Yesterday the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) published six separate articles on sex abuse in the Jewish community. For those who don’t know, JTA is the Associated Press(AP) of Jewish journalism. Some of these articles focused on problems within the Orthodox community, some past and resolved some present and unresolved. There was nothing really new there as I scanned all of them. But they did provide a pretty good description of the state of affairs as they are now, and as they should be. One thing that stood out was that Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform leaders and organizations are not that different in their approaches. All these organizations want the guilty punished and the innocent protected.
Within Orthodoxy there were disagreements between various representatives of differing Hashkafic organizations about and how to handle things.
To me there was one article stood out the most. And the following statement excerpted from it is one of the reasons why:
“(Rav Matisyahu) Salomon , a dean of Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, N.J., one of the world´s largest yeshivas, said, according to an Agudath Israel spokesman, that haredim are indeed guilty of "sweeping things under the carpet."
I remember when he made that comment. It didn’t occur to me at the time how repugnant that sounded since he immediately explained what he meant. As Rabbi Shafran said in the article:
“(Rav) Salomon meant that rather than ignoring or covering up sexual misconduct, as detractors maintain, haredi officials deal with it discreetly to protect the dignity of the families of perpetrators and victims.”
All well and good. I agree with the policy of using discretion to protect the innocent. Although I do think that sometimes such “discretion” goes too far in protecting the potentially guilty at the expense of the victim. But after reading this article it became clear to me just how bad his phrasing sounded. I totally disagree with the way he characterized it. The very statement “sweeping things under the carpet” implies cover-up. He should not have used that term. Why he did so is puzzlement to me. How can a Rabbinic leader of the stature of Rav Salomon say that “sweeping allegations of sexual abuse under the rug” is the right and proper thing to do? Even after it was explained, does he not realize that such comments are easily misconstrued and open to attack?
And indeed he was attacked. Many of the attacks were by commenters right on this blog. Those commenters were unfair and wrong, in my view but understandable. As the article further states:
“The response to Salomon’s remarks was swift and often heated, with several Web site and blog contributors arguing that the rabbi´s comments should be taken literally — that is, haredi officials often look the other way when clergy sex abuse takes place in their midst.”
“(Rabbi Avi) Shafran, who accused the online detractors of making glib and sweeping generalizations without corroborating evidence, termed the comments "abhorrent." Rabbi Shafran also denied the charge that in cases of sexual abuse Batei Din will try to convince litigants to not pursue their complaints. “In cases where there is some degree of doubt, the beit din has a responsibility to counsel against going to authorities until there is proven criminal activity.”
I wonder about that. Is it in the best interest of the Torah community to avoid the authorities until there is proof? How do we attain that proof without the help of the authorities? Does Agudah have the investigative resources to get proof? If they are unable to ascertain the validity of the charges, what would they do? Ignore the accusations? Allow the accused perpetrator to continue as before? I think this policy is a mistake and is responsible for the perpetuation of a situation that has claimed a great many victims, and destroyed the reputation of Yeshivas Torah Temimah. If there are credible accusations, the authorities ought to be immediately informed. Let them investigate.
I wonder, too, if Rabbi Shafran’s stated reason for not going to the authorities is the only one. I suspect there is also another, less noble one: To protect the reputation of the Torah community by avoiding the attendant negative publicity of a scandal.
Should the Beis Din be the first line of defense in such cases? Normally I would think it should be. But Rabbi Mark Dratch, founder and director of JSafe, an organization addressing abuse in the Jewish community makes the following observation: “(I)f the beit din is used to make the community safer, that´s appropriate. If that relationship is used to bypass the justice system, I think that´s wrong”. He feels, and correctly so in my view that the Batei Din don’t “always work appropriately”. He has in fact "pleaded with members of Agudah to expose the dangers of clerical and familial abuse. (He) said if you don´t expose, victims have no place to turn."
Rabbi Shafran conceded, that there are not now in place any official guidelines in Agudah and expressed the belief that there would be such guidelines in the future.
As the self proclaimed and widely acknowledged repository of Daas Torah in America, I have to wonder why there are no guidelines by Agudah in place yet. What are they waiting for?
