Threats of Excommunication and the Limits of the Beth Din in Australia

MEDIA RELEASE: Rabbis found to have committed criminal contempt

Rabbis found to have committed criminal contempt

31 December 2018

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Three senior rabbis who acted as judges of the Sydney Beth Din and a fourth rabbi who acted as its Registrar, and whose conduct Justice Sackar of the Supreme Court of NSW found constituted a criminal contempt of court, have had their appeal dismissed by a majority of the Court of Appeal of NSW. The majority comprised the Chief Justice of NSW and the President of the Court of Appeal. A third judge dissented from the ruling.

The case was Ulman v Live Group Pty Ltd [2018] NSWCA 338. Justice Sackar’s judgments were delivered in Live Group Pty Ltd & Anor v Rabbi Ulman and Ors [2018] NSWSC 393 (29 March 2018) and Live Group Pty Ltd and Anor v Rabbi Ulman and Ors [2017] NSWSC 1759 (14 December 2017).

The matter emanated from a commercial dispute between two companies whose principals were observant members of the Jewish faith. The two companies had entered into a commercial agreement which included a clause that in a case of dispute, the matter shall be brought to the “Chief Dayan” of Sydney who will hear the matter and his decision will be final.

Following a dispute, the principal of one of the companies was personally summonsed together with other members of his family to the Sydney Beth Din and required to submit to its jurisdiction. When that person refused, the Beth Din threatened religious sanctions (not being counted in a minyan, not being called to the Torah during services, not being offered any honour in the synagogue) unless the person submitted to the jurisdiction of the Beth Din.

The Chief Justice and the President largely agreed with the decision at first instance of Justice Sackar that such threats impeded a person’s unconstrained access to the civil courts and thus the conduct had a real tendency to interfere with the administration of justice generally. The conduct therefore amounted to a criminal contempt of court, although the contempt was found not to be “contumacious”, and the Court of Appeal reduced what it described as the “manifestly excessive” amount of the fines and cost orders imposed on the rabbis by Justice Sackar. Justice McColl delivered a minority dissenting judgement in which Her Honour considered that the conduct was in essence the threat of religious sanctions by a religious body for a religious transgression and therefore did not amount to illegitimate pressure in the circumstances.

There remains the prospect that the Rabbis will seek special leave to take the matter to the High Court and therefore any comments made are necessarily provisional, pending the outcome of any such application.

At the outset it must be emphasised that it is a matter of grave concern that religious leaders of the Jewish community have been found to have engaged in conduct that amounts to a criminal contempt. That is simply intolerable.

The Rabbis have contended that they have merely sought to preserve and uphold traditional Jewish law and that in a country that prides itself on religious freedom they ought to be entitled to do so. However, while the Beth Din (and for that matter, any religious leader) is generally to be commended for upholding the liberty of religious belief and practice, it is entirely inappropriate and indeed injudicious for the Beth Din to seek to impose Jewish law by the threat of serious religious-social sanctions on someone who insists upon having their rights in a commercial dispute determined by the Australian civil court system rather than by the Beth Din. It is one thing to accept that Halacha requires the resolution of commercial disputes between consenting observant Jews to be before Rabbis acting as judges at a Beth Din. It is a very different thing for such Rabbis to exercise a discretionary power to threaten a person who, for whatever reason, chooses not to observe any such tradition. The Supreme Court of New South Wales has now confirmed that such conduct is unlawful, and indeed criminal.

Unless and until the High Court rules otherwise, the Rabbis should, with unmitigated contrition, now accept the limits of their jurisdiction and that their conduct was inappropriate and indeed unlawful.

This is not, as the Rabbis contend, an attack on religious freedom. As Justice Sackar observed and as the Court of Appeal agreed:

Whilst there is no doubt religious freedoms are vital and important in a democracy, they must be balanced against every citizen’s right to approach a court or to insist upon a secular court resolving any alleged commercial dispute between citizens……This finding is not a restriction on their religious freedom, it is a restriction in our democracy of any person holding and acting upon the view a civil court is the appropriate place for the determination of commercial disputes between Jews, or for that matter gentiles.

