more than gold, a nucleus of submissive disciples trained by Tropper who came to Chaim Berlin and served as "role models" for the more lively Brooklyn talmidim after Schechter had purged them and threw many of them out together with his own yeshiva's mashgiach ruchani, Rav Shlomo Carlebach (The singer's cousin by the same name). SCHECHTER LOVES THE KOL YAAKOV MODEL OF ZOMBIE TALMIDIM and now he is going to try to do life support for the yeshiva (Kol Yaakov) he loves so much in his own twisted and demented way!
Without rehashing all the details again,(see the UOJ documents below), Rav Carlebach went to multiple batei din, including that of Rav Moshe Feinstein and Satmar to present his claims but Schechter and Fruchthandler REFUSED to appear, and in turn they have since then been in contempt of several batei din, making them into mesarvim ledin and lo tzayis dino, that puts them into automatic cherem. It was also a huge Chillul Hashem and in many ways it was probably the incubator for Tropper's Chillul Hashem, as Rav Carlebach warned the Agudath's Zwiebel in writing then that a Chillul Hashem does not go away, it incubates like a cancer and comes back to haunt its perpetrators.
And indeed now, finally, it is no surprise that the chief perpetrator of the Chillul Hashem 30 years ago (who now has cancer), who threw his own yeshivas glorious mashgiach into the gutter and traded him in for the likes of servile (to Schechter) Tropper and his zombie lobotomized talmidim, instead, now rears his head like a primal python and agrees to have his name put on paper as the "big Agudath Israel puff daddy" -- NOT to denounce Tropper and his misdeeds -- but save the guttersnipe Tropper who Tropper invokes as the one to appoint a future "rosh yeshiva" for Kol Yaakov (it won't last much longer, they will be closing very soon, no one wants to go to a place run by a publicly unmasked and now certified menuval shebemenuvalim).
Note that Aaron Schechter, the 85 year old mechutzaf and menuvel in his own right, -- and still active bully, throws in his gauntlet -- NOT to reprimand Tropper -- but allowing his name to appear on paper for "rabbi" Leib Tropper (it's typed that way), as Schechter the original lo tzayis dino the scorner of batei din and creator of Chillul Hashem comes -- NOT to punish Tropper -- but to give his moral support and public name to Tropper the shiksa [now Tropper's Jewess] gang-banger with his own WIFE, the menuval shebemenuvalim and creator of a global Chillul Hashem, that grows not just like a festering cancer but like a mushroom cloud destroying all in its wake.
Beware, Schechter (and Fruchthandler) of Chaim Berlin cometh, tell them to go home to Brooklyn, where they can keep an eye on sheitel stores and enjoy Michael Hersh, the unapologetic crazed BT disciple of Schechter and kidnapper of Isaac Hersh - sitting next to him. Schechter must be told to stay away and keep out of the global mess he helped to create by inflating and keeping alive the Tropper monster.
THE LOW-LIVES AGUDATH ISRAEL DELEGATES ARE COMING TO MONSEY --- NO GOOD CAN COME FROM THESE ACHZORIM!
CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE DOCUMENTS FROM THE UOJ ARCHIVES:
RABBI MOSHE FEINSTEIN'S LETTER SUMMONING AARON SCHECHTER & ABE FRUCHTHANDLER TO BAIS DIN:
By Tropper is Troubled:
Documents from the UOJ Archives:
The signed letter from Monsey that was kvetched out by Tropper on February 15th, in point 3, names Rabbi Aaron Schechter of yeshiva Chaim Berlin as one of three recommended names that Tropper would like to see -- NOT to rebuke Tropper -- but to "help" appoint a new rosh yeshiva for his totally ruined (by him) Kol Yaakov outfit. The other two names are Wachtfogel and Wolpin who carry no power in Agudath Israel of America's vaunted Moetzes, simply because it is Aaron Schechter who wields all the power at Agudah with the help of real estate manipulator/loan shark Abe Fruchthandler, who is also Chaim Berlin's chief honcho money man.
Now, why would Tropper want to bring in Aaron Schechter? The answer is actually very simple, as has been explained a few times in depth to those who have been reading the Tropper is Troubled chronicles for the past number of months: Aaron Schechter is the one big shot rabbi who IRRATIONALLY LOVES TROPPER and put Tropper on his feet, helped him build his hole in the wall yeshiva and stood by him when Tropper was divorcing his first wife while cavorting with his future second wife, and all the while Schechter also knew all about Tropper's fatal attractions and weakness for womanizing, and much worse yet, Schechter -- did NOT stop Tropper -- he rather emboldened him and built him up, and now look what's happened.
But all that Tropper did wrong was always forgiven and overlooked by Schechter because Tropper was able to furnish Schechter with something he prized more than gold, a nucleus of submissive disciples trained by Tropper who came to Chaim Berlin and served as "role models" for the more lively Brooklyn talmidim after Schechter had purged them and threw many of them out together with his own yeshiva's mashgiach ruchani, Rav Shlomo Carlebach (The singer's cousin by the same name). SCHECHTER LOVES THE KOL YAAKOV MODEL OF ZOMBIE TALMIDIM and now he is going to try to do life support for the yeshiva (Kol Yaakov) he loves so much in his own twisted and demented way!
Without rehashing all the details again,(see the UOJ documents below), Rav Carlebach went to multiple batei din, including that of Rav Moshe Feinstein and Satmar to present his claims but Schechter and Fruchthandler REFUSED to appear, and in turn they have since then been in contempt of several batei din, making them into mesarvim ledin and lo tzayis dino, that puts them into automatic cherem. It was also a huge Chillul Hashem and in many ways it was probably the incubator for Tropper's Chillul Hashem, as Rav Carlebach warned the Agudath's Zwiebel in writing then that a Chillul Hashem does not go away, it incubates like a cancer and comes back to haunt its perpetrators.
And indeed now, finally, it is no surprise that the chief perpetrator of the Chillul Hashem 30 years ago (who now has cancer), who threw his own yeshivas glorious mashgiach into the gutter and traded him in for the likes of servile (to Schechter) Tropper and his zombie lobotomized talmidim, instead, now rears his head like a primal python and agrees to have his name put on paper as the "big Agudath Israel puff daddy" -- NOT to denounce Tropper and his misdeeds -- but save the guttersnipe Tropper who Tropper invokes as the one to appoint a future "rosh yeshiva" for Kol Yaakov (it won't last much longer, they will be closing very soon, no one wants to go to a place run by a publicly unmasked and now certified menuval shebemenuvalim).
Note that Aaron Schechter, the 85 year old mechutzaf and menuvel in his own right, -- and still active bully, throws in his gauntlet -- NOT to reprimand Tropper -- but allowing his name to appear on paper for "rabbi" Leib Tropper (it's typed that way), as Schechter the original lo tzayis dino the scorner of batei din and creator of Chillul Hashem comes -- NOT to punish Tropper -- but to give his moral support and public name to Tropper the shiksa [now Tropper's Jewess] gang-banger with his own WIFE, the menuval shebemenuvalim and creator of a global Chillul Hashem, that grows not just like a festering cancer but like a mushroom cloud destroying all in its wake.
Beware, Schechter (and Fruchthandler) of Chaim Berlin cometh, tell them to go home to Brooklyn, where they can keep an eye on sheitel stores and enjoy Michael Hersh, the unapologetic crazed BT disciple of Schechter and kidnapper of Isaac Hersh - sitting next to him. Schechter must be told to stay away and keep out of the global mess he helped to create by inflating and keeping alive the Tropper monster.
THE LOW-LIVES AGUDATH ISRAEL DELEGATES ARE COMING TO MONSEY --- NO GOOD CAN COME FROM THESE ACHZORIM!
CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE DOCUMENTS FROM THE UOJ ARCHIVES:
RABBI MOSHE FEINSTEIN'S LETTER SUMMONING AARON SCHECHTER & ABE FRUCHTHANDLER TO BAIS DIN:
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
The Shomrim - Gotham's Crusaders!
Luzer Twersky still remembers the day he came back from shul to his Borough Park home to find his father waiting for him with an important question.
Twersky's father, a Hasidic rabbi, had just received a disturbing report. One of his employees had walked in on another rabbi, Duvid Greenfeld, molesting a young boy in the mikveh, the ritual bath.
Twersky's father knew that his young son had also studied with Greenfeld until the year before, when he moved to a different shul. He wanted to know if Luzer had seen anything similar from Greenfeld.
He had.
"Greenfeld abused me from age nine to age 12," Twersky says, smirking bitterly. "My father asked me about it about a year after we ended our 'relationship,' if you want to call it that."
The man who caught Greenfeld red-handed in the mikveh was connected to the Shomrim, the community patrol that functions as a sort of auxiliary police force for the Hasidic and conservative Orthodox community in Borough Park.
But although the Shomrim are pledged to protect the innocent and work closely with police to catch criminals, that isn't what happened this time. Greenfeld was the son of a close adviser to Rabbi Mordechai David Unger, seen by many as the head of the Bobov Hasidic dynasty and one of the most influential men in Borough Park.
So when the Shomrim associate discovered the abuse, he told his rabbi and left the matter at that. The police never learned of the incident, and Greenfeld continued to teach in yeshivas, working with young children for a decade until he was finally arrested for molesting a 15-year-old boy in 2009.
Nine years after he watched the neighborhood protector turn a blind eye to Greenfeld's abuse, Twersky decided he had to leave the Hasidic community altogether. He left Borough Park, divorced his wife, and cut ties with his parents and friends.
Talking about the incident now, he says he doesn't hold any ill will against the man, still a member of the Shomrim today, who learned of Greenfeld's abuse and didn't tell the police.
"He's a good guy, in his way," Twersky says. "He's a baby who likes playing cops—that's a lot of what the Shomrim is. I've got nothing against patrolling a neighborhood, and they do a good job at it mostly: Borough Park is a very safe neighborhood for adults. It's just not very safe for kids."
The question of children's safety in Borough Park came under renewed scrutiny this summer in the aftermath of the grizzly murder of Leiby Kletzky, the eight-year-old boy who vanished in Borough Park on his way home from camp.
Kletzky's parents called the Shomrim when he didn't make it home, and the organization flooded the neighborhood with a hundred volunteers searching for the boy. But Kletzky was never found alive, and when his dismembered body was ultimately discovered in the home of a Borough Park resident, the Shomrim found themselves in the center of a contentious debate.
Community leaders and politicians praised the way the Shomrim flooded the streets in search of the young boy, calling the response a source of community pride even in the face of terrible tragedy.
But critics noted that the Shomrim's efforts hadn't saved Kletzky or indeed even caught his killer. It was an unaffiliated concerned citizen, not the Shomrim, who thought to check the surveillance videos from local businesses that showed the boy being lured into the Honda of Levi Aron, a supply clerk who lived nearby.
More pressing was the question of why the Shomrim had waited three hours to notify the police of the missing boy. It wasn't until after Kletzky's parents had called 911 themselves that the Shomrim made contact with the NYPD.
Speaking to the press after Aron had been arrested and made a confession, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the Shomrim's delayed notification of police was a long-standing issue.
"We have no problem with the Shomrim being notified," Kelly said, "but we'd like to be notified as well."
But Kelly was careful not to antagonize the Shomrim, adding that the delay probably wouldn't have made a difference in the Kletzky case.
Jacob Daskal, the founder of the Borough Park Shomrim, agreed, but less diplomatically.
"It wouldn't have mattered," Daskal told The Wall Street Journal. "And the police wouldn't have come right away."
The first Shomrim group in Brooklyn started in Williamsburg in the late 1970s, as the fast-growing community of Hasidic and Eastern-European Orthodox Jews—collectively known as the Haredi community—sought to protect themselves from the petty crime then common in Williamsburg.
Shomrim means "watchers" or "guards" in Hebrew, and as the Williamsburg Jews carved out their own self-contained domain in the middle of Koch-era Brooklyn, guards were a good thing to have.
Soon the model was replicated in other Haredi outposts throughout Brooklyn. Today, there are independent, unaffiliated Shomrim groups in Williamsburg, Flatbush, and Borough Park. In Crown Heights, an acrimonious split among the Lubavitcher Hasids has led to the creation of two competing Shomrim groups.
Shomrim groups also patrol Haredi neighborhoods in Monsey, Baltimore, Miami, London, and elsewhere..........
CLICK ON LINK FOR THE ENTIRE ARTICLE:
http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-09-07/news/gotham-s-crusaders-shomrim-jewish-neighborhood-patrol/
Tuesday, September 06, 2011
"Muslims in Germany" - Could Have Been Titled Orthodox Jews In America!
This article hits home; the overwhelming majority of our "arbitrators" or Bais Din representatives (batei din in the plural), are every bit as dangerous to our community as Hassan Allouche is to his!
UOJ
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,783361,00.html
Muslims in Europe
09/01/2011
Parallel Justice
Islamic 'Arbitrators' Shadow German Law
By Maximilian Popp
DER SPIEGEL
Hassan Allouche, originally from Lebanon, says he mediates 200 cases a year.
In mosques or tearooms, Muslim elders dispense verdicts that keep their communities in line. They mediate between aggrieved immigrants, sometimes at the expense of German justice. Some say the arbitrations ease caseloads in court, but others see the creeping advance of Sharia law.
The men ambushed Fuat S. on the street, then locked him in a basement and tortured him. Fuat was later admitted to the hospital in Berlin's Neukölln district with gaping wounds, contusions and broken bones.
Police took his statement concerning the attack the same night. Fuat S., a gambler and a recipient of "Hartz IV" -- Germany's social welfare benefits for the long-term unemployed -- gave a detailed statement. He'd conned an acquaintance, Mustafa O., out of €150,000 ($217,000) and the man was taking his revenge, Fuat said, together with his three brothers. They hit his hands, arms and knees with a hammer and threatened to shoot him.
The public prosecutor's office in Berlin initiated proceedings against Mustafa O., a Palestinian man who had come to their attention repeatedly for violent acts. Police had investigated him in a number of cases, and now prosecutors saw an opportunity to convict a dangerous repeat offender. But when the case began, Fuat S., the principle witness, unexpectedly withdrew his testimony. It was not Mustafa who had tortured him, he said, but an Albanian man he didn't know. Mustafa, he said, wasn't even in the basement at the time. This was clearly a lie, as police analysis of telephone data showed, but the judge was forced to acquit the defendant due to lack of evidence.
The decision, in fact, was reached by a different judge. According to police, the victim's and the perpetrator's families had met at a restaurant in the presence of an Islamic "justice of the peace," an arbitrator who mediates conflicts between Muslims. The two families had reached a compromise: Fuat would drop the charges, and in exchange be relieved of part of his debt.
According to Bernhard Mix, the public prosecutor in charge of the case, Fuat's false testimony was part of a deal between the families. "It's difficult to establish the truth using legal means, when the perpetrator and the victim reach an agreement," he says.
Judges Without Laws
Politicians and social workers tend to focus on forced marriages and honor killings, but the baleful influence of these Islamic arbitrators has gone largely unnoticed by the public. Joachim Wagner, an author and television journalist of many years, has taken a closer look at the phenomenon in his book "Richter ohne Gesetz" ("Judges without Laws"). Reconstructing Mustafa O.'s case, he reaches the conclusion that "the Islamic parallel justice system is becoming a threat to the constitutional legal system."
These justices of the peace don't wear robes. Their courtrooms are mosques or teahouses. They draw their authority not from the law, but from their standing within the community. Most of them are senior members of their families, or imams, and some even fly in from Turkey or Lebanon to resolve disputes. Muslims seek them out when families argue, when daughters take up with nonbelievers or when clans clash. They often trust these arbitrators more than they trust the state.
The late juvenile court judge Kirsten Heisig drew attention to this problem a year ago: "The law is slipping out of our hands. It's moving to the streets, or into a parallel system where an imam or another representative of the Koran determines what must be done."
In Wagner's book, judges and prosecutors tell of threats toward public officials and systematic interference with witnesses. "We know we're being given a performance, but the courts are powerless," says Stephan Kuperion, a juvenile court judge in Berlin. Federal public prosecutor Jörn Hauschild warns, "It would be a terrible development if serious criminal offences in these circles could no longer be resolved. The legal system would be reduced to collecting victims."
So who are these men who make the decisions about justice and love, lives and monetary compensation?
'They Trust Me'
Hassan Allouche sits behind the wheel of his station wagon, steering the vehicle through Berlin's rush hour traffic with one hand, talking on his cell phone. Two Arabs have called on him for help in a rent dispute. He lights a cigarette and says, "People are afraid of the authorities. They trust me."
Allouche came to Germany from Lebanon 37 years ago. He acts as a religious arbitrator, just as his great-grandfather did before him. People greet him on the streets of Berlin, shaking his hand or bowing. "He's kept us from a great deal of harm," one Turkish businessman says.
Allouche's brother was shot while trying to resolve a conflict, and since then he always wears a bulletproof vest when doing his work. He says he mediates 200 cases a year, often offers his own services and doesn't ask any payment, although he accepts gifts. "I do this for Germany and for Allah," he says.
Wagner, the journalist, believes that getting rich plays only a minor role for most of these arbitrators. Far more important, he says, are power and prestige, as they increase their influence within the community with each successful mediation.
Although the mediators generally work in secret, "it's common practice," Wagner says, repeating what Ralf Menkhorst, detective superintendent for the city of Essen, has told him. "Any beginner realizes after three cases that this phenomenon exists." Police in Bremen, for example, know of four or five arbitrators by name.
They operate in a gray area between conflict resolution and obstruction of justice. Allouche, for example, claims to work closely with authorities, but investigators suspect him of preventing witnesses from giving statements to the police. So far they've never been able to prove an obstruction of justice.
This culture of arbitration predates Islam, since earlier Arab tribes also solved conflicts with verdicts passed by senior family members. In countries such as Lebanon or in southeastern Turkey, these lay judges still take the place of governmental institutions. In Germany, they find followers wherever the local population includes many Muslims who haven't integrated into German culture.
Ursula Spuler-Stegemann, an Islamic studies professor in Marburg, believes this distance between immigrants and the German state explains the success of religious arbitration. Many immigrants, she says, mistrust police and the legal system. Criminal prosecutors are concerned about extended Muslim families and strict religious groups. "They disdain the rule of law. They haven't integrated, and don't intend to. The family is above the law," Bremen's police write in a working paper.
Munich-based imam and arbitrator Sheik Abu Adam says he considers it a religious duty to mediate among the faithful. He invites both parties to visit him at the mosque, listens to both sides, and ultimately has them sign a peace treaty. The important thing, he says, is not who's right and wrong, and evidence is no particular help -- the important thing is to find a compromise. In nine out of 10 cases, the people respect his decision, he says. "My judgment is fairer than the government's," he says.
