Democratic State Senator Brad Hoylman speaking in favor of The Child Victims Act at the New York State Capitol, in January. Credit
Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times
If
the #MeToo movement of the last few months has taught us anything, it’s
that it is extremely painful and risky for victims of sexual harassment
or assault — even those with power, money and connections — to speak
out against their abusers. Now consider how much harder it must be for a
child.
It
should surprise no one that a vast majority of people who were sexually
abused as children never report it. For those who do, it takes years,
and often decades, to recognize what happened to them, realize it wasn’t
their fault and tell someone. The trauma leads to higher rates of
alcoholism and drug abuse, depression, suicide and other physical and
psychological problems that cost millions or billions to treat — money
that should be paid not by taxpayers, but by the offenders and the
institutions that cover for them.
For
these reasons, many states — including eight last year alone — have
done the right thing and extended or eliminated statutes of limitations
for the reporting of child sexual abuse. This has encouraged more
victims to come forward and seek justice for abuse that was never
properly addressed, if it was addressed at all.
New
York, which has had no shortage of child sex-abuse scandals, should be
on that list. In fact, it should be leading the nation on this issue.
Instead it, along with Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama and Michigan, is
one of the states with the least victim-friendly reporting laws in the
country. New York requires most child sex-abuse victims to sue by the
age of 23, 19 years before the average age at which such victims report
their abuse.
Lawmakers have had the solution in their hands for more than a decade. The Child Victims Act
would extend the statute of limitations to age 50 in civil cases, and
to age 28 in criminal cases. It would also establish a one-year window
in which anyone would be permitted to bring a lawsuit, even if the
statute of limitations had already expired.
The
bill enjoys widespread and bipartisan support in Albany — it passed the
State Assembly once again in 2017, by a vote of 139 to 7 — and from
Gov. Andrew Cuomo. And yet it keeps failing to become law.
Why? The Senate majority leader, John Flanagan,
a Republican, has refused to let the bill come to the floor for a vote.
The bill’s opponents, which include the Catholic Church, Orthodox
Jewish groups and the Boy Scouts of America, are concerned primarily
with the one-year window, which they believe would cause a wave of
claims that could drive churches, schools and hospitals into bankruptcy.
That hasn’t happened in other states, even those that opened the window
for longer. In Minnesota, which created a three-year window for a
population a little more than a quarter of New York’s, just under 1,000
civil claims have been filed.
But
even if it did, we should be less concerned with protecting the bank
accounts of institutions that might harbor sexual predators, and more
concerned with bringing justice to the victims — whether their abusers
are clergy members, teachers or, as in a majority of cases, a family
member.
The
Child Victims Act should have passed on its merits long ago. Since it
hasn’t, Mr. Cuomo needs to step up and demonstrate the leadership he has
shown on many other divisive issues in recent years, like same-sex
marriage. If Mr. Cuomo includes the bill’s provisions in the 2018-19
state budget, which he is scheduled to present on Tuesday, he will make
it extremely tough for Mr. Flanagan and other Republican leaders to say
no to protecting New York’s most vulnerable victims.
For some time now, we have heard that many of our youth are in a bad way—drinking, drugs, scandalous behavior—all of which have given rise to problems
in schools. There have been conferences and seminars, calls for better
education and improved communication. And the schools have generally
responded to credible accusations of misconduct with a quick but
somewhat selective trigger finger—especially in their use of expulsions.
A number of people have reported to me about a party that took place
recently in the metropolitan area that attracted a lot of teens and
involved mass drinking and revelry, with the parents of the host
conveniently out-of-town. (There were probably many other and similar
parties of which I am unaware.) And the schools have dutifully responded
with the range of disciplines at their disposal, and applied to the
great variety of offenders under their dominion in inconsistent ways. I
have always been a law-and-order man; schools should have rules just
like life has rules because otherwise there is chaos and anarchy. But I
think we have gone too far in these situations to the extent that I have
changed my mind. I used to think that it was appropriate for schools to
monitor their students’ behavior even off campus and react when there
is degenerate behavior, and in an ideal world that would still hold
true. But I no longer believe that. Schools should monitor what students
do on their premises, and that’s it. And off premises? That is the
responsibility of the parents. Remember them? Parents
used to have primary responsibility for parenting, discipline, and
instilling values in their children. Sometime in the recent past,
parents abdicated that responsibility to the schools, and the results
have not been pretty. For example: What parent lets a teenager go to a
party of teenagers that has no responsible adult in charge? (I say
“responsible” because not all adults are responsible.) You would have to
be insane to allow such a thing. My children were trustworthy, but I
would never let them as teens go to an unsupervised party. My wife and I
would monitor, as best as possible, with whom our children would
socialize. That is elementary parenting. Forget
the schools. As far as I am concerned, it’s none of the school’s
business what happens off campus. It’s the parents’ business—and parents
have to reclaim their role. Indeed, parents have many more disciplinary
tools in their arsenal than schools do. They should use them, without
fear of losing their children as “buddies.” That
being said, I have reconsidered something else. Schools have to stop
these willy-nilly expulsions of students, which have become (1) a
marketing tool (“Look at us! We expelled two students for unacceptable
behavior. Problem solved. Send your children to us!”), (2) a deterrent
that has clearly failed given the widespread misconduct that apparently
exists and (3) a tacit admission that schools don’t have the time,
interest or energy to deal with every child with a problem. I was slow
to come around to this but I have realized that was once unthinkable has
become normative, and again, quite selectively applied. A few months
ago, I was sent a video a few months ago of Rav Moshe Weinberger (the
Rav of Aish Kodesh) pleading with principals
to remember their own youth. “What were you like when you were 17?” Why
are they pretending that all was so perfect that now we can just
dispatch Jewish children into the spiritual wilderness? My
initial reaction was that it is easy for someone not in chinuch to make
such a broad statement and encourage such a policy change—banning
expulsions—but as I pondered his comments over the course of a few
weeks, I realized that he was correct. Teens are teens, and even if the
parameters of “acting out” have widened over the decades since I was a
teenager, and mostly in very unsalutary ways, I do not doubt that there
are today principals and Roshei Yeshiva, teachers and rabbis, who acted
as teens in ways that they chalk up to adolescent hijinks. Yet, they—or
their boards—do not want to give today’s children the same break or a
compassionate hand. I certainly do not lay all the blame at the feet of
the principals or administrators who are often confronted with
conflicting pressures that cannot all be resolved to the satisfaction of
all. And
then I started my research on my “Great Rabbis of the 20th Century”
series and to my astonishment, I determined that these giants dealt with
the same issues in a much more tolerant, loving and probably effective
way. The Alter of Slabodka, for example, never agreed to expel a
student. (Keep in mind that Slabodka had its share of students who
desecrated Shabbat, who were Socialists trying to overthrow the Czar,
who were students in the yeshiva who even rebelled against the Alter and
tried to have him dismissed!) Yet, he would tell the Roshei Yeshiva,
that we must look and find some good in them. He kept one student
around, he told his colleagues, even though he wasn’t much of a student,
because he liked to do favors for people. The Jewish people need that
also. And when challenged about particular miscreants, he would cite the
verse in Kohelet and the Midrash (Vayikra Raba 27:5) thereon: “‘G-d
seeks out the pursued;’ even when the righteous pursue the wicked” G-d
takes up the cause of the underdog. So find his good quality and help
him. Don’t throw him away. Similarly, Rav Ovadia Yosef said
in an interview a year before he died that it is forbidden to expel a
child from yeshiva. I quote: “Even if there is a student who behaves
inappropriately, it is still forbidden to throw him out of school and
instead we must exercise extreme patience… If we are patient with this
student, one day he can grow up to be a talmid chochom. And if we send
him away from the yeshiva where will he go? To a secular school and then
what will become of him?” And
then he added: “What, are you throwing away a rock? These are precious
souls! If you throw a child away, do you know what will be? Are you
ready to take responsibility for what might happen?” And in Rav Yissachar Frand’s Dvar Torah last week
(the second essay) he made the same point. If all these great rabbis
are addressing this issue, it tells me that there is a problem in
Baltimore, Israel, the Five Towns, New Jersey – and everywhere else. And
who are we throwing away? The children of the Avot and Imahot of our
people. Like Rambam says (Hilchot Sanhedrin 25:2), even the lowliest
among us are “the children of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov, the armies
of G-d who took us out of Egypt with a great might and a powerful arm.” I’m
not an extremist. If a child is endangering another child, that is
different. But short of that, there are other measures. Educate.
Discipline. Suspend. Make a child repeat a class or a grade. (The
thought alone of paying an extra year’s tuition will get the parents’
attention.) But don’t throw them away. G-d also took these children out
of Egypt. I
would rather send my children to a school that deals with its children
with problems than to a school that pretends it doesn’t have any
children with problems. And
what should parents, now once again responsible for their children’s
behavior, impress upon them? During the years of bondage in Egypt, we
never lost our identity, our dignity, our sense of self-respect. We
always knew, in the statement of the Mishna (Masechet Shabbat 111a),
that “all Israel are the children of kings.” We are all princes and
princesses. We never let the Egyptians, those debauched pagans, define
us. We endured them, survived them and triumphed over them, and then the
sense of inner freedom naturally emerged from us. It cannot be
suppressed forever – in any of us. That
is the message for us and for our children. They should realize that
all the attractions and allures of the world mean nothing compared to
the great privilege of being part of a royal people. They need to be
taught that when they act like reprobates, they have first and foremost
let themselves down. There
is no greater deterrent to mischief than the realization that some
conduct is beneath them and unworthy of them, of who they are supposed
to be. When that realization sinks in, we will merit only blessings from
all of our children.
Rabbi Steven Pruzansky is mara d’atra of Congregation B’nai Yeshurun in Teaneck.
Chief Rabbi condemns sex offender’s ‘disturbing’ Torah scroll stunt
Convicted abuser Mendy Levy criticised for trying to “seek public acclaim” by donating a scroll to Chabad in Golders Green
Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis
Menachem
‘Mendy’ Levy was criticised by Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis for trying to
“seek public acclaim” by donating the scroll, which was subsequently
rejected.
Last week there were celebrations in Golders
Green after the completion of the Sefer Torah.
According to a press
release published — and then removed — from the crownheights.info
website, “well over 1,000 men, women and children” joined in with
“joyous dancing and celebration which was heard several streets away.
The new Torah made its way slowly to the local
Lubavitch shul, Hechal Menachem, where it was greeted by the other
existing Torah scrolls.”
After the ceremony, there was celebration at
Levy’s home, where, again according to the press release, “Rabbi Yossi
Simon presented Levy with a thank you from Chabad of Golders Green.”
Levy was jailed for three years in 2013 for
two counts of sexual assault against Yehudis Goldsobel, who waived her
right to anonymity to encourage others to speak out against abuse.
Yehudis Goldsobel
On her Facebook page this week, she wrote: “A
Sefer Torah dedication is a lovely thing, but how can a community of
people ignore the fact that the person donating it is a convicted sex
offender? Does this not somehow tarnish this mitzvah? I would think so.”
She said she had not known about the
dedication until she was approached by a reporter, and that she
continued to be shunned by members of the Chabad community in which she
had grown up.
A spokesman for the Chief Rabbi told Jewish
News: “The very idea that a man convicted of sexual abuse should seek
public acclaim in this way is extremely disturbing.
“The Chief Rabbi has met Yehudis Goldsobel on a
number of occasions. and knows her to be a brave and tireless
campaigner against the scourge of abuse. It is impossible for us to
appreciate the kind of pain that this episode must have caused her.
“What is essential is that a clear message
goes out to all concerned that these kind of antics will never find
support within our community. It’s also fair to say that everyone we
have spoken to on this matter is in agreement with this position.”
On Sunday, Rabbi Simon issued a statement
saying “an individual” — Levy — had “chosen to turn the completion of
the sefer Torah into a public event, organising all the details, down to
the production of the flyers and post-event publicity”.
Rabbi Simon said Levy had offered Golders
Green Chabad the scroll, on loan, when Chabad moved into premises in the
area. But in light of the nature of the celebration, it had decided
against housing it, he said.
“We have also asked news outlets that publicised the donor’s article to remove it from their sites.
“We can only imagine the further anguish this matter has caused the victim, and our hearts go out to her and her family.”
Board of
Deputies Vice President Marie van der Zyl said Chabad were correct to
not accept the scroll, saying: “Sexual offences are extremely serious
and, while we should give people the opportunity to express remorse and
change their behaviour, care should be taken not to honour people who
have committed these sorts of terrible crimes.
I am therefore reassured
to note that Chabad has decided not to accept the scroll. No one in the
Jewish community must ever give the impression that sexual abuse
perpetrators are to be accepted until it is clear they have genuinely
repented.”
A spokesperson for the Jewish Leadership
Council said: “We can only imagine the further pain that this event has
caused Ms Goldsobel and her family and were encouraged to read of the
strong action Rabbi Simon has taken. We continue to encourage our member
organisations to have robust policies in place regarding safeguarding
and work to ensure that victims of abuse are protected and respected.”
Bnei Brak lawsuit: Yeshiva student harassed others over 3 years
Conspiracy of silence? Allegations of sexual abuse and pedophilia at flagship haredi yeshiva.
A lawsuit filed last week against the famed Ponevezh Yeshiva in Bnei
Brak, the leading Israeli haredi yeshiva, alleges that serious crimes by
a student have been committed there for several years.
According to the statement of claim, a yeshiva student sexually
assaulted students in a violent manner and photographed them in the nude
in a secret location within the yeshiva.
The victims appealed to
a new organization called Din Vecheshbon that was formed recently by
members of the haredi community in order to fight silencing of sexual
harassment within the community.
The events were investigated by the organization and a civil suit was
subsequently filed against the yeshiva, two of its rabbis and the
alleged offender. The lawsuit states recorded evidence as proof of
admission by the defendant of his actions against the plaintiff. In
addition, a complaint was also filed with the police.
According
to the lawsuit, the story, which began three years ago, reveals
incidents of serious physical, emotional and sexual abuse against a
16-year-old minor, including violence and humiliation. In addition, it
alleges that the offender exploited the minor by fostering a situation
of deep emotional dependency and using this to violate him sexually
contrary to his will and consent, as well as beat, threaten and
humiliate the minor before allowing him to leave the room.
The prosecution likewise claims an additional offense of creating and collecting pedophilic material.
"In many of the events detailed [in the statement of claim], the
defendant would sit on top of the plaintiff and photograph himself. The
defendant would store the nude photographs of the plaintiff in his
personal computer, along with nude pictures of other youngsters, which
in effect holds the defendant responsible for a computer collection of
child abuse images."
In addition to the offender in question, two
of the yeshiva’s rabbis are being charged with criminal violations for
failing to report the incidents. According to the complaint, when the
minor turned to the first rabbi, "Defendant 3 listened to the
plaintiff's words, calmed him down and left without following up on the
matter."
When the plaintiff asked to meet with the second rabbi, the rabbi
told him that "He believed that the purpose of the meeting was to
discuss what the defendant had done to him after hearing about the
severity of the defendant’s actions committed on the plaintiff. During
this conversation, Defendant 2 told the plaintiff that it had been known
for some time that the defendant was a danger to the students, but that
they did not know how severe his actions were."
The statement of
claim says that, "Although Defendants 2 and 3 recently admitted to the
plaintiff that they are aware of the danger posed by the defendant, the
defendant continues to live in the yeshiva, and it is reasonable to
assume that even now he continues to harm there. "
"It should now be noted that all the defendants recently confirmed to
the plaintiff that the events described above did indeed occur, and
that the plaintiff has the recordings which confirm this admission, and
therefore the defendants' confessions must be regarded as a confession."
Nachman
Rosenberg, who represents private haredi donors behind Din Vecheshbon,
states that, "It is time to recognize that the 'silencers' of sexual
abuse are far more dangerous than the predators themselves." "These institutional cover-ups directly endanger hundreds and
thousands of innocent children simultaneously. Din Vecheshbon represents
a paradigm shift in the haredi community by targeting the root of
this... by punishing institutions or individuals who neglect the safety
of their students and turn a blind eye on sexual abuse."
Rubashkin Surviving Prison Is A Heroic Act In Itself
Though the Forward published many articles after the release of Sholom Rubashkin,
some opinion writers have taken the position that the celebrations that
followed Rubashkin’s release were at best inappropriate and at worst a
desecration of God’s name.
Most of us have thankfully not been through the criminal justice
system. However, until one has been through it, one cannot truly
understand it nor appreciate why these celebrations were befitting
someone who epitomizes the justice system at its worst.
Though I have never met Rubashkin, I myself have been through the
criminal justice system and spent about a year in the Federal Prison
Camp in Miami, Florida.
Long prison sentences demoralize a person. I have met people who have
been in prison for 20 years and the effects are not pretty. When they
are released they are not equipped to socially integrate into society.
They have been sitting in prison while life passed them by. Whether or
not they deserved these sentences does not change the fact that when
someone enters prison for a lengthy prison sentence, he has effectively
kissed his life goodbye. In short, his life is over.
Rubashkin faced that real possibility when he entered prison. Even
though he was a white collar convict, he was not permitted to go to a
prison camp since his sentence was so long. He was housed in a medium
security facility. From my own experiences, knowing that I was going to
prison for even a 30 month sentence was especially daunting. I have no
idea how I would have handled the prospect of being away from my friends
and family for such an enormous amount of time, especially if i felt I
had been wrongly convicted and unfairly punished. In my view, suicide is
a better option than that prospect. Certainly, upon entering prison, I
see no scenario where, even as an Orthodox Jew, I would have been able
to keep my faith in God. I would have wallowed in a state of depression
and despair. God would have been completely out of the picture.
Rubashkin faced not only that possibility but lived the reality. He
faced a real possibility of being one of the unlucky prisoners who die
in prison. But Rubashkin did not despair. The plight facing someone who
is in prison is not something that anyone can understand until he has
experienced it, but to survive it and live every day is nothing short of
heroic.
You eat when they tell you to eat and sleep when they tell you
to sleep. Visitations with family are limited and monitored. Prisoners
are limited to 300 minutes of phone privileges per month, which is less
than most of us use in two days. The spouse is left to handle everything
on his or her own while the husband or wife is helpless to assist in
any way. In many ways prison is harder on the spouse then it is on the
actual person who has been incarcerated. Meanwhile, the inmate is
watching his family suffer, hearing about everything going out in the
outside world and he misses everything. Rubashkin was looking to have to
do that for 20 years.
In the end, common sense prevailed and President Trump commuted his
sentence. As a Jew and more so as a former inmate, I experienced a joy
not felt since my own release as I watched the videos of the
celebrations. How can one not admire a man who did not despair and who
came out stronger on the other side? How can we not feel a sense of
happiness for a wife who after eight years of waiting finally has her
husband back at home? How can we not jump for joy for the children who
finally have their father back at home and can study with them? How can
we not be happy for the grandchildren who finally get to meet their
Zaidy? And how can we not feel a sense of joy and admiration for a
person who took everything the prosecutors threw at him and came out not
only the same but stronger on the other side? Heroic does not begin to
appropriately describe his actions.
As word of his release spread, celebrations erupted from all corners
of the world and among many different stripes of Orthodox Jews. Not only
were they warranted, but there should have been more of them. When I
came out of prison, my family was ecstatic. My wife, my three children
and my entire family suffered tremendously while I was in prison. Life
while I was away was extremely stressful for many reasons. However, on
the day I was released, all the worries of the past year melted away and
joy permeated the home. My parents were beyond elated and a received
calls of mazal tov from friends who had visited me as well as those who
did not. That Shabbat I got called to read from the torah and was
welcomed warmly back into the shul. But that was me: I was a relative
nobody who went away for a relatively short amount of time. When it came
to Rubashkin, everyone of those people dancing in the streets felt as
though it was also his father, his brother and his son who got released.
Not only did Rubashkin get released, but the release came unexpectedly
via a sentence commutation by none other than the president! Is it any
wonder that there were so many celebrations?
Perhaps the real problem lies with those who did not celebrate. We
Jews are supposed to be achim, brothers. We have a commandment to V’ahafta L’re’acha Kamocha,
to love your brother as yourself.
When a brother is released from
prison after eight years, how do we not go out and celebrate!
Of course, the obvious response is that it is a “bad example” to turn
convicts into heroes. That is the comment of at best an ignoramus and
at worst a fool. One cannot fully appreciate the criminal justice system
until he has lived it. Well, I lived it, and let me tell you a little
secret: it is not a fair system.
I ask all of Rubashkin’s accusers why you feel the need to rain on
his parade. No one is forcing any of you to participate in the
celebrations. Why the need to publicly criticize and defame Rubashkin?
Are you all so insecure in your own religious beliefs that the only way
to legitimize your own flaws is by trying to find fault in others? Are
you all so perfect that you have the right to criticize others? Are you
so insensitive to the plight of a mother and children that had to endure
pain that no one should ever experience you begrudge their celebration?
As a Modern Orthodox Jew, I am embarrassed by some of the hatred coming
from my own community.
Finally, Jews embrace the concept of t’shuva, repentance. We
believe that while people do sin, there is an opportunity and
obligation to repent. King Solomon stated in Ecclesiastes that there is
no man who does all good and does not sin. We all have something for
which we can repent. While I cannot give an opinion on what went on is
Postville, Iowa all those years ago, I do know that as Jews, we accept
the person who does repent. So even if one were to honestly believe that
wrongs were committed, can there be any doubt that there was repentance
as well? We have an obligation not only to accept the person who has
repented but we are forbidden from bringing up his past indiscretions.
Saying the celebrations are unwarranted and using the “sins” as a basis
flies in the face of everything that we Jews embrace. Perhaps it is the
naysayers who need to take a hard look at themselves and embrace
repentance. Of course, first you all need to ask forgiveness from Sholom
Rubashkin.
To Sholom Rubashkin I say the following: May God bestow upon you and your
family all of His blessings. May you continue to be an inspiration to
Jews all over the world and may you only use this horrible experience to
help others. But most of all, Mazal Tov!
There are situations in life that are
more complicated than others. Some of us only become aware of them many
years after the fact, and often decisions have been made to sweep things
under the carpet or hide them in the recesses of our minds.
Few of us are unaware of the cases of
harassment, assault and abuse that have taken over the news media.
Truthfully, as astounding and vulgar as these accusations may be in the
“Hollywood” community, we are able to regard them as not being a
relevant part of our lives.
However, when these accusations enter
“our” world, the Jewish world, they seem to catapult into our
consciousness and sometimes lead us to deny that this could ever happen
to us, one of our children or someone we know. Both in terms of
perpetrator and victim.
In the very back of Nina’s mind, rarely
thought of, is the tutor her parents hired to help her with algebra.
This well-recommended math teacher came each week for several months to
help ensure that Nina would pass her New York State algebra Regents.
Each week he sat with her at her desk and went over various problems,
and each time as the session progressed he would rub her back. There was
not a chance in the world that Nina would ever tell her parents. She
was so sure that she must be imagining this horrible act that made her
so uncomfortable. Her thought at the time was primarily that if she told
her parents they would probably excuse his actions as those of a kind
and caring individual. He definitely was not that.
We worried for many years about the
vulnerability of our daughter Naama. People would pass her and some
would say, “Oh, she’s so cute.” Believe us that after she passed the
first maybe eight years of her life, Naama was no longer “cute.”
Silently we worried and were concerned. Her ability to defend herself
was obviously “not at all.”
Often people talk about the “good old
days” as if they were the absolute best. In some ways, perhaps the
attention being given to the situations in which people have been abused
is a benefit to all of us. It helps us be more aware of the dangers
that really do exist out there in both the secular and Jewish world. It
may give us the opportunity to be more open within our community and our
workplace, with our children and our families. Abuse takes many forms.
As a family, we experienced the terror
of one of our grandsons being subpoenaed as a witness in a case of
possible abuse, in which a rebbe who slept in the same bunk as the boys
was accused of molesting a child in the bunk. Although there was a
trial, the “rebbe” was acquitted by the judge in the Monticello, New
York, courthouse. The district attorney of that area told us that he had
never been under as much pressure by every facet of the Jewish
community to not press charges against the accused. A well-known New
York City lawyer was brought to Monticello to defend the accused, who
went on to be arrested again at a later time and was seen being taken in
handcuffs from a well-known yeshiva that did not find his charges from
the past relevant. Into the police car he went. Shame on the menahel and
board of that school to have allowed him to be hired in the first
place. For years there was a cover-up due to his well-known family.
Another form of abuse that we
significantly cringe at is verbal in nature: the lack of respect that is
often shown between men and women, husbands and wives, in front of
others and, most sadly, in front of their children. There is no excuse
for a father to speak to one of his children derogatorily about their
mother and vice versa. Couples spending time with other couples seem not
to hesitate to criticize their spouses. This form of abuse, yelling,
criticizing, making fun of in public causes a form of poison in a
relationship and must not continue.
It is obvious that despite the number of
times we, on egg shells, speak with our children about these topics, it
is almost impossible to protect them from totally unexpected incidents.
Most notable is the fact that most instances of abuse are by someone
who is known to the person and in whom they place their faith and trust.
We all must be brave enough to come forward at any time if we feel
someone has acted inappropriately to anyone in our family. There are
also appropriate ways to report such incidents. Going directly to the
person in question is absolutely the last way to deal with a concern.
Have enough confidence in knowing that what you are doing is protecting
yourself and many others, and do not hesitate.
Recent reports of inappropriate behavior
among respected youth leaders in our communities has encouraged us to
come forth and share with everyone the necessity of not keeping quiet.
It is extraordinarily important to report these cases discreetly,
without ever taking the chance of decimating the character of someone
before all evidence has been proven. No, the world is not the same;
however, as we have seen, many of these horrors took place way before
anyone considered that such things could occur. With proper education
and responsibility we need to continue to relish the beauty of the world
we live in and the good fortune we have to be a part of it, ensuring
that any improprieties are immediately dealt with.
Rabbi Mordechai and Nina Glick are living in Bergenfield after
many years of service to the Montreal Jewish community. Rabbi Glick was
the rav of Congregation Ahavat Yisroel as well as a practicing clinical
psychologist in private practice. He also taught at Champlain Regional
College. The Glicks were frequent speakers at the OU marriage retreats.
Nina coordinated all Yachad activities in Montreal and was a co/founder
of Maison Shalom, a group home for young adults with special needs. They
can be reached at nina@jewishlinknj.com.
The
writer is director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust
Studies in Washington, D.C. His latest book is "FDR and the Holocaust: A
Breach of Faith".
Shulamit Magnus, and Thane Rosenbaum co-authored this article
The
longstanding dispute over accusations that Shlomo Carlebach molested or
harassed numerous women has gained new currency as American
politicians, journalists, and entertainers have been exposed for
engaging in similar conduct.
The
Carlebach discussion has provoked strong sentiments. Sadly, some of
Rabbi Carlebach’s defenders have gone way beyond the bounds of civility
by trivializing and rationalizing the abuse.
In his December 31 essay for Arutz 7,
Dr. Chaim Charles Cohen protests that some in the Jewish community
have—in his words— “stopped singing the music of Rav Shlomo because two
of the women complained that it is not liberally correct to sing the
music of man who may have had questionable social behavior at one point
in his life.”
No, they didn’t complain
that it was “not liberally correct.” They complained that it was
improper to honor the music of someone against whom there is credible
evidence of numerous instances of sexual harassment and assault.
Each
of us has to make an individual decision as to whether she or he is
comfortable enjoying the music, art, or writing of someone accused
of despicable acts. In addition to that personal decision, everyone has a
right and even a duty to question whether it is wise communal policy to
act is if Carlebach’s behavior never happened or doesn’t matter.
The
acts attributed to Rabbi Carlebach were not acts of “questionable
social behavior.” Nor were they “solitary mistakes of social behavior”
and “incidents of inappropriate social behavior,” as Cohen characterizes
them. Laughing loudly during a shiva visit is inappropriate social
behavior.
Fondling a teenage girl is criminal assault. Girls and women
don’t exist to serve the pleasure of men. The world is not a harem.
Dr.
Cohen does not express any sympathy for Rabbi Carlebach’s victims.
Instead, he dismisses the eyewitness testimonies of molestation as
“certain possible footnotes in Rav Sholomo’s life.” [The girls and women
who were molested were not footnotes. They were people, religious
seekers no less than the men who came to Carlebach, who were allegedly
harmed.
Dr. Cohen in effect
rationalizes molestation when he asserts: “If there were, at some point
in his life, incidents of inappropriate social behavior on the road,
they are very clearly a result of this unending loneliness.” Loneliness
is not an excuse for abuse. Nothing is.
Cohen
argues that the evidence of molestation by Rabbi Carlebach should be
overlooked because of “the greatness of [Carlebach’s] contribution to
the resurrection of Jewish life after the Holocaust” and his commitment
to “an unending mission of spreading Torah.”
We’ve
seen this “Let him off, he’s one of us” approach all too often in some
of the recent responses to the exposure of harassment or abuse by
prominent political or cultural figures. We’ve seen it in cases of
get-refusers and suspected child molesters. We see it when board members
of Jewish or Zionist organizations fail to act against corrupt leaders
because they approve of their leader’s political positions. This
argument is unacceptable in any context. In this one, we would also note
that Rabbi Carlebach’s behavior towards women violated the very Torah
he was spreading.
No one is saying that
those who committed acts of sexual assault at some point in their lives
must be exiled from the Jewish community, or that their achievements
must be forgotten and expunged from our collective memory. All human
failure is a matter of degree. Not all of these allegations and acts are
the same; proportion always informs culpability. So, too, does
acknowledgment and meaningful gestures of repair. But in this case, Dr.
Cohen is saying, in effect, that nobody was culpable, nothing needs to
be acknowledged, and that there is no obligation (in this instance, by
the community) to acknowledge a grievous wrong.
Perpetrators
of sexual crimes are not being defamed; they are being exposed, which
is critical to preventing abuse and giving justice to victims of abuse.
The Jewish community must face how it responds to sexual assault. Chaim
Cohen’s essay is a tutorial on what the Jewish community shouldn't say
in response to these moral and ethical failures.
Dr.
Cohen concludes by complaining that “p.c. liberalism wants to resolve
all the complexities of man-woman relationships with a single equation:
all intimate physical relationships between men and women are moral if
both parties truly consent of their own free will.” This, indeed, is the
clear and legal definition for permitted sexual contact: true consent
by those legally able to give it. No such consent, no relations.
Period.
The
need for such consent in physical contact is not “p.c. liberalism.” It
is basic decency; it is the law in civilized societies; and it is an
integral part of the teachings of the same Torah that Cohen praises
Rabbi Carlebach for spreading.
The authors are members of the steering committee of the Committee on Ethics in Jewish Leadership (www.jewishleadershipethics.org)
Controversial Rabbi Meir Shlomo Kluwgant is seeking damages for alleged defamation. The Truth Defense Obviously Does Not Apply In Australia
Rabbi Meir Shlomo Kluwgant sues over ‘scum of the earth’ slur ...Although that's too nice of a name for him!
A
SHAMED rabbi forced to step down from a string of posts after
vilifying and intimidating victims of child sex abuse is now suing their
spokesman for defamation.
Meir Shlomo Kluwgant had to
resign as Australia’s top rabbi in the wake of the child abuse royal
commission’s probe into Yeshivah College in East St Kilda.
He now
claims Phillip Weinberg, who acted as spokesman for the victims,
defamed him in telephone calls to Adass Israel School secretary Avraham
Weiszberger in June and July last year.
Adass Israel School in ElsternwickIn
a writ filed in the Supreme Court, Rabbi Kluwgant claims the first
call took place just days before he took up the post of CEO and
principal of the Elsternwick school.
Rabbi Kluwgant alleges that
during the call, Mr Weinberg told Mr Weiszberger that he (Kluwgant) was
“the scum of the earth” and “one of the worst people” he had heard
about.
He claims Mr Weinberg suggested he was unsuitable for the
job and that the school was making a big mistake employing him and
encouraged Weiszberger to contact other members of the Rabbinic Council
of Australia and New Zealand to obtain further details of his poor
character. The Rabbi alleges further defamatory comments were made in a
second call where Mr Weinberg allegedly stated the school was “on the
right track” by distancing itself from him.
Rabbi Meir Shlomo Kluwgant labelled the father of a child sex abuse victim a “lunatic” who neglected his children.Rabbi
Kluwgant claims Mr Weinberg suggested that he was of such “unsavoury,
unscrupulous and distasteful” character that he should be sacked, being
unfit to hold any office at a school.
He claims the alleged
statements injured his reputation and breached court orders made in
December 2015 restraining Mr Weinberg from making derogatory comments
about him.
He is seeking aggravated damages and damages for lost income and for the alleged contempt of court.
He
claims the alleged statements injured his reputation and occupation and
breached court orders made in December, 2015 restraining Mr Weinberg
from publishing or sharing certain documents, or making derogatory
comments about him to anyone.
Rabbi Kluwgant alleges Mr Weinberg
has refused to correct, retract of apologise despite being asked to do
so and is seeking aggravated damages and damages for lost income and for
Mr Weinberg’s alleged contempt of court for breaching the earlier
orders.
Mr Weinberg could not be contacted and is yet to file a defence.
Rabbi
Kluwgant resigned as principal of Adass Israel in August last year. His
appointment prompted the most powerful rabbi in the ultra-Orthodox
community to make an extraordinary call for further consultation, after
abuse victims asked the school to reconsider.
Former Adass Israel School principal Malka Leifer, who is now in hiding in Israel.Victims
had expressed alarm in 2015 that Rabbi Kluwgant was teaching religious
studies at Beth Rivkah Ladies College, operated by the Yeshivah Centre,
saying it was evidence the centre was not serious about tackling abuse.
Earlier
in 2015 Rabbi Kluwgant resigned as president of the Organisation of
Rabbis of Australasia, lost his position on Victoria Police’s
multi-faith advisory committee and resigned as general manager of
cultural and spiritual services at Jewish Care.
The royal
commission heard that he had labelled the father of Yeshivah College
abuse victim Manny Waks a “lunatic” who neglected his children, and told
another victim who called on Jewish leaders to confront the child
sexual abuse crisis to “remain silent”.
Adass Israel School was
previously mired in controversy when former principal Malka Leifer fled
to Israel in the middle of the night when she was accused of molesting
her students in 2008.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
last month promised to take a fresh look at extraditing Ms Leifer to
Australia, where she is wanted on 74 charges of child sexual abuse.
In late 2008, at a meeting with academics at the London School of Economics, Queen Elizabeth II asked
why no one seemed to have anticipated the world’s worst financial
crisis in the postwar period. The so-called Great Recession, which had
begun in late 2008 and would run until mid-2009, was set off by the
sudden collapse of sky-high prices for housing and other assets —
something that is obvious in retrospect but that, nevertheless, no one
seemed to see coming.
*(For the record, I did see it coming in the summer of 2006, and told everyone in my inner circle and in my organization. The pattern of consumer spending started to decline rapidly as the banks dramatically cut back on home equity loans - PM)*
Are
we about to make the same mistake? All too likely, yes. Certainly, the
American economy is doing well, and emerging economies are picking up
steam. But global asset prices are once again rising rapidly above their
underlying value — in other words, they are in a bubble. Considering
the virtual silence among economists about the danger they pose, one has
to wonder whether in a year or two, when those bubbles eventually
burst, the queen will not be asking the same sort of question.
This
silence is all the more surprising considering how much more pervasive
bubbles are today than they were 10 years ago. While in 2008 bubbles
were largely confined to the American housing and credit markets, they
are now to be found in almost every corner of the world economy.
As the former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan recently warned,
years of highly unorthodox monetary policy by the world’s major central
banks has created a global government bond bubble, with long-term
interest rates plumbing historically low levels.
He
might have added that this bubble has hardly been confined to the
sovereign bond market. Indeed, stock values are at lofty heights that
have been reached only three times in the last century. At the same
time, housing bubbles are all too evident in countries like Australia,
Britain, Canada and China, while interest rates have been driven down to
unusually low levels for high-yield debt and emerging-market corporate
debt.
One
reason for fearing that these bubbles might soon start bursting is that
the years of low interest rates and avid central bank government bond
buying that spawned the bubbles now appear to be drawing to an end.
The
Federal Reserve has already started to raise interest rates — on
Wednesday it hiked the benchmark rate by a quarter of a percentage point
— and has announced a schedule
for reducing the mammoth amount of government securities it holds. At
the same time, with the European and Japanese economic recoveries
picking up pace, both the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan
are hinting that they are likely to soon follow the Fed’s lead in
tightening monetary policy by raising rates.
Other
reasons for fearing that the bubbles might soon start bursting are the
fault lines in a number of major economies. Italy has both a serious
public debt problem and a shaky banking system. Brazil is experiencing
political turmoil while its public finances are on a clearly
unsustainable path. China has a housing and credit-market bubble that
dwarfs the one in the United States at the start of this century. And
both Brazil and Italy will be holding contested parliamentary elections
next year.
This
is not to mention the economic dislocation that could result from a
termination of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or from the
accentuation of other protectionist tendencies, whether by the United
States or by another big country. Nor is it to mention the risk that
events in the Korean Peninsula could spin out of control.
Economic
policymakers seem to have lulled themselves into a false sense of
security by trusting the stricter bank regulations put in place after
the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. They seem to be turning a blind
eye to the dominant role that so-called shadow banks (hedge funds,
private equity funds, large money market funds and pension funds) play
in the American financial system now. Unlike the banks that were covered
by the Dodd-Frank regulations, these institutions are lightly regulated
— but, as we painfully learned in 1998 when the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management had to be bailed out, are subject to deposit runs just like banks.
It
is too late for policymakers to do much to prevent bubbles from
forming. However, it’s not too early for them to start thinking about
how to respond in a manner that might free us from the boom-bust cycles
that we seem to be experiencing every 10 years. They could, for example,
create a program that in a severe downturn would give every citizen a
cash grant to be spent at their discretion, what Milton Friedman called
“helicopter money.”
It’s
unclear, however, whether the world’s largest economy can take the lead
this time. The Trump administration’s budget-busting tax cuts risk
overheating markets even further and limiting the government’s ability
to respond when the bubbles pop. This heightens the risk that when the
bubbles burst, we’ll be forced to rely yet again on artificially low
interest rates, which will set us up yet again for another boom-bust
cycle.
Subprime delinquency rate for non-bank lenders back near recession levels
A
Perella Weinberg Partners fund has been sitting on an IPO of Flagship
Credit Acceptance for two years as bad loan write-offs push it into the
red. Blackstone Group LP has struggled to make Exeter Finance profitable, despite sinking almost a half-billion dollars into the lender since 2011 and shaking up the
C-suite multiple times.
And Wall Street bankers in private say others
would love to cash out too, but there’s currently no market for such
exits.
In the years
after the financial crisis, buyout firms poured billions into auto
finance, angling for the big profits that come with offering
high-interest loans to buyers with the weakest credit. At rates of 11
percent or more, there was plenty to be made as sales boomed. But now,
with new car demand waning, they’ve found the intense competition -- and
the lax underwriting standards it fostered -- are taking a toll on profits.
Delinquencies on subprime loans made by non-bank lenders are soaring toward crisis levels. Fresh investment has dried up and some of the big banks, long seen as potential suitors, have pulled back from the auto lending business. To top it off, state regulators are circling the industry, asking whether it preyed on borrowers and put them in cars they couldn’t afford.
“The
PE guys sailed into this thing with stars in their eyes. Some of the
businesses have done fine and some haven’t,” said Chris Gillock,
managing director at Colonnade Advisors, a boutique investment bank. But
right now, “it’s about as out-of-favor a sector as I can think of.”
The apparent turnabout represents a sobering shift
in what has been a booming market. Since the turn of the decade, buyout
firms, hedge funds and other private investors have staked at least $3
billion on non-bank auto lenders, according to Colonnade. Among PE
firms, everyone from Blackstone and KKR & Co. to Lee Equity
Partners, Altamont Capital and CIVC Partners waded in.
Many
targeted smaller finance companies that often catered to the least
creditworthy borrowers with nowhere else to turn. Overall, subprime car
loans -- those extended to people with credit scores of 620 or lower --
have increased 72 percent since 2011. Last year, about 20 percent of all
new car loans went to subprime borrowers.
It usually works like
this. Subprime finance companies first borrow money from the big banks
and then compete for loans from car dealers. They make their margin from
the spread between their funding costs and the interest they can
charge, minus operating expenses and whatever losses occur when
borrowers can’t pay. What they don’t keep on their books usually gets
bundled into bonds and sold as asset-backed securities. Some will also
sell loans to banks or brokers to raise cash.
For many PE-backed subprime lenders, which invested heavily
to expand, margins have shrunk as delinquencies spiked and auto sales
peaked.
In some ways, buyout firms can only blame themselves.
Because of the limited time to show a return on their investments,
usually four to six years, there was immense pressure to grow. That led
many finance companies to loosen their standards -- like lengthening
repayment periods and lending to borrowers with lower credit scores --
to gain an edge as car sales roared back from the depths of the
recession and competitors jumped in. Many pushed into “deep subprime,”
the riskiest part of the business that’s grown in recent years.
Take
Exeter. The company, which is licensed in all 50 states and works with
roughly 10,000 dealerships, was unprofitable from 2011 -- when
Blackstone took a majority stake -- through 2015, according to S&P
Global Ratings. That’s even as the PE firm invested $472 million to help
Exeter expand and cycled through three CEOs at the lender.
On a
pretax basis, S&P said Exeter turned a profit last year, and Matthew
Anderson, a spokesman at Blackstone, says the company will do so again
in 2017. He added the New York-based firm hasn’t tried to sell the
lender.
Blackstone may look to unload Exeter later next year, said
a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified
because it’s private.
Bad loans remain an issue. This year, a rash
of delinquencies in two bonds stuffed with loans that Exeter made in
2015 caused the securities to dip into their extra collateral to keep
investors whole.
Another example is Flagship, which Perella
Weinberg bought in 2010. (Innovatus Capital Partners, which manages the
lender on behalf of Perella Weinberg, was formed by former Perella
Weinberg managers last year after they split from the firm.)
‘Satisfactory Return’
As
its loan portfolio surged to almost $3 billion from just $89 million in
2011, bad loan write-offs mounted and left the company with losses last
year. Since then, it’s been forced to cut back origination and tighten
underwriting standards. Kroll Bond Rating Agency said in November it
expects Flagship to post another loss this year before returning to
profitability in 2018.
“We’re concerned about the company’s ability to earn a satisfactory return,” S&P said in August.
That
might not bode well for Flagship’s initial public offering, which could
potentially provide an exit for its owners. The IPO has languished and
its prospectus hasn’t been updated since July 2015.
Representatives for Perella Weinberg, Flagship and Innovatus declined to comment.
In hindsight, the planned sale may have come a year too late.
Santander
Consumer USA Holdings Inc., whose investors included KKR and Warburg
Pincus, went public in January 2014, turning then-CEO Thomas G. Dundon
into a billionaire. (He didn’t respond to a request for comment.) The shares have lost about a quarter of their value since then as the lender restated earnings going back to 2013 and agreed to pay almost $25 million to two states to settle a probe into predatory lending. Santander says it has improved its governance, risk management and capital buffers.
Perfectly Timed
“Tom
Dundon at SC timed it perfectly,” said Dan Parry, co-founder of Exeter
who now runs TruDecision, a fintech firm that serves car dealers and
lenders. “Others haven’t been that fortunate.”
Indeed, while
subprime delinquencies of 90 days or more have stabilized at banks, the
rate at non-banks is close to the highest since 2009, according to the
Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which noted the industry’s hasty
underwriting standards.
Many of the large banks that provide
funding to subprime auto lenders have taken notice and become far more
conservative in doling out credit lines, says David Knightly, a
vice-president at Innovate Auto Finance, which buys loans from
dealerships and auto finance companies to help them raise cash.
“From
a standpoint of subprime auto right now, if you’re small, people aren’t
lining up,” he said. “Everybody’s trying to guess when the next 2008
is.”
Bigger subprime auto lenders can still turn to the capital
markets. Sales of subprime auto ABS have reached $25 billion, topping
last year’s total and almost triple the amount in 2010. They’ve also
shored up finances by lending to borrowers with stronger credit, said
Amy Martin, an analyst at S&P. That in turn has buoyed shares of
some of the biggest ones in recent months.
Martin expects a lot of
mergers as car sales slow. In the meantime, PE firms have largely
lowered their expectations for a big exit and are trying to make their
companies leaner to extract a dividend or sell the loan portfolios.
“Nobody
wants to pay much more than book value” for these companies, said
Colonnade’s Gillock. “It’s not a disaster, but it’s a failure.”
Bitcoin Starts New Year by Declining, First Time Since 2015
Updated on
Bitcoin is already having a bad year.
For
the first time since 2015, the cryptocurrency began a new year by
declining, extending its slide from a record $19,511 reached on Dec. 18.
The
virtual coin traded at $13,624.56 as of 5 p.m. in New York on Monday,
down 4.8 percent from Friday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
That’s also a fall from the $14,156 it hit Sunday, according to
coinmarketcap.com, which tracks daily prices. The cryptocurrency
fluctuated in early Asian trading on Tuesday.
Wrong Foot
Bitcoin is having an unusually bad first day of the year
Source: Coinmarketcap.com
Percentage changes
reflect bitcoin's rise or fall on Jan. 1 compared with the previous day.
The figure for 2018 reflects the cryptocurrency's price as of 3:45 p.m.
in New York.
Bitcoin got off to a much stronger start last year, and then
kept that momentum going, helping to create a global frenzy for
cryptocurrencies. It rose 3.6 percent on the first day of 2017 to $998,
data from coinmarketcap.com show. It ended the year up more than 1,300
percent.
That rally
drew a growing number of competitors and last month brought bitcoin to
Wall Street in the form of futures contracts. It reached the Dec. 18
peak hours after CME Group Inc. debuted its derivatives agreements,
which some traders said would encourage short position-taking.