Subject to any decision of the High Court, it is entirely unacceptable for a Beth Din in Australia to take a contrary view and seek to impose its jurisdiction by the threat of religious sanctions on members of the community who do not wish to resolve their commercial disputes with other Jews before a Beth Din. It is of course open to any person or relevant entity to agree voluntarily to have their dispute resolved by a nominated tribunal, including a Beth Din. But that must be done in accordance with the mechanisms provided by Australian law, and not be imposed by a Beth Din under the threat of sanctions.

Of equal concern, are the observations of Justice Sackar (undisturbed by the Court of Appeal) that raise grave concerns about the governance and accountability of the Sydney Beth Din to the community. The Court noted that as at January 2015, the ASIC records disclose that the Sydney Beth Din is simply a partnership between its two senior rabbis. Justice Sackar said the Sydney Beth Din “is an organisation that wishes, indeed demands, the respect and reverence from its parishioners and adherents, and yet appears to be a law unto itself”.

It is plain that the Sydney Beth Din lacks adequate governance or accountability structures that might have avoided the present intolerable circumstances. A proper governance review and reform of the Sydney Beth Din is a critical priority for the community. That must happen if the good name and standing of the Sydney Beth Din is to be restored within the Jewish and the wider community.

Indeed, all religious bodies in the Jewish community in Australia should review the adequacy of their mechanisms of governance and accountability in light of these judgments.

The ECAJ has followed the proceedings with deep concern, and will comment further once the time for applying for special leave to appeal to the High Court has expired or alternatively once such an application and, if applicable, such an appeal, has been determined.

Contact
Peter Wertheim AM | co-CEO
ph: 02 8353 8500 | m: 0408 160 904 | fax 02 9361 5888
e: pwertheim@ecaj.org.au | www.ecaj.org.au

Sydney Beth Din and the Ruling Against It

Sydney Beth Din goes public following the 2-1 decision appeal against it

December 26, 2018 by J-Wire Newsdesk

Read on for article

 

Last week, the Court of Appeal in Sydney rejected an appeal by the Sydney Beth Din against a verdict of being guilty of contempt of court. The Beth Din responds.

Rabbi Moshe Gutnick

The Sydney  Beth Din appealed against a NSW Supreme Court decision finding the religious judicial body guilty of contempt of court when threatening sanctions against a member of the community who refused to appear before it.

The 2-1 decision was reached by three judges one of whom dissented.

The December 2017 case involved a summons issued by the Beth Din on a Sydney businessman who was involved in a commercial dispute in which the other party had sought the matter being dealt with by the Beth Din. When the observant businessman refused to appear the Beth Din, its judges threatened religious religius sanctions and he took the case to civil court. The Supreme Court decided the threat of sanctions had been a contempt of court and found the four Beth Din rabbis guilty, imposing total fines of $50,000 when the decision was announced in April 2018 and costs.

As a result of this week’s appeal, the fines were reduced to $25,000 in total.

The statement:

“Today the Sydney Beth Din has made a statement on the case which involved Rabbi Moshe Gutnick, Rabbi Michael Chriqui, Rabbi Yoram Ulman and Rabbi Eli Schlanger.

Until today the Beth Din has refrained from commenting publicly on any aspect of this matter awaiting the outcome of the Appeal.  This has now occurred.

According to Jewish law, the halachically correct forum for disputes between Jews to be heard is at a Beth Din.  This is a fundamental tenet of our faith as expressed in the first verse of Parshat Mishpatim and is undisputed by any Orthodox halachic authority.  The proposition expressed in the NSW Court of Appeal’s majority judgement that there may be an alternative halachic view is simply erroneous.

On the basis of the halachic principle stated above, an individual was summonsed to Beth Din. He then refused to come.  The Beth Din warned the respondent that there would be religious consequences if he refused to attend a Beth Din thereby evading his religious responsibilities both to the complainant and to God, particularly as he claimed to be an observant Orthodox Jew.  The Beth Din offered to refer the dispute to an alternative Beth Din if for whatever reason he was not willing to have it heard by the Sydney Beth Din.  The forewarned sanctions were purely religious in nature.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rabbi Michael Chriqui

He refused to attend and instead commenced proceedings against the Beth Din seeking to injunct them from imposing the sanctions and hearing the dispute.

At the first hearing, the primary judge, not the plaintiff, raised an issue that had not been raised before, namely, the issue of contempt of court.  Until that point in time, the Beth Din believed it had always acted within the parameters of its freedom to practice the Jewish religion in Australia.  The Sydney Beth Din’s practice was no different from the practice of any other Beth Din anywhere in the world.  We believed that contempt was only an issue if there was a case afoot, and the Beth Din tried to interfere with that case.  In fact, in practice when cases of that kind arose the Beth Din never involved itself at all.

There was no such case here.  There was not even any case contemplated.  Notwithstanding this, the primary Judge found, that the Beth Din’s issuing of a summons, accompanied by a threat of sanctions if it was not complied with, constituted an act of contempt and was an affront to the Australian legal system and the administration of justice.  He imposed significant fines and costs.

 

The Beth Din along with many supporters of religious freedom believed his judgment was wrong and curtailed our religious freedoms.  Why could we not issue religious sanctions for a religious transgression?  The sanctions were purely religious in nature and only affected persons who were equally religious. Almost all religions in Australia apply religious sanctions for those who transgress the religion and the ability of a religious authority to regulate the conduct of its believers is an essential aspect of freedom of religion.  Our belief was that if someone refuses to go to a Beth Din in contravention of the tenets of the Jewish religion they should have to wear that decision and face any religious consequences without a civil court interfering in what are purely Jewish religious processes.  We were always of the view that our right to freedom of religion meant the courts will not interfere in what are purely religious matters.  Would a civil court ever interfere in whether or not an individual is afforded communion in a Christian church?

Justice McColl who gave the dissenting judgement in the NSW Court of Appeal found in the Beth Din’s favour recognising the fundamental right of freedom of religion and seeking to protect that freedom from interference from the courts.  She further stated, relying on legal precedent, that matters of Jewish Law should be determined by Rabbis expert in Jewish Law, not by the courts.  She proposed the appeal be upheld with all costs paid by the respondent.

Despite the majority finding otherwise, and with the greatest respect to the two judges, we the Beth Din know what our intentions were.  They were never to act in contravention of Australian law nor were they intended to force anyone not to attend a civil court.  Indeed it has always been the Beth Din’s policy to never issue sanctions once a matter is before the courts.  The Beth Din, on the other hand, did believe it was its right to practice as Batei Din do around the world, and to issue sanctions against an Orthodox Jew who acted in contempt of the Beth Din and the whole Orthodox community’s religion by failing to attend on summons.

The Beth Din acted purely out of its religious conviction believing that what it was doing was its obligation, was legal and was an expression of our religious freedom.  It is heartened that Justice McColl saw it that way too.

The effect of the majority decision, which the Beth Din will, of course, abide by, is that it sets a precedent that affects not just all of our ability, as Jews, to freely practice our religion, but also potentially any religion.  It sets a precedent that the courts are able to interpret and determine how religious law is to be applied contrary to the determination of the ecclesiastical courts of that religion.

In practical terms, going forward, this means that the Beth Din will no longer be in a position to issue religious sanctions on civil matters.  We will be curtailed in issuing sanctions for Gett refusal, something that has been manifestly helpful in the past.  Subject to any further appeal that may take place, the Beth Din will be meticulous in adhering to this judgement.”

J-Wire understands that the Beth Din has not announced if it will seek leave to appeal to the High Court.

To read the Article in its entirety click here.

The rabbis confer

Sydney Beth Din Loses Appeal, The Australian Jewish News Reported

 

HOME / THE LATEST / SYDNEY BETH DIN LOSES APPEAL

Sydney Beth Din loses appeal

 December 20, 2018 The latest

Rabbi Moshe Gutnick. Photo: Ingrid Shakenovsky

 

THE rabbis of the Sydney Beth Din (SBD) have lost their appeal to have a decision by the Supreme Court, which found them in contempt of court, to be overturned.

The rabbis were initially given combined penalties of $50,000, and ordered to pay court costs which were expected to exceed $250,000.

While the NSW Court of Appeals today (Friday) halved the financial penalties to $25,000, the rabbis were ordered to pay all legal costs for the appeal, which is now expected to reach $350,000.

Last year, Reuven Barukh was called to front the SBD to resolve a business dispute, but he refused to attend and instead offered to have the case heard “in a civil court”.

SBD’s Rabbi Eli Schlanger wrote to Barukh that “all members of the Jewish faith are obliged to have their disputes heard in accordance with Jewish Law at a Beth Din” and that Jews are “not permitted to seek adjudication at a civil court without the express permission of a Beth Din”.

When Barukh still refused to attend the SBD, and asked again for the case to be brought to a secular court, Rabbi Schlanger wrote that if he didn’t comply, among other sanctions, “Synagogue/s where he prays will be informed accordingly. He will not be counted to a minyan. He will not be able to receive an aliyah to the Torah. He will not be offered any honour in the synagogue.”

Last December, NSW Supreme Court’s Justice John Robertson Sackar found the rabbis in contempt of court and then in March fined Rabbi Schlanger, Rabbi Yehoram Ulman and Rabbi Michael Chriqui $10,000 each.

He fined Rabbi Moshe Gutnick $20,000 because the judge said he was “the principal actor in the circumstances and as a result he should bear a greater responsibility than that of the others”.

In announcing the penalties, the judge noted that the rabbis did apologise. The rabbis also said they had suffered “significant embarrassment and distress as a result of being found guilty of contempt” but the judge stated this “can be seen equally to be the product entirely of their own behaviour”.

To read the remainder of the article, click here.

Malka Leifer – Extradition and Hearings, and 3 of her Victims

Melbourne sisters miss out on facing accused abuser in court

Three sisters who were allegedly abused by the former principal of an ultra-orthodox Jewish school in Melbourne have missed out on facing their accused abuser in court.

Dassi Erlich, and her sisters, Nicole Meyer and Elly Sapper, travelled more than 13,000km for the court hearing in Israel, however a last-ditch ruling by the judge excused Malka Leifer from appearing on the grounds it could be detrimental to her mental health.

The alleged victims were still allowed to sit in court for the hearing, which was to determine whether Leifer is mentally fit enough to be extradited to Australia.

Three sisters allegedly abused by former principal Malka Leifer travelled to Israel to attend a Jerusalem court hearing about her possible extradition to Australia. (9NEWS)

 

“It’s been very intense sitting in there,” Ms Erlich told 9News.

“Now we’re here and we see the ups and downs, and it’s incredibly difficult to watch that, and just hope and have faith that the judge will come to the right decision.”

The women could only listen and observe while a psychiatrist was questioned.

Leifer, a mother of eight, fled Australia for Israel in 2008 after being tipped off about the allegations against her. (AAP)

“We have no voice,” Ms Meyer said.

“We’ve got to be completely silent and that is the most difficult thing in there.”

Leifer, a mother of eight, fled Australia for Israel in 2008, after being tipped off about the allegations.

Leifer’s defence lawyers are now arguing she is mentally unfit to be extradited back to Australia to face court over the accusations. (9NEWS)

She has battled extradition since 2014 when she was charged with 74 child sex offences.

Leifer’s lawyers argue she is too mentally ill to be extradited.

However, after a private investigator recorded video footage of Leifer walking, shopping and interacting with people, opinion in Israel is changing.

The former principal faces eight charges of alleged child abuse. (AAP)

Both a member of Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset, and a Jerusalem city councillor were at court to observe proceedings and support the alleged victims.

“If she’s got nothing, if she wants to clear her name…if she’s not guilty…then why not go back and clear her name?” Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, a city councillor, said.

Leifer’s brother, sister and one of her adult children were also at court today.