A Problem of Integration
Abu Adam teaches a reactionary kind of Islam. He lives with three women, doesn't believe in separating religion from the state, and rejects moderate branches of his religion. "I tell my people, don't go to the police," the sheikh says unabashedly. "We'll take care of this conflict among ourselves." He dismisses accusations of running a shadow justice system, saying, "I'm making less work for the police."
Investigators do cooperate with Islamic arbitrators in a few exceptional cases. In Essen, for example, police and an imam work together to mediate disputes within Muslim families.
If these arbitrators would limit themselves to containing conflicts, there would be no reason to object, says legal and Islamic studies expert Mathias Rohe in the Bavarian city of Erlangen. German law, after all, allows for arbitration. What Rohe finds unacceptable is the exertion of influence over criminal proceedings. "Criminal prosecution is a privilege of the state," he says.
The state justice system, though, is having a hard time shaking off the shadow system. Klaus-Dieter Schromek, a judge in Bremen, criticizes his colleagues for not taking the phenomenon seriously enough. "If conflict mediators manage to force the justice system out of homicides and other serious violent crimes," he told Wagner for the book, "it will mean more conflicts settled using these methods."
Legal steps alone can't prevent a parallel Islamic justice system, not with so many immigrants from Muslim countries who insist on following values retained for centuries -- such as the primacy of men and the unconditional struggle for one's own honor and that of the family. One problem is that they pass on these clichés to their children, so even third-generation members of immigrant families mistrust the German legal system.
"We need to promote our constitutional legal state starting in school," says Rohe, the Islamic studies expert. If German integration were in better shape, he believes, Islamic arbitrators would have been out of work long ago.
UOJ
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,783361,00.html
Muslims in Europe
09/01/2011
Parallel Justice
Islamic 'Arbitrators' Shadow German Law
By Maximilian Popp
DER SPIEGEL
Hassan Allouche, originally from Lebanon, says he mediates 200 cases a year.
In mosques or tearooms, Muslim elders dispense verdicts that keep their communities in line. They mediate between aggrieved immigrants, sometimes at the expense of German justice. Some say the arbitrations ease caseloads in court, but others see the creeping advance of Sharia law.
The men ambushed Fuat S. on the street, then locked him in a basement and tortured him. Fuat was later admitted to the hospital in Berlin's Neukölln district with gaping wounds, contusions and broken bones.
Police took his statement concerning the attack the same night. Fuat S., a gambler and a recipient of "Hartz IV" -- Germany's social welfare benefits for the long-term unemployed -- gave a detailed statement. He'd conned an acquaintance, Mustafa O., out of €150,000 ($217,000) and the man was taking his revenge, Fuat said, together with his three brothers. They hit his hands, arms and knees with a hammer and threatened to shoot him.
The public prosecutor's office in Berlin initiated proceedings against Mustafa O., a Palestinian man who had come to their attention repeatedly for violent acts. Police had investigated him in a number of cases, and now prosecutors saw an opportunity to convict a dangerous repeat offender. But when the case began, Fuat S., the principle witness, unexpectedly withdrew his testimony. It was not Mustafa who had tortured him, he said, but an Albanian man he didn't know. Mustafa, he said, wasn't even in the basement at the time. This was clearly a lie, as police analysis of telephone data showed, but the judge was forced to acquit the defendant due to lack of evidence.
The decision, in fact, was reached by a different judge. According to police, the victim's and the perpetrator's families had met at a restaurant in the presence of an Islamic "justice of the peace," an arbitrator who mediates conflicts between Muslims. The two families had reached a compromise: Fuat would drop the charges, and in exchange be relieved of part of his debt.
According to Bernhard Mix, the public prosecutor in charge of the case, Fuat's false testimony was part of a deal between the families. "It's difficult to establish the truth using legal means, when the perpetrator and the victim reach an agreement," he says.
Judges Without Laws
Politicians and social workers tend to focus on forced marriages and honor killings, but the baleful influence of these Islamic arbitrators has gone largely unnoticed by the public. Joachim Wagner, an author and television journalist of many years, has taken a closer look at the phenomenon in his book "Richter ohne Gesetz" ("Judges without Laws"). Reconstructing Mustafa O.'s case, he reaches the conclusion that "the Islamic parallel justice system is becoming a threat to the constitutional legal system."
These justices of the peace don't wear robes. Their courtrooms are mosques or teahouses. They draw their authority not from the law, but from their standing within the community. Most of them are senior members of their families, or imams, and some even fly in from Turkey or Lebanon to resolve disputes. Muslims seek them out when families argue, when daughters take up with nonbelievers or when clans clash. They often trust these arbitrators more than they trust the state.
The late juvenile court judge Kirsten Heisig drew attention to this problem a year ago: "The law is slipping out of our hands. It's moving to the streets, or into a parallel system where an imam or another representative of the Koran determines what must be done."
In Wagner's book, judges and prosecutors tell of threats toward public officials and systematic interference with witnesses. "We know we're being given a performance, but the courts are powerless," says Stephan Kuperion, a juvenile court judge in Berlin. Federal public prosecutor Jörn Hauschild warns, "It would be a terrible development if serious criminal offences in these circles could no longer be resolved. The legal system would be reduced to collecting victims."
So who are these men who make the decisions about justice and love, lives and monetary compensation?
'They Trust Me'
Hassan Allouche sits behind the wheel of his station wagon, steering the vehicle through Berlin's rush hour traffic with one hand, talking on his cell phone. Two Arabs have called on him for help in a rent dispute. He lights a cigarette and says, "People are afraid of the authorities. They trust me."
Allouche came to Germany from Lebanon 37 years ago. He acts as a religious arbitrator, just as his great-grandfather did before him. People greet him on the streets of Berlin, shaking his hand or bowing. "He's kept us from a great deal of harm," one Turkish businessman says.
Allouche's brother was shot while trying to resolve a conflict, and since then he always wears a bulletproof vest when doing his work. He says he mediates 200 cases a year, often offers his own services and doesn't ask any payment, although he accepts gifts. "I do this for Germany and for Allah," he says.
Wagner, the journalist, believes that getting rich plays only a minor role for most of these arbitrators. Far more important, he says, are power and prestige, as they increase their influence within the community with each successful mediation.
Although the mediators generally work in secret, "it's common practice," Wagner says, repeating what Ralf Menkhorst, detective superintendent for the city of Essen, has told him. "Any beginner realizes after three cases that this phenomenon exists." Police in Bremen, for example, know of four or five arbitrators by name.
They operate in a gray area between conflict resolution and obstruction of justice. Allouche, for example, claims to work closely with authorities, but investigators suspect him of preventing witnesses from giving statements to the police. So far they've never been able to prove an obstruction of justice.
This culture of arbitration predates Islam, since earlier Arab tribes also solved conflicts with verdicts passed by senior family members. In countries such as Lebanon or in southeastern Turkey, these lay judges still take the place of governmental institutions. In Germany, they find followers wherever the local population includes many Muslims who haven't integrated into German culture.
Ursula Spuler-Stegemann, an Islamic studies professor in Marburg, believes this distance between immigrants and the German state explains the success of religious arbitration. Many immigrants, she says, mistrust police and the legal system. Criminal prosecutors are concerned about extended Muslim families and strict religious groups. "They disdain the rule of law. They haven't integrated, and don't intend to. The family is above the law," Bremen's police write in a working paper.
Munich-based imam and arbitrator Sheik Abu Adam says he considers it a religious duty to mediate among the faithful. He invites both parties to visit him at the mosque, listens to both sides, and ultimately has them sign a peace treaty. The important thing, he says, is not who's right and wrong, and evidence is no particular help -- the important thing is to find a compromise. In nine out of 10 cases, the people respect his decision, he says. "My judgment is fairer than the government's," he says.
A Problem of Integration
Abu Adam teaches a reactionary kind of Islam. He lives with three women, doesn't believe in separating religion from the state, and rejects moderate branches of his religion. "I tell my people, don't go to the police," the sheikh says unabashedly. "We'll take care of this conflict among ourselves." He dismisses accusations of running a shadow justice system, saying, "I'm making less work for the police."
Investigators do cooperate with Islamic arbitrators in a few exceptional cases. In Essen, for example, police and an imam work together to mediate disputes within Muslim families.
If these arbitrators would limit themselves to containing conflicts, there would be no reason to object, says legal and Islamic studies expert Mathias Rohe in the Bavarian city of Erlangen. German law, after all, allows for arbitration. What Rohe finds unacceptable is the exertion of influence over criminal proceedings. "Criminal prosecution is a privilege of the state," he says.
The state justice system, though, is having a hard time shaking off the shadow system. Klaus-Dieter Schromek, a judge in Bremen, criticizes his colleagues for not taking the phenomenon seriously enough. "If conflict mediators manage to force the justice system out of homicides and other serious violent crimes," he told Wagner for the book, "it will mean more conflicts settled using these methods."
Legal steps alone can't prevent a parallel Islamic justice system, not with so many immigrants from Muslim countries who insist on following values retained for centuries -- such as the primacy of men and the unconditional struggle for one's own honor and that of the family. One problem is that they pass on these clichés to their children, so even third-generation members of immigrant families mistrust the German legal system.
"We need to promote our constitutional legal state starting in school," says Rohe, the Islamic studies expert. If German integration were in better shape, he believes, Islamic arbitrators would have been out of work long ago.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
The Truth About Ohel Children's Home and Family Services
Breaking the Silence about “Breaking the Silence”
by Dr. Asher Lipner
In the recent sequel to the hit movie Wall Street, the protagonist, Gordon Gekko, gets released from jail after completing an eight-year sentence for committing insider trading and stock fraud. The “reformed” con-artist makes an “only in America” comeback by writing and marketing a book warning people of financial trouble in the real estate bubble that has been created by the very philosophy Gekko promoted in the 80’s: greed is good.
In their new book, David Mandel, CEO of Ohel Children’s Home and Family Services and his colleague, Dr. David Pelcovitz, Ph.D. similarly endeavor to lock the barn door after they have stolen the horses. The title, “Breaking the Silence: Sexual Abuse in the Jewish Community,” attempts to convey a courageous heroism, as if the editors are exposing an unknown crisis to the public. But in fact, our community has had scandalous headlines about sexual abuse and cover-up for over ten years. Like Gekko, the editors are engaging in a public relations campaign to cover their backsides and to maintain the silence about the fact that as leaders in the mental health community, they have helped create the system that got us into this mess.
Mandel attempts to establish his credentials as an expert in the field by repeatedly referring to “our experience at Ohel”, so the book really needs to be read in the context of Ohel’s notorious record. Since the 1980’s when Ohel failed to warn the community about its “consultant”, infamous child molester Avraham Mondrowitz, thereby enabling him to escape justice, until this day Ohel has repeatedly been involved in protecting molesters, not children.
Even on the book cover in the short list of safety goals, “reporting” to the authorities is glaringly missing. While Rabbi Dovid Cohen commits to writing for the first time that one is “allowed” to report sex crimes to the police, he hedges his bet by equivocating that the issues of “mesirah, lashon harah and chillul Hashem” are complex, and one should consult “a competent halachic authority” when in question.
Unfortunately, consulting rabbis is exactly what parents and survivors of abuse have been doing until now with catastrophic results, as almost all rabbis, out of ignorance or cowardice have breached halacha and advised protecting the abusers. Ohel’s own internal policy for staff is that no therapist is allowed to report child abuse without clearing it with Rabbi Cohen, a policy that is in breach of mandated reporting laws.
Ohel’s misguided philosophy on dealing with abusers is due to the book’s stated belief in a “diversity of values and ends” that can create conflict among “reasonably rational, well intentioned persons…involved with sex offenders.” The “relevant stakeholders” that in Ohel’s opinion can “reasonably disagree on the ordering of priorities”, seem to include (based on Ohel’s history) the molester whose concern and legal right to confidentiality is constantly trumpeted by Ohel, the molester’s family, the community whose image is tarnished by revelations of criminality and deviancy, and the institutions that harbor molesters who want to protect their reputations and finances from lawsuits. This ideology of complex, relative moral values completely flies in the face of both Jewish and secular law that give simple, straightforward and unequivocal directives that protection of the past and future victims must be the primary value and consideration.
In their chapter on “treating” sexual predators, the authors ignore the experts who advocate that courts and probation departments play a particularly important role both as a motivating force, and an integral part of therapy. The Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers treatment guidelines also insist that “supervision agencies work closely with victim advocacy organizations to ensure that their policies do not re-traumatize victims of sexual assault,” an idea that is neither recommended in this book, nor practiced by Ohel.
One example of a policy that certainly re-traumatized victims of abuse is that instead of joining virtually all child advocates groups in supporting the Child Victim’s Act, (aka the “Markey Bill”) Ohel advocated for a “compromise” bill giving legal amnesty to abusers.[1] Furthermore, not a single of the recent pedophiles arrested in Brooklyn were brought to the attention of the authorities by Ohel, nor has Ohel given any support to the victims of abuse who courageously came forward to warn the public.
The book also continues to support the “Ohelian” idea that a rabbinic Beit Din should be utilized to address cases of child molestation. Refusing to learn from the fiasco of the Catholic Church’s shameful system of sheltering pedophile priests, or the doomed-to-failure attempts of the Batei Din of Yeshiva University, Lakewood, Baltimore, Los Angeles and Chicago to play “Law and Order” without the police, the editors and some of the authors are proud to help set up yet another rabbinical group to “deal with” (read: cover up for) sex crimes in Rockland County.[2]
In the chapter on “Prevention and Intervention Programs,” highly trained professionals give dangerously bad advice to parents. They state that although there is no halachic problem of reporting abuse to the authorities, it is “understandable” that orthodox professionals who are mandated reporters nevertheless feel hindered by cultural taboo from doing so. Even more shocking is that parents are admonished not to tell other parents in their child’s school if molestation occurs, because it is a “private matter.”
Silence is not always golden
Psychologists and crime prevention professionals have long known that in communication, one can often learn more about the speaker’s thoughts from that which is not said than from that which is. While claiming to “break the silence,” Ohel’s book continues to censor important information that the community needs to know. The most glaring omission is the voice of a survivor of abuse. While the disclosures that were taken from therapy sessions and edited letters are educational, sorely missing is a first-hand account of an adult survivor about the real life experience of surviving abuse in our community. Survivors of abuse will certainly feel that yet another opportunity was missed to finally give them a voice, and they have once again been shut out of the discussion. By comparison, in the recently published scholarly book, “Daas Torah: Child and Domestic Abuse,” edited by Rabbi Daniel Eidensohn and Baruch Shulem, Ph.D. (to which this writer also contributed) two powerful autobiographical chapters are included, allowing the reader to hear what survivors really think and feel, unedited and uncensored.
Furthermore, “Breaking the Silence” can break one’s eardrums with its silence about the history of scandalous communal cover-ups. It is utterly ludicrous to discuss abuse in the community without addressing the real betrayal experienced by survivors whose victimhood has been denied, minimized, and silenced by our establishment leaders for so long with threats and intimidation. Most survivors of abuse agree that the community response to child sexual abuse is often a worse trauma than the abuse. The parents who have had their children thrown out of yeshivas for the “crime” of disclosing abuse, the families that were literally run out of town, the children who were slapped in the face for daring to name their molester, will all read this book and think “Here we go again.” The reasons for this betrayal are not unknown, as Dr. Michael Salamon explains in his new book, “Abuse: How Extremist Views Undermine the Apprehension of Offenders and the Treatment of Victims.”
On a bright note, David Mandel’s own chapter does provide some comic relief. Although he admits that the rabbis, adult survivors and child advocates who brought this issue to the awareness of the community deserve recognition, he declines to name them with the excuse that he does not want to get them into trouble. As if survivors like Mark Weiss, David Framowitz, and Joel Engleman, Esther Malka Reich, Sara Rosenberg, advocates like Vicki Polin, Ben Hirsh, Michael Salamon, Mark Appel, Assemblyman Dov Hikind, rabbis like Nochem Rosenberg, Yosef Blau, Daniel Eidenshohn, and Yitzchak Eisenman or bloggers like Paul Mendlowitz of UOJ, or Shmarya Rosenberg of FailedMessiah fear backlash in standing up for child safety. Dr. Freud would surely interpret this notion as Mr. Mandel “projecting” his own fear of bringing attention to these individuals who have, almost to a person, been harshly critical of his record (in UOJ’s words) of “letting no cover-up go uncovered.”
[1] Mandel, D. (April 29, 2009) Sexual Abuse Legislation: A Proposed Strategy for Reform. Five Towns Jewish Times
[2] Orbach, M. (April 23, 2010) New Square appoints Vaad to deal with sexual abuse. The Jewish Star
by Dr. Asher Lipner
In the recent sequel to the hit movie Wall Street, the protagonist, Gordon Gekko, gets released from jail after completing an eight-year sentence for committing insider trading and stock fraud. The “reformed” con-artist makes an “only in America” comeback by writing and marketing a book warning people of financial trouble in the real estate bubble that has been created by the very philosophy Gekko promoted in the 80’s: greed is good.
In their new book, David Mandel, CEO of Ohel Children’s Home and Family Services and his colleague, Dr. David Pelcovitz, Ph.D. similarly endeavor to lock the barn door after they have stolen the horses. The title, “Breaking the Silence: Sexual Abuse in the Jewish Community,” attempts to convey a courageous heroism, as if the editors are exposing an unknown crisis to the public. But in fact, our community has had scandalous headlines about sexual abuse and cover-up for over ten years. Like Gekko, the editors are engaging in a public relations campaign to cover their backsides and to maintain the silence about the fact that as leaders in the mental health community, they have helped create the system that got us into this mess.
Mandel attempts to establish his credentials as an expert in the field by repeatedly referring to “our experience at Ohel”, so the book really needs to be read in the context of Ohel’s notorious record. Since the 1980’s when Ohel failed to warn the community about its “consultant”, infamous child molester Avraham Mondrowitz, thereby enabling him to escape justice, until this day Ohel has repeatedly been involved in protecting molesters, not children.
Even on the book cover in the short list of safety goals, “reporting” to the authorities is glaringly missing. While Rabbi Dovid Cohen commits to writing for the first time that one is “allowed” to report sex crimes to the police, he hedges his bet by equivocating that the issues of “mesirah, lashon harah and chillul Hashem” are complex, and one should consult “a competent halachic authority” when in question.
Unfortunately, consulting rabbis is exactly what parents and survivors of abuse have been doing until now with catastrophic results, as almost all rabbis, out of ignorance or cowardice have breached halacha and advised protecting the abusers. Ohel’s own internal policy for staff is that no therapist is allowed to report child abuse without clearing it with Rabbi Cohen, a policy that is in breach of mandated reporting laws.
Ohel’s misguided philosophy on dealing with abusers is due to the book’s stated belief in a “diversity of values and ends” that can create conflict among “reasonably rational, well intentioned persons…involved with sex offenders.” The “relevant stakeholders” that in Ohel’s opinion can “reasonably disagree on the ordering of priorities”, seem to include (based on Ohel’s history) the molester whose concern and legal right to confidentiality is constantly trumpeted by Ohel, the molester’s family, the community whose image is tarnished by revelations of criminality and deviancy, and the institutions that harbor molesters who want to protect their reputations and finances from lawsuits. This ideology of complex, relative moral values completely flies in the face of both Jewish and secular law that give simple, straightforward and unequivocal directives that protection of the past and future victims must be the primary value and consideration.
In their chapter on “treating” sexual predators, the authors ignore the experts who advocate that courts and probation departments play a particularly important role both as a motivating force, and an integral part of therapy. The Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers treatment guidelines also insist that “supervision agencies work closely with victim advocacy organizations to ensure that their policies do not re-traumatize victims of sexual assault,” an idea that is neither recommended in this book, nor practiced by Ohel.
One example of a policy that certainly re-traumatized victims of abuse is that instead of joining virtually all child advocates groups in supporting the Child Victim’s Act, (aka the “Markey Bill”) Ohel advocated for a “compromise” bill giving legal amnesty to abusers.[1] Furthermore, not a single of the recent pedophiles arrested in Brooklyn were brought to the attention of the authorities by Ohel, nor has Ohel given any support to the victims of abuse who courageously came forward to warn the public.
The book also continues to support the “Ohelian” idea that a rabbinic Beit Din should be utilized to address cases of child molestation. Refusing to learn from the fiasco of the Catholic Church’s shameful system of sheltering pedophile priests, or the doomed-to-failure attempts of the Batei Din of Yeshiva University, Lakewood, Baltimore, Los Angeles and Chicago to play “Law and Order” without the police, the editors and some of the authors are proud to help set up yet another rabbinical group to “deal with” (read: cover up for) sex crimes in Rockland County.[2]
In the chapter on “Prevention and Intervention Programs,” highly trained professionals give dangerously bad advice to parents. They state that although there is no halachic problem of reporting abuse to the authorities, it is “understandable” that orthodox professionals who are mandated reporters nevertheless feel hindered by cultural taboo from doing so. Even more shocking is that parents are admonished not to tell other parents in their child’s school if molestation occurs, because it is a “private matter.”
Silence is not always golden
Psychologists and crime prevention professionals have long known that in communication, one can often learn more about the speaker’s thoughts from that which is not said than from that which is. While claiming to “break the silence,” Ohel’s book continues to censor important information that the community needs to know. The most glaring omission is the voice of a survivor of abuse. While the disclosures that were taken from therapy sessions and edited letters are educational, sorely missing is a first-hand account of an adult survivor about the real life experience of surviving abuse in our community. Survivors of abuse will certainly feel that yet another opportunity was missed to finally give them a voice, and they have once again been shut out of the discussion. By comparison, in the recently published scholarly book, “Daas Torah: Child and Domestic Abuse,” edited by Rabbi Daniel Eidensohn and Baruch Shulem, Ph.D. (to which this writer also contributed) two powerful autobiographical chapters are included, allowing the reader to hear what survivors really think and feel, unedited and uncensored.
Furthermore, “Breaking the Silence” can break one’s eardrums with its silence about the history of scandalous communal cover-ups. It is utterly ludicrous to discuss abuse in the community without addressing the real betrayal experienced by survivors whose victimhood has been denied, minimized, and silenced by our establishment leaders for so long with threats and intimidation. Most survivors of abuse agree that the community response to child sexual abuse is often a worse trauma than the abuse. The parents who have had their children thrown out of yeshivas for the “crime” of disclosing abuse, the families that were literally run out of town, the children who were slapped in the face for daring to name their molester, will all read this book and think “Here we go again.” The reasons for this betrayal are not unknown, as Dr. Michael Salamon explains in his new book, “Abuse: How Extremist Views Undermine the Apprehension of Offenders and the Treatment of Victims.”
On a bright note, David Mandel’s own chapter does provide some comic relief. Although he admits that the rabbis, adult survivors and child advocates who brought this issue to the awareness of the community deserve recognition, he declines to name them with the excuse that he does not want to get them into trouble. As if survivors like Mark Weiss, David Framowitz, and Joel Engleman, Esther Malka Reich, Sara Rosenberg, advocates like Vicki Polin, Ben Hirsh, Michael Salamon, Mark Appel, Assemblyman Dov Hikind, rabbis like Nochem Rosenberg, Yosef Blau, Daniel Eidenshohn, and Yitzchak Eisenman or bloggers like Paul Mendlowitz of UOJ, or Shmarya Rosenberg of FailedMessiah fear backlash in standing up for child safety. Dr. Freud would surely interpret this notion as Mr. Mandel “projecting” his own fear of bringing attention to these individuals who have, almost to a person, been harshly critical of his record (in UOJ’s words) of “letting no cover-up go uncovered.”
[1] Mandel, D. (April 29, 2009) Sexual Abuse Legislation: A Proposed Strategy for Reform. Five Towns Jewish Times
[2] Orbach, M. (April 23, 2010) New Square appoints Vaad to deal with sexual abuse. The Jewish Star
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Failed Leadership!
CLICK ON LINK TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE:
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2008/11/19/failed-leadership-caused-the-financial-crisis?PageNr=1
"1. They should be authentic leaders, focused on serving their [clients] and all the institution's constituents, rather than [charismatic] leaders seeking money, fame, and power for themselves.
2. They should place the interests of their institutions and society as a whole above their own interests.
3. They should have the integrity to tell the whole truth, admit their mistakes, and acknowledge their shortcomings. Authentic leadership is not about being perfect. It is having the courage to admit when you're wrong and to get on with solving problems, rather than covering them up.
4. They need to adapt quickly to new realities, changing themselves as well as their institutions, rather than going into denial when things don't go as intended.
5. They need the resilience to bounce back after devastating losses. Resilience enables leaders to restore trust by empowering people to create new solutions that build great institutions for the future."
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2008/11/19/failed-leadership-caused-the-financial-crisis?PageNr=1
"1. They should be authentic leaders, focused on serving their [clients] and all the institution's constituents, rather than [charismatic] leaders seeking money, fame, and power for themselves.
2. They should place the interests of their institutions and society as a whole above their own interests.
3. They should have the integrity to tell the whole truth, admit their mistakes, and acknowledge their shortcomings. Authentic leadership is not about being perfect. It is having the courage to admit when you're wrong and to get on with solving problems, rather than covering them up.
4. They need to adapt quickly to new realities, changing themselves as well as their institutions, rather than going into denial when things don't go as intended.
5. They need the resilience to bounce back after devastating losses. Resilience enables leaders to restore trust by empowering people to create new solutions that build great institutions for the future."
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Can You Hear Me Now? - Part 3 - Yeshiva Torah Vodaath Versus Lipa Margulies - Part Two
THE UOJ ARCHIVES:
CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE:
Ten years after Rav Yaakov Kaminetzky zt"l forced Lipa Margulies to surrender his property at 150 Ocean Parkway to Bais Din, to be held in Trust pending a full accounting of the sources of the millions of dollars raised under the name Yeshiva Torah Vodaath of Flatbush, Rabbi Gedalya Schorr (a good friend of Margulies), released the property back to Margulies WITHOUT any accounting of the millions of dollars raised, with a "promise" from Margulies to never use the name of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath again or lose 150 Ocean Parkway (which was sold subsequently by Margulies). That would make it a full 21 years that Margulies was raising large sums of money from the unwitting masses, under the guise of being Yeshiva Torah Vodaath. By that time, Margulies had already built the new building at 555 Ocean Parkway, and Rabbi Gedalya Schorr had attended the groundbreaking years before, during his tenure as principal or menahel of YTV.
It is interesting to note, and no coincidence, that Frank Klein, the deceased nursing home magnate, who in 1966 was on the original deed transferring the property to YTV, and a board member of Margulies' school, in 1977 was a board member of YTV, a very close ally of Margulies and Schorr, and a very "prominent" Ger chasid, as was Rabbi Schorr (for different reasons of course).
This could only have been done if R' Yaakov Kaminetzky or his designated rosh yeshiva of YTV, R' Zelig Epstein, was out of the hanhala of YTV....
With these facts now disclosed, we will shortly revisit the years of YTV after R' Reuvain Grozofsky z"tl passed away, the subsequent din Torah with Rabbi Aaron Kotler z"tl, his ruling regarding Rabbi Schorr's duties at YTV, the fierce battle for the Rosh Yeshiva position waged by Rabbi Schorr once Rabbi Kaminetzky announced his intentions to retire in 1966, and the events that ultimately destroyed Beth Medrash Elyon in Monsey, and brought YTV to the brink of disaster, causing YTV to become a third-rate Banana yeshiva!
CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE & PRINT!
Monday, August 15, 2011
Can You Hear Me Now? - Part 2 - What I Would Say at The Agudah Convention!
THE UOJ ARCHIVES NOVEMBER 2010:
The first, last and only time I attended a convention sponsored by the Agudath Israel, is when it took place at the Pioneer Country Club in upstate New York; the brilliant accountants that are here tonight I'm certain can tell you how long ago that was without taking off their socks.
I was a bochur, just turning eighteen at the time, I looked forward to spending Shabbos in the presence of my rosh yeshiva, and a few classmates from yeshiva that were also Pirchei leaders. I did not know what to expect, and indeed it was a disappointing display by the "esteemed" baalei batim of their new cars, their wives' jewelry and designer clothes. Single girls of marriageable age were being hawked off to the would be shadchanim and parents of eligible boys. For the most part, bochurim of marriageable age were not invited. Food was being gulped down by the pound and by the cow, and the waiters were sweating bullets keeping up with the crowd. At breakfast on Friday, one behaimishe baal habayis tells his waiter, " I vant an omelette mit ah dozen - 12 eggs, fried on baider zeiten, and if it's 11 eggs, I'll know -- hahaha". Putz! We kids were sitting at the entrance to the kitchen as the waiter rushes in to tell his story. Ugly I tell you, stuff that stays with you for a lifetime.
I swore I'd never go back, and never did.
Rabbi Joshua Silbermintz a"h (aka Josh - a name that I would never call him by), asked me at the third Shabbos meal (shalosh seudas)...if I would please speak to the assembly about the importance of Pirchei; the second scheduled speaker took ill. He gave me 10 minutes to Shir Ha'maalot.
As Moshe Sherer taught, never begin your speech with " I'm not really prepared", so I stood up and blurted out what came to my mind, that's been on my mind since my very brief stint as a Pirchei leader.
".... Parents - what we must all learn from the Avos and Imahos - our patriarchs, Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov and their rebbetzins --- is the sacrifices and love showed to their children. Avraham Avinu was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice with Yitzchak -- and the Torah goes out of its way to describe the love Yitzchak and Yaakov, Rivkah, Leah and Rachel had for their children. I quoted the relevant psukim and Rashi to a now attentive crowd. I continued... Many or most of you here tonight are survivors, you know the meaning of heartache. I went on now... raising the pitch of my voice (I was a quick learner); you have an obligation to teach your children that sleeping Shabbos afternoon is not more important than the walking of your children to Pirchei and Bnos...leaving them hefker in the streets (in what was then a very safe Crown Heights). [Many kids wandered off to Lefferts Av. Park and to other unsupervised places,]... your childrens' safety is paramount. I beseech you to please pay heed to your childrens' physical and emotional safety. Thank you".
Nothing changed; I resigned my high-paying job.
And in all these years, parents trusted their kids to people that used their kids as "objects" - either making money off of them in their schools, summer camps, seminaries etc., and as we now know, that in every yeshiva and girls school, many kids were sexually, physically and emotionally abused by staff members, principals, teachers --- and these crimes were covered up by criminal circus midgets with long beards, like the ones sitting at your dais here tonight.
I look around this room and I know many of you; I find it incredible to believe that you are here showing support for this criminal enterprise. In effect, you have created "a race to the bottom" of what was once a beautiful heritage and tradition. Have you no shame? What will your legacy be, if not leaving the world a much worse place than how you found it? Your kids are ashamed of you --- and are voting with their souls, hearts and feet " out of here!"
Don't take my word for it! Did you read Mishpacha magazine? Who do you think you're kidding? They see through you! They know that there's not a darn thing about your lifestyle that they want to have anything to do with!
Hashem had sent His messenger to America in September 1913 to set up shop with a model that would work for American Jewry. And a model that was mostly foolproof until the end of time. Children were to be cared for and loved by how you educated them. They were to be first and foremost bnei Torah in all its glory. Being a mensch was not optional! They needed to spend most of their school day with model rebbes/humans... not some garbage can with a lid that the sanitation department would refuse to pick up!
They needed to be educated as proud Americans, with full knowledge of most every subject taught in American secular schools (at the time). They needed to understand that they would one day need to go out in the world and either be a proud supporter of Torah institutions, or become a member or founder of a Torah institution. There was no gray area;... in order to support Torah, you had to appreciate what you learned as a child. And you had to love it, not loathe or fear it! In order to "stay in chinuch" you had to excel in your abilities, in your emunah, in your middos, and wisdom of the printed Torah and its spirit. And that required that you had to give up the so-called good-life, "without ever having to say you're sorry!" There had to be mesiras nefesh, knowing that your ben Torah neighbor that has gone to work, may have a nicer car than you.
Look at you! Look at what you have become! Either felons, or felons that have not been caught yet!
You trusted your kids to lowlifes, degenerates and perverts! They'd sell you down the river in a second, the second you stopped giving them money, or not as much as they wanted from you! And then your kid would be out on the street too, because he "did not measure up"! Which guy at the dais here has to be concerned about mundane issues like paying their mortgage, or tuition? Do they even have a mortgage? Or was it paid off with your money combined with whatever they could steal from Uncle Sam?
So why are you here?
There was a reason that Dr. Joseph Kaminetzky was appointed the head of Torah Umesorah. He graduated from Columbia University and had the wisdom needed in every area of education, and was rightfully in charge of the curriculum in each and every Torah Umesorah affiliated school.
It was no coincidence that Dr. David Stern was selected as menahel/principal of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath. He too was a graduate of Columbia University and a rabbi at one of the early Young Israel synagogues.
And when Rabbi Alexander Linchner z"l left his position at Mesifta Torah Vodaath to focus full time on the building of Boys Town Jerusalem, he hired Rabbi Moshe Lonner PhD, to be the high school secular studies principal; with the same intent, gusto and spirit that his father in-law had in appointing Drs. Kaminetzky and Stern to their respective positions.
So how did we get here? What group of ignoramuses led us down this path of "the more ignorant, the more uneducated, the more dumb" -- the better? "Where are the lomdim?" an ultra-orthodox rabbi recently bellowed! Where are the Torah scholars?
What have you done to your kids and their kids?
Go back to the original model set up by Hakodesh Baruch Hu Himself; pick the few select students to toil in Torah, to stay in chinuch, and to be a model for your grandchildren. Get rid of the gangsters running the American yeshiva system and its affiliated organizations -- they have already destroyed two complete generations.
Genug!
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Can You Hear Me Now?
THE UOJ CLASSICS - FEBRUARY 19, 2007!
Quotes from Samuel Reshevsky a former U.S. Chess Grandmaster
( and a devout Orthodox Jew)
"By playing slowly during the early phases of a game I am able to grasp the basic requirements of each position. Then, despite being in time pressure, I have no difficulty in finding the best continuation. Incidentally, it is an odd fact that more often than not it is my opponent who gets the jitters when I am compelled to make these hurried moves."
His self-description, "I am essentially a positional player, although I can conduct an assault with precision and vigor, when the opportunity arises. My strength consists of a fighting spirit, a great desire to win, and a stubborn defense whenever in trouble. I rarely become discouraged in an inferior situation, and I fear no one." ----
*
I played Chess with Samuel Reshevsky when I was a teenager, five times. I played him to a draw twice and lost three times (badly) after he figured out my weakness. That weakness is extreme impatience. But I learned a great deal from him and used his strategy as a guide in navigating life.
Ever since I can remember I loved a challenge and a good fight. I would not necessarily go looking for it, it always found me. But fight I did, and rarely lost. Bruised, absolutely, sometimes badly, but rarely lost!
So here we are, after being bruised and battered by evil and corrupt rabbis for decades, after permitting these same rabbis to permit all kinds of malfeasance in the name of daas Torah and Halacha, including their own, we dare include a "rabbi" like Shmuel Kaminetzky back into the fray of rabbi-permitted sexual abuse, by having him OK a script for a sexual abuse video for our children.
Here's the point; I'm going to attempt to remain calm, no promises.
FACTS:
Shmuel Kaminetzky knew that Moshe Eiseman was a pedophile some 35 years ago when numerous boys came forward in the Yeshiva Of Philadelphia. So did Elya Svei. I spoke to and communicated with many of those boys who are now in their sixties. There is irrefutable evidence that Eiseman was sent to Ner Israel in Baltimore because Kaminetzky and Svei were afraid their business, aka yeshiva, would be tarnished.
Kaminetzky sat smiling on the Agudah dais Fress Convention nodding approvingly of Mattisyahu Salomon's "under the rug-dignity-daas Torah-beat the [@#$%EDITED] out of the Bloggers" speech!
So now Eiseman is in Baltimore doing his thing, Kaminetzky's son in-law Tzvi Berkowitz, a rebbe in Ner Israel is told by more than a few boys some 20 years ago that Eiseman molested them. His response; "don't tell anyone, the yeshiva could get hurt." Any rational person would safely assume that Berkowitz discussed this with Kaminetzky. Nothing! Eiseman remains, and is promoted to a mashgiach ruchni of sorts, now he has access to the ENTIRE high school.
I called Shmuel Kaminetzky about a year ago under a pseudonym of the son of one of his benefactors. I asked him squarely; my son is in Torah Temimah, should I be concerned that Kolko has interaction with my son.
His response and I paraphrase; "The Jews have the ability to do teshuva even in cases of this nature; unless there were very recent credible accusations against Kolko, WE MUST ASSUME HE DID TESHUVA!"
I then asked him would he permit his grandchild to be in the privacy of Kolko's office; he asked for my phone number and would not answer the question. I hung up!
Debbie Fox in L.A. has Shmuel Kaminetzky reviewing the video presentation for viewing by children. What are Kaminetzky's qualifications?
DID HE DO TESHUVA? DID HE APOLOGIZE TO ALL OF THE VICTIMS OF MOSHE EISEMAN THAT HE WAS AWARE OF? DID HE TELL HIS SON IN-LAW TZVI BERKOWITZ TO APOLOGIZE TO THE VICTIMS OF MOSHE EISEMAN?
Nothing much has really changed, other than spinning it differently!
RABBIS THAT ARE NOT PROFESSIONALLY TRAINED IN SEXUAL ABUSE ISSUES HAVE NO RIGHT TO GO ANYWHERE NEAR THIS ISSUE!
Mandel and Horowitz from Ohel are still of the opinion that rabbis have a voice in this conversation, and under certain circumstances should be consulted.
I SAY NEVER! GO TO THE POLICE AND LET THEM SORT IT OUT!
Dovid and Reuvain Feinstein were aware 20 years ago that a young child in their family was molested by Kolko. Their excuse, they did not want to go up against Margulies. These two are the "best" of what we have as rabbis today. Do they know what they're doing on sexual abuse? Can they really be human?
They should be locked up!
We still don't get it!
The best of the rabbis I'm communicating with on the issue of child molestation still refer to the yetzer tov and yetzer ra as evil inclinations that can be overcome with teshuva!!!!!!
Rabbis are tripping over themselves asking for mechila for bad-mouthing me.
I SAY NO ON BEHALF OF ALL THE VICTIMS' LIVES THAT YOU PARTICIPATED IN DESTROYING BY YOUR ACTION OR INACTION!
Suggestion:
ALL YESHIVAS SHOULD HIRE A MEDICAL DOCTOR-THERAPIST THAT IS NOT OF THE JEWISH FAITH THAT IS ON STAFF! ALL CHILDREN AND THEIR PARENTS SHOULD HAVE FREE ACCESS TO THIS DOCTOR! HE/SHE REPORTS ONLY TO THE PARENT BODY, NOT TO THE RABBIS OF THE SCHOOL! THE DOCTOR WOULD BE A MANDATED REPORTER THAT IS NOT UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF BOGUS "HALACHA" AND WOULD BE REQUIRED BY LAW TO GO STRAIGHT TO THE POLICE WHEN CREDIBLE ACCUSATIONS ARE MADE!
GET RID OF THE RABBIS....ALL OF THEM! GET THE POLICE INVOLVED! GET CHILD SERVICES INVOLVED! RAISE HELL LIKE YOUR LIVES AND YOUR KIDS' LIVES DEPEND ON IT, BECAUSE IT DOES!
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
The Violence of Silence!
http://thejewishreporter.com/2011/08/02/leibys-lesson-the-violence-of-silence/
By RABBI GARY MOSKOWITZ
Still in shock we must focus our attention to how such a horrific tragedy could occur and what went wrong in the rescue efforts of precious innocent Leiby. There are those who don’t want to point fingers as they must realize by now are pointing in their direction and threaten the very fabric of the way they do business in the community and with government. Ignorance and arrogance permeates the air in Boro Park and in much of the orthodox Jewish community.
Egregious errors in judgment leading to serious ethics violations at best to sinister crimes will be exposed which I pray compel the city or state to hold hearings how the community and police conspire to protect their images at the cost of great suffering of the weak and most frail in our community. Yes, I believe the Leiby murder could have been prevented if proper caution and care were taken prior to the kidnapping and certainly if the rescue effort was more professional. I am detailing this with other cases in my book “Chasing Justice – I am my Brother’s Keeper.”
The insular orthodox community which breeds insular crime feels that a collective appearance which influences both public and private funding is more important than the individual no matter what the misery. Pedophiles and domestic batterers have a good life knowing that there is little chance their victim will come forward out fear of the community’s religious psychological terror campaign against anyone who threatens the ban of approaching the secular courts or press. Many in the religious leadership indoctrinate their congregants and followers that they would be in violation of Jewish law if they would turn in any Jew to an outside jurisdiction namely our secular courts regardless of their crimes against their community. They fail to realize they are not living in ancient sovereign Israel as they have no jurisdiction in criminal matters as they openly violate the law of our land which by itself is a violation of Jewish law and this is accomplished and facilitated under the protection of many politicians kowtowing to their strong influence from block voting.
Beyond the public congratulations between the volunteer’s community’s security patrol known as the Shomrim and the NYPD there are deep feelings of mistrust and resentment emanating from both sides. The NYPD knows that the Shomrim are not accountable to anyone, have little or no professional training, hinder serious criminal investigations and yet the community has more faith and trust in them as they often seem to show up the NYPD on many occasions. The Shomrim experiences regularly the often reported headline news of the NYPD’s incompetency, laziness and outright refusal to take and investigate complaints as the rest of us know. While disdain runs both ways their relationship is cemented by a larger common interest – keeping the statistics low anyway possible regardless of violations of law. This complicit relationship often means people like the murderer Levy Aron often stays out of harm’s way until there is a body count. The police keep crime down when they don’t report it and Boro Park keeps their image.
Every second is crucial in a missing child’s case. There is no time to guess during an emergency. The following information comes from multi-media reports, interviews with reporters, parents in Boro Park, the Shomrim, canvassing volunteers and with members of the NYPD on the abduction and murder of Leiby Kletsky. I am convinced more information will come out shedding light on the debacle of the case. This is a brief oversimplification of the problems of the Leiby kidnapping/murder case which collectively contributed to this human tragedy.
There is no parent training in Child Safety for most of the community and since most do not watch television or use on the internet for fear of being over exposed to the bad influences of the world they do not have access to much public information on the subject. There is no community preparation for the obvious, missing kids, awareness of sex offenders in area, terror attack etc. As a result ignorance overwhelms many people. Most people I spoke with still believe that a child has to be missing for 24 hours first before the Police get involved which is not true. The Jewish civilian patrol Shomrim like most civilian patrols have little or no professional training and often practice rescue searches during the emergency itself. Rabbinical pressure on the community to call a rabbi first or their designees in this case the Shomrim regarding crimes are a must with full knowledge of the NYPD. This includes missing child cases as the rabbinical leadership does not desire unwanted scrutiny in their community which is fodder for another article.
Leiby’s mother waited an hour before calling for help and then she first called the Shomrim. The Shomrim then waited another three hours to notify the police thereby loosing precious time where if the NYPD was brought in right away other resources could have been deployed. Additionally the Shomrim keeps records of suspected criminals/pedophiles which the police department has no access to opening legal consequences from the right and left and while they have access themselves they have no authority to do anything with it without involving civil and/or criminal activities. Finally thousands of dedicated volunteers showed up with no clear direction.
When police finally arrive it became a fanfare of high profile imaging where commanders flaunt their political friendships without the proper investigative tactics which ultimately could have saved the boy’s life. The hero here is a man name Yakov German who initially had the idea to check the video surveillance cameras from the stores surrounding the school/camp area where Leiby was walking from.
Why weren’t the police detectives and commanders many who are getting paid over $110,000 a year and many with only a high school diploma pouring through these videos like Yakov German did right away? Even when they first got Yakov’s video showing Leiby’s last whereabouts it took them hours longer to bring in another detective who specializes in identifying cars to identify the car of Levy Aron.
From reports in the media and from volunteers who were there validated my own assumption from my prior experiences as a police officer with these cases involving the NYPD. Complacency with no immediate sense of urgency resonated from some officers believing that little Leiby will turn up later as what happens in most cases they work on. The “Here we go again attitude” where the belief is that Leiby is probably at a friends house where he fell asleep. This is very similar to when officers answer commercial and residential burglar alarms. With so many being false the police often become lax in their response and investigation. They need to treat every case as real and think of the false alarms as practice for when the real thing happens.
Even more insidious is the belief by many in the community and by some of the officers working there that the Chassidic orthodox Jews have too much clout which negatively affects their police performance. One cop asked me, “Do you think the police brass with all their helicopters and squads of detectives would have come if there was a missing black kid? Two weeks after this diabolical murder the police in the 66 precinct in Boro Park still have not received any additional training about missing children or dealing with the local public as was reported to me by officers in the command. In short the police need much retraining in thinking and investigating.
After Leiby’s murder the Jewish community had a hug fest thanking the police and other groups for their sincerity in helping to find Leiby. Huge ads were taken in the Jewish press. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I am sure everyone sincerely wanted to find Leiby alive and well. However their lack of training and lack of professionalism precluded this. I sincerely hope that there was an error in the media when it reported that members of the police department said that the time factor of receiving the videos depicting where Leiby was last seen wouldn’t have made a difference. According to the medical examiner Lieby wasn’t murdered until Tuesday.
Leiby could have and should have been found alive and there is plenty of blame and blood to go around!
In my recent meetings with NY State Senator Marty Golden, NYC Council Public Safety Chair Peter Vallone, Congressional candidate David Weprin and NYS Assembly Dov Hikind’s legislative staff member I detailed some practical and legislative recommendations to protect our children and community. These are recommendations I have made in the past regarding protecting us from child abductions, terrorism and crime.
High grade cameras installed around businesses near schools and Houses of Worship which are accessible in real time from the internet so there is no waiting hours to access fuzzy video footage.
Video footage needs to be monitored regularly so we can detail hostile surveillance from potential abductors. If a pedophile is hanging out at a school or camp it can be detected before a situation arises. Police reports mention that this was a chance encounter by a loner. We don’t know that and there is a real possibility that Levy Aron as with other abductors was tracking Leiby and that he could have been working with another accomplice.
Technology has come of age where we can outfit every child with a tracking device on their person like we put on our cars. Every kid seven and older can carry a cell phone programmed to call only their parents or 911. Alarms can be programmed and placed on children that go off when they separate at a certain distance.
We must train and deploy a citizen detective program training parents how they can assist and facilitate police investigations very much the auxiliary police do with patrol. Compel professional training to volunteer community patrols like the Shomrim who are dedicated to keeping their community safe or they should lose all funding.
Enforce mandated reporting of educators and specific community leaders including clergy with criminal and civil penalties for not reporting suspected crimes against children and with cases of domestic violence.
Schools, camps and youth programs should not release kids except to a parent or a responsible adult approved by the parents.
Make available the listing of all residential sexual offenders in the community.
Legislation needs to be passed that in the investigation of any child abduction or terror attack the police do not need the permission of any owner to access the video saving hours of time.
Mandating parochial schools and camps for all their staff to be fingerprinted and go through a similar background check as the NYC Department of Education puts their teachers through.
Creation of a NYS license called “Child Safety Specialist” where every public and private school and camp would be mandated to have a Child Safety Specialist training kids, parents and educators a few times annually before, during and after school starts.
Anyone who is aware that a child is missing within the first hour and doesn’t report it to their police department should face felony charges.
Offer tax credits for those who spend funds on safety for their children from martial arts classes, Safety Instructional DVDs, safety cameras to child safety classes. Creation of our Clergy 911 program where all clergy would be trained in crisis intervention and mandating reporting.
A government, religion and community are judged by how they protect the weakest in their society; the sick, the poor, the victim and the oppressed. The bible is replete with statements like “Justice, Justice You Should Pursue and “Don’t Stand Idly by the Blood of your Neighbor” and much more. Denying justice to the weakest for some warped sense of community/religious image is a threat to justice everywhere. Since most of the leadership is either complicit or missing in inaction we are appealing to mothers to rise up and protect your children, yourselves and Jewish and American law.
Our group the Child Safety Initiative made up of professionals in the health, medical, educational, police, legal and rabbinic fields are calling for a federal civil rights probe leading to hearings to determine which mandated organization, educational institution, community group and individuals working with the minority Jewish community were/are coercing individuals not to assert their rights in reporting crimes and testifying in court against their assailants. We implore victims and those who are aware of victims in the community to come forward to us. We can offer those coming forward protection by working with the Department of Justice. We are also calling for any rabbi or community leader who espouses their congregants and people to go to a rabbi first in the event of a suspected crime bypassing the police should face criminal and civil rights charges.
Lastly as I strenuously try to apply my grief and anger management techniques to myself my advice for my own Orthodox community is I pray you awaken from your coma soon. Don’t wait again for a body count. Take your energies, money and resources and invest it in practical preventive and therapeutic care. The community doesn’t need more dedications of Torahs and synagogues in memorials. We need more safety and security for our children in our communities.
We at the Child Safety Initiative have been offering child safety seminars and martial arts classes regularly. We are completing our first Child Safety DVD which will be available shortly and we are hosting a Child Safety and Health conference at the last week of August at the Kutcher’s Hotel. In September we are holding our first annual Child Safety and Health Legislative forum. Don’t be reactive be proactive.
As the Jewish New Year approaches and Jews around the world become more reflective of their lives I kneel before God scratching the floor weeping in agony looking towards the heavens with shouts from my heart – Why? I can almost hear whispers of, “Don’t ask God – ask Man!
Rabbi Gary Moskowitz is director of the Child Safety Initiative and can be contacted at gavriael@aol.com
Sunday, August 07, 2011
UOJ Downgrades Standards & Poor Religion To D - *Outlook Negative*!
UOJ Keywords - Religious Jew, Length of Beard, Sexual Abuse of a Minor, Holy Man, Archbishop, Child Endangerment, Sexual Abuse, Transferring of Predatory Priests, Conspiracy & Dementia:
Behold the Mighty Beard, a Badge of Piety and Religious Belonging
by Mark Oppenheimer - THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: August 6, 2011
Go ahead, picture a religious Jew.
Now picture a Muslim cleric.
Now an Amish farmer.
What do they have in common? Beards. And not neatly trimmed beards, but, in the popular stereotype, long, unruly beards, which connote piety, spiritual intensity and a life so hard at study that there is no time for a shave. The scholar, the mystic, the terrorist, the holy man — they all have beards.
Last month, the connection between hirsuteness and religiosity appeared in federal court, not for the first time. In this latest case, a federal court refused to consider the appeal of a Jewish prisoner in New Hampshire who had bristled against regulations limiting his beard to a quarter-inch.
In upholding a 2010 summary judgment against the prisoner, Albert Kuperman, convicted in 2002 of sexually molesting a minor, the First Circuit panel did not disagree that Mr. Kuperman had a religious obligation to refrain from shaving. But it concluded, in a decision issued July 14, that “alternative means remained open for Kuperman to exercise the constitutionally protected right at issue.” The prison, in other words, had to allow Mr. Kuperman, who has since been released, some avenue for religious observance, but not every avenue.
Being bearded is just one of many obligations that some strictly religious Jewish men uphold. Only one of the Torah’s 613 commandments applies to facial hair, and scholars disagree on the commandment’s interpretation.
But the beard is integral to many men’s religious identities, not just religious Jews’. The beard, especially the really big beard, constitutes a look, one that dictates how they are perceived by the world.
“Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard,” according to Leviticus 19:27. That commandment has produced reams of rabbinic commentary. Some traditional Jews believe only the chin must remain unshaven. Others argue the unshaven area is larger, and some teachings hold that the prohibition against shaving extends to the neck. Rabbis draw distinctions between shaving (forbidden) and practices like cutting the hair with scissors, plucking it with tweezers and removing it with depilatories (depending on whom you ask, possibly permitted).
But to focus on the legalisms misses the point. In many religious communities, the beard is the man’s ID badge, his sign of membership. Like the Hasid’s black hat or the Muslim’s kufi, it’s what he acquires when he joins the community, and it’s what he gets rid of when he leaves. It is a form of religious garb, with different versions in different religious tribes......"
CLICK ON LINKS FOR THE ENTIRE ARTICLE:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/06/us/06beliefs.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/06/us/06brfs-CARDINALISSU_BRF.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
Pennsylvania: Cardinal Is Summoned to Court
by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 6, 2011
A judge on Friday summoned the former Philadelphia archbishop to court on Sept. 12 to see if he should be deposed in a sexual abuse case. Prosecutors want to preserve the testimony of Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, 88, for next year’s trial because he has cancer and dementia. Monsignor William Lynn, 60, secretary for clergy under Cardinal Bevilacqua, is accused of transferring predatory priests to new parishes and is charged with child endangerment and conspiracy. Three priests and a former teacher are charged with rape.
Behold the Mighty Beard, a Badge of Piety and Religious Belonging
by Mark Oppenheimer - THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: August 6, 2011
Go ahead, picture a religious Jew.
Now picture a Muslim cleric.
Now an Amish farmer.
What do they have in common? Beards. And not neatly trimmed beards, but, in the popular stereotype, long, unruly beards, which connote piety, spiritual intensity and a life so hard at study that there is no time for a shave. The scholar, the mystic, the terrorist, the holy man — they all have beards.
Last month, the connection between hirsuteness and religiosity appeared in federal court, not for the first time. In this latest case, a federal court refused to consider the appeal of a Jewish prisoner in New Hampshire who had bristled against regulations limiting his beard to a quarter-inch.
In upholding a 2010 summary judgment against the prisoner, Albert Kuperman, convicted in 2002 of sexually molesting a minor, the First Circuit panel did not disagree that Mr. Kuperman had a religious obligation to refrain from shaving. But it concluded, in a decision issued July 14, that “alternative means remained open for Kuperman to exercise the constitutionally protected right at issue.” The prison, in other words, had to allow Mr. Kuperman, who has since been released, some avenue for religious observance, but not every avenue.
Being bearded is just one of many obligations that some strictly religious Jewish men uphold. Only one of the Torah’s 613 commandments applies to facial hair, and scholars disagree on the commandment’s interpretation.
But the beard is integral to many men’s religious identities, not just religious Jews’. The beard, especially the really big beard, constitutes a look, one that dictates how they are perceived by the world.
“Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard,” according to Leviticus 19:27. That commandment has produced reams of rabbinic commentary. Some traditional Jews believe only the chin must remain unshaven. Others argue the unshaven area is larger, and some teachings hold that the prohibition against shaving extends to the neck. Rabbis draw distinctions between shaving (forbidden) and practices like cutting the hair with scissors, plucking it with tweezers and removing it with depilatories (depending on whom you ask, possibly permitted).
But to focus on the legalisms misses the point. In many religious communities, the beard is the man’s ID badge, his sign of membership. Like the Hasid’s black hat or the Muslim’s kufi, it’s what he acquires when he joins the community, and it’s what he gets rid of when he leaves. It is a form of religious garb, with different versions in different religious tribes......"
CLICK ON LINKS FOR THE ENTIRE ARTICLE:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/06/us/06beliefs.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/06/us/06brfs-CARDINALISSU_BRF.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
Pennsylvania: Cardinal Is Summoned to Court
by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 6, 2011
A judge on Friday summoned the former Philadelphia archbishop to court on Sept. 12 to see if he should be deposed in a sexual abuse case. Prosecutors want to preserve the testimony of Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, 88, for next year’s trial because he has cancer and dementia. Monsignor William Lynn, 60, secretary for clergy under Cardinal Bevilacqua, is accused of transferring predatory priests to new parishes and is charged with child endangerment and conspiracy. Three priests and a former teacher are charged with rape.
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