It is at once commendable and tragic that so many in the Torah world believe that a Torah based society is nigh incapable of sex abuse in the high numbers presented in a recent study as reported in the Jewish Week (and dealt with here in last Friday’s post).
The Gemarah tells us: ‘Ein Apitropus L'Arayos’. Loosely interpreted one can say this means that sexual Taavos (desires) are not subject to Hashkafa restrictions. If one has a biological pre-disposition to be weak in matters of sex, one will have a lower threshold of transgression. They will often also have addictive personalities.
Sexual urges can take many forms, some of which are very abberational. And the manner of satisfying those urges will be just as varied and abberative. Put individuals like this in a scenario where opportunity presents itself… and the impulse to transgress is almost impossible to resist. Transgressions can range from the relatively harmless to the extremely harmful. And the addictive personality will transgress multiple times!
Is Frumkeit and even Ehrlichkeit a preventative in such cases? I don’t think so. At least not in all cases. It might very well depend on how ‘sick’ a person’s sex-drive is. If the urge is strong and the will is weak, even the best of us can succumb.
There is a rather famous case of an esteemed and highly respected Rosh HaYeshiva in Israel... with many loyal Talmidim over the years. Some thought of him as their Rabbo Muvhak. He was a man who was close to Gedolei Yisroel and often consulted with them. He garnered respect from students and peers alike, ...a man with an international reputation who in fact became a Noef! He had sexual relations with a married woman who was not his wife. This... as we know… is a Yehoreg V'Al Yaavor... a cardinal sin which one must sacrifice his life and not violate!
And he wasn't the only one. There are other famous cases of sexual abuse. They were people in positions of power who found ways to get around Yichud restrictions that were observed in their communities. Some were MO. Some were Charedi. ..and some were everywhere in-between. It doesn’t much matter what the Hashkafa is. It matters more how impaired the libido is.
It is therefore incredilbly naïve to suggest that a Charedi society makes it more difficult to transgress these kinds of violations.
When an urge to transgress a sexual taboo exists in a human being, some human beings find it almost impossible to resist… no matter how Frum they are... no matter how Charedi they are.
The sex drive is not a quantitatively fixed urge in all people. It is as varied as is individual differences in the desire to eat: Some people eat to live... and other live to eat. When it comes to sex the problem is exacerbated because of all the various taboos involved and all of the social and religious restrictions involved.
I will grant that we do not yet know the real extent of the problem of sexual abuse in the Torah world. But at the same time, I think it exists in far greater numbers than anyone ever thought. That is the lesson to be drawn from that study. At the very least.
Sex abuse comes in many forms. It can involve just about any normal or abnormal sexual scenario one can imagine. The Jewish Week article did not go into detail about what the criteria of that report was but I expect that the journal article does.
In any case, those who continue to insist that the study is worthelss should pay attention to what a commenter posted on the subject.
This is not an isolated case. The reason we don't hear more about cases like this is because of the shame and embarrassment of the victims, fear of repercussions such as the impact such information would have on Shiduchim for the abuse victim and other members of her family…and many other reasons. For anyone to use a counter argument of : ‘If the number were that large…we would know’ is therefore quite inaccurate. The fact is... we would not necessarily know.
So in the final analysis, one must take this study seriously. Indeed there should be more studies. But to discredit this study as ‘bogus’ because the numbers are unexpectedly high, is to discourage further study. And that would be tragic.