Leifer did not appear in the court today, and the case is set to return in a hearing in January. (9NEWS)

They made no comment.

No judgement has yet been made about whether Leifer is mentally fit for extradition, and the case will return to court again in January.

It will be the former principal’s 43rd court date in Israel – and there’s still no sign of a quick resolution.

Manny Waks – Letter to Lost Messiah –

Newsletter 5/2018 View this email in your browser https://mailchi.mp/770ad6de32b9/newsletter-1947229?e=58da27f930

Dear Lost Messiah, I write this e-newsletter on the eve of yet another trip back to Australia – this time, to represent many victims/survivors of institutional child sexual abuse within the Australian Jewish community, and their families, at the Federal Government’s National Apology in Canberra on 22 October. My thoughts will also be with those children who were sexually abused overseas due to Australian Jewish institutions’ negligence. I will also think of the vast majority of child sexual abuse victims/survivors within our society; those who were sexually abused within the institution of family. Hopefully, this Government apology will have its desired effect. Importantly, institutions should not see this apology as absolving them of their responsibilities. Nor should these institutions think that an apology, compensation or other forms of redress on their part will suffice. These institutions have often caused life-long, irreparable damage to so many children under their care. It will take a lifetime to try to heal and repair the damage. Well done to all concerned, especially former Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the Royal Commission. It’s a good time to try to heal. On a personal note, I’ve had a number of successes recently. First, as noted in the last e-newsletter, I expect Australia to seek the extradition of my first abuser, Velvel Serebryanski. Second, I was delighted to reach a financial settlement with the Yeshivah Centre in response to my civil claim against them. But to be clear, despite the settlement reached, I still view this institution to be rotten to the core (see relevant articles below). Regards, Manny • Click here to read my statement re Yeshivah Centre settlement. • Click here to read  Yeshivah’s statement, and my response. • Click here to read  Yeshivah’s subsequent clarification regarding the roles of (Rabbis) Groner and Telsner, and my response. I’d encourage those of you who can to attend this milestone event Merv Adler (above) was the last Yeshivah Centre Board member to resign in disgrace after the Royal Commission in 2015. He has written the following disgusting comments in a public forum (not his first indiscretion), which reinforces some of what I’ve been saying regarding that rotten institution: Now that the Yeshivah has embarked on the road of embryonic democracy, is it not up to the Boards and members as to the employment or roles of Rabbis Groner and Telsner? It pains me to say this, but I think it’s time Manny Waks lets go of the Yeshivah. It seems that he is as addicted to the Yeshivah as Pharoah was to his Jews. It might not be perfect, and there could well still be some soul searching left for the Yeshivah, but it’s time to draw the line in the sand and say – what ever has been said, has been said. Whatever has been paid, has been paid. What ever changes were required to be made by the Yeshivah have been made. What ever group photos and apologies were necessary have been taken and given. Time for the Yeshivah and Manny Waks to recognise a complete and comprehensive divorce from each other. As a member of the Yeshivah, it is well and truly enough. Let the Yeshivah go forward from strength to strength and let Manny Waks live the life G-d intended for him. Wishing all a wonderful year and may we all be inscribed in the Book of Life. ​ And if you’re wondering whether any lay or religious leader spoke out against his vile hate speech, no, not a single one of them did! Further evidence that the community still has a very long way to go. Sad and offensive. At least my good friend and colleague Phillip Weinberg responded publicly: What an extraordinary comment from one of the people responsible for the events which led Yeshivah to the Royal Commission and the last one to take responsibility for his horrific failures and to resign. As you should know, Groner’s role is not up to the Boards and members. He rewarded his failures by appointing himself to the Boards for life. Telsner’s role is indeed up to the Boards and members and the fact that he is still employed there (presumably because he has been doing the Rebbe’s work while attacking victims of child sexual abuse and their families) tells you everything you need to know about the place. If Manny has an addiction, it is to ensuring the safety of children and that people who behaved appallingly in relation to child sexual abuse are held to account. Some more people with the same affliction in that place would not go astray. It’s well and good for you, one of the people responsible for the way victims were treated, to say ‘it’s time to draw the line in the sand’ while victims are still hurting. Rather than ‘a complete and comprehensive divorce from each other’ (as you suggest), Yeshivah should create an environment where Manny Waks and its many other victims feel safe attending Yeshivah and are held up as heroes on account of the Yeshivah children they have saved while those responsible for the mistreatment of victims feel shame whenever they enter the place. To say ‘what ever changes were required to be made by the Yeshivah have been made’ while people like Telsner and Groner who led Yeshivah to the Royal Commission continue their involvement and cause ongoing suffering to victims is vile and disingenuous. Once ‘whatever changes were required to be made’ have indeed been made, then ‘let the Yeshivah go forward from strength to strength’. Until then I hope that Manny continues to shine a light on Yeshivah so that your children and other peoples children can be safe. Wishing you the insight into your own behavior to seek forgiveness from the people you have hurt and continue to hurt. I suspect another Yom Kippur will be wasted on Yeshivah. https://www.jewishnews.net.au/all-change-at-the-yeshivah-centre/42341

YAFFED, Haredim, Education, The Rights of the Children to an Education?

Haredi Communities and the Right to Education

To our readers: We are publishing this on behalf of one of our contributors. We have not edited, except to change the spacing to work within this format. We have not published the entire Abstract but ask that you support the author, read and review.

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Test of Faith: Haredi Communities and the Right to Education

Shmuel Levin*

*Honours Thesis to Monash University, Wellington Rd, Clayton VIC 3800, Australia

ABSTRACT

Ultra-orthodox Jewish (‘Haredi’) communities shun any outside influence or external
media and maintain traditional customs, dress codes, and strict gender roles. These
communities also believe that mainstream education threatens their traditional values
and therefore provide little to no education for their children. This article explores
whether Haredi communities in the USA should be permitted to deny their children
an education. It argues that international law recognizes the rights of both parents and
children, and accordingly does not permit parents to deny completely their children’s
rights. However, the US Supreme Court has not recognized that children have a right
to education and the USA has failed to ratify major international instruments which
protect the rights of children. Accordingly, in the USA, parents are permitted to deny
their children an education unless the state can demonstrate that it has a compelling
interest of its own for intervening. As such, the right of Haredi children to an education
remains insufficiently protected.

I. INTRODUCTION: HAREDI COMMUNITIES AND EDUCATION

1. Haredi Communities

Haredi Jewish communities emerged in response to the Enlightenment in Europe to-
wards the end of the 18th century. As European Jews were no longer forced to live in ghettos and permitted to join mainstream society, many began to adapt to the society around them. In response, ‘an extremely conservative, anti-secular, isolationist expression of Judaism’ emerged (Weiss). This Haredi community consisted primarily
of two groups: the Hasidic community – ‘a pietist movement that spread through
the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe during the eighteenth century’ – and the
Misnagdic opposition who believed that Hasidism was a corruption of traditional
Judaism (Weiss; Jochnowitz, 1968).

Following the rise of communism in the Soviet Union and the Holocaust, large
numbers of Haredi Jews fled Eastern Europe to other parts of the world
(Wertheimer, 2014). The largest Haredi communities can be found in New York
and in Israel, and there are smaller communities in other countries including Australia, Canada, the UK, France, and Russia. In New York alone, there was an esti-
mated 336,000 Haredi Jews in 2011. Haredi populations also have high birth rates, VC

The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com International Journal of Law, Policy and The Family, 2018, 0, 1–29 doi: 10.1093/lawfam/eby015
Article

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An Unholy Alliance – The Catholic Church and the Haredim – Sexual Abuse Cover-Ups

 

How could this happen again?’ Why this Catholic abuse scandal seems worse than 2002

 

(CNN)This is how bad things are in the Catholic Church right now: The Pope’s top adviser on clergy sexual abuse canceled a trip to Ireland for a papal event because he has to investigate sexual misconduct in his own seminary.

And Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, isn’t alone. Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, another key papal ally embroiled in the sex abuse crisis, has also canceled his appearance at next week’s World Meeting of Families, a spokesman told CNN.

Pennsylvania sex abuse report presents crucial test for Pope Francis

Consider the litany of recent incidents in the Catholic Church:

• Catholic bishops have launched investigations into sexual misconduct in seminaries in Boston, Nebraska and Philadelphia.

• The former archbishop of Washington resigned from the College of Cardinals after accusations that he molested seminarians and an altar boy.

• A Catholic bishop in Australia was convicted by a civil court of covering up abuse, and the Vatican has accepted the resignations of six bishops from Latin America after church investigations.

• An Associated Press investigation found evidence that priests and bishops around the world have abused Catholic nuns and sisters for decades.

• Next week, the Pope plans to travel to Ireland, where the former president, in an interview with The Irish Times, recently accused a top Vatican official of pressuring her to “protect” incriminating church documents from civil authorities in 2003. The Vatican has declined to comment on the allegation.

But none of the above compares to the stomach-turning, nearly 900-page grand jury report unveiled Tuesday in Pennsylvania.

The report, two years in the making, revealed shocking accusations: More than 1,000 children had been abused by 300 Catholic “predator priests” in six Pennsylvania dioceses during the past 70 years.

The report also said some church leaders covered up the crimes, shuffling priests from rehab centers to parishes, giving no notice to parents or civil authorities.

The state’s attorney general called it the largest investigation ever by a US government into the Catholic Church. The president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops called it a “moral catastrophe.”

“I know that many of you are asking,” Cardinal Blase Cupich wrote to Catholics in his Chicago archdiocese Friday, “how could this be happening again?”

Priest abuse victims detail lifetime of trauma and broken trust

If the Catholic sexual abuse scandal that came to light in 2002 slowly unspooled through news reports, Pennsylvania’s grand jury report landed like an atom bomb, dropping its online horrors all at once. With some redactions, the report was readily available for everyone to read and share: the accusations of sexual deviance, shameless lies and deceitful churchmen.

“What we have now is people freely expressing their outrage on Facebook and Twitter,” said Greg Kandra, a Catholic deacon in Brooklyn, New York. “The anger is palpable. This is like 2002 on steroids.”

To continue reading click here.

 

Child sexual abuse, cover-ups and intimidation — a global Jewish community snapshot

A global Jewish community snapshot in light of revelations in Baltimore, and an ongoing Australian case

Rabbi Steven (Shmuel) Krawatsky, formerly of the Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School in Baltimore (via The New York Jewish Week)

In the wake of a recent child sexual abuse scandal to hit the Jewish community, this time in Baltimore, it is an opportune time to examine similar cases around the Jewish world and reflect on how we have responded to them. Learning from these will help us respond more adequately to such scandals in the future.

For this purpose, I will focus on what has recently transpired in Australia and the United Kingdom.

In 2011, during my tenure as Vice President of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), I publicly disclosed for the first time that I had been sexually abused as a child by two perpetrators while a student at Melbourne Chabad’s Yeshivah Centre.

While initially applauded by some, this revelation and my subsequent public advocacy on the broader issue of child sexual abuse unleashed a torrent of additional abuse from many quarters, most notably from many within the global Chabad community, including its leaders and their supporters.

The week after the disclosure, Yeshivah’s senior rabbi, Tzvi Hirsch Telsner, asked a question directed at me and my family in his Shabbat sermon: “Who gave you permission to speak?” An Australian Judicial Inquiry, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, later confirmed that Rabbi Telsner effectively intimidated me and my family (and others) in an attempt to silence us.

The intimidation and cover-up attempts came not just from the Chabad community, the centre of the scandal and investigation. Much of it came from the mainstream Jewish community, including those at the highest levels of leadership. Dr Danny Lamm, then president of the ECAJ, publicly supported Yeshivah’s reactions during the scandal, despite clear evidence that they were behaving unconscionably. The ECAJ recently apologised for its part in the scandal, but Lamm has stubbornly refused to do so

To read the remainder of the article, click here: