C4programmeasks:do rabbis cover up abuse?
BRITAIN’S CHAREDI establishment, already buffeted by allegations of sexual abuse against women by one of its senior rabbis, is about to become embroiled in fresh controversy.
Channel 4’s Dispatches strand is to broadcast an investigation next Wednesday night into claims of the sexual abuse of children within the strictly Orthodox communities of the UK.
In Britain’s Hidden Child Abuse, in secretly filmed footage, Rabbi Ephraim Padwa, the rabbinical head of the Stamford Hill-based Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations, tells a man who says he was abused as a child in Stamford Hill not to go to the police.
One Orthodox community worker, aware of the programme’s contents, said its effect would be “like a tsunami”.
The footage of Rabbi Padwa was shot undercover by a man raised in Stamford Hill who says that he was “sexually abused… when I was younger” and asks whether “it is a good idea to speak to the police about it”.
Rabbi Padwa says no, and is asked why. “It’s mesirah”, he responds — a term which means informing on a Jew to the non-Jewish authorities. “But this is a very serious issue,” the interviewer says.
“Ye s , b u t n o t police,” Rabbi Padwa answers.
A spokesman for Channel 4 said that the investigation had uncovered “19 different alleged cases of child sex abuse across the UK. Yet not one was reported to the police because alleged victims feared reprisals from within the community”.
Members of the community “often turn to the rabbis for advice and help. Our investigation discovered that ‘advice’ sometimes amounts to an outright ban on reporting alleged child abuse to the authorities.”
Two rabbinical authorities this week issued statements to make clear that they supported reporting cases of abuse to the police.
Rabbi Julian Shindler, executive director of the Rabbinical Council of the United Synagogue, told rabbis that it was “essential that, when abuse has occurred, the police must be informed without delay. Local communities should not attempt to deal with the situation internally. Delays in reporting abuse can cause vital evidence to be lost, allowing the abusers to continue violating our children. We must all ensure that the children of our communities will be protected by reporting abuse to the authorities wherever it takes place”.
Rabbi Shindler said that the US had “an obligation to safeguard the children of our community, and we have to accept that even within our own communities there are those who steal the innocence of our children.” Rabbi Yehuda Brodie, registrar of the Manchester Beth Din, stated: “We offer our strongest support for any victim of any criminal act to report matters to the authorities, including the police, as and where appropriate.”
JEWISH victims of child sex abuse have spoken out about serious sexual crime being perpetrated within the UK’s strictly Orthodox Jewish community,
Two victims — who are not involved in the film — have spoken exclusively to the
Both from Greater Manchester, they explained why they have never spoken openly about abuse or reported the allegations to the police. They said rabbis in whom they confided provided mixed responses, including utter naivety about what to do.
But they also said that they feared the response of their own community and could not face the prosecution process or destroying a perpetrator’s family, whom they knew.
One woman claimed that her son was abused, together with other children, when he was just six. The children were encouraged, with sweets, to fondle a Charedi man by placing their hands in his underpants. But the allegations only came to light more than five years later.
“My husband was absolutely horrified. My first thought was to call the police. My husband said no, because the man has a family and little children and it would hurt them badly.
“I would have preferred to have had him openly charged, to protect other people... But I am very familiar with [the alleged perpetrator’s] wife. I knew her, I knew her kids. I didn’t feel I could do it.”
A man from Salford alleges he suffered repeated attempted rape when he was 15, by a Charedi businessman who tied him up with a chasidic prayer belt, a while plying him with alcohol, marijuana and food. Attacks took place over many months, it is claimed.
“He would scream at me and squeeze my testicles until I was black and blue to punish me, if I confronted him.
“I never told my parents. I’d confided in a few friends. They believed me, but didn’t know what to do”.
Eventually the boy turned to a rabbi.
“He told me I should go to the Child Protection Team straight away. He said, they will put you in contact with the police. He also got me a psychologist in London.
“I felt relieved, that I had done the right thing”.
But after a number of meetings with police, the boy became scared. “I was nervous. There were stories in the papers about a boy who was raped. I thought I would be just another one of these kids in the newspaper”.