There are many reasons why victims will not report abuse to the police. Like the community ethos in the hard core Chasidic world that sees reporting anyone to the police for any reason as Mesirah - often treating victims as criminals and the abusers as victims. This was the case with accused sex abuser Rabbi Nechemia Weberman as shown by the picture above. Which contains posters in Yiddish announcing the mass fundraising rally for him a couple of months ago - calling it a case of Pidyon Shevuyim.
But even in communities that realize that accusations of abuse are legitimate, there is often still an unwillingness to report even if the perpetrators aren’t Jewish as was pointed out in an article in the Forward. The reason being that victims want to
avoid the stigma of having been abused.
These victims
justifiably fear that their prospects of marriage will be severely reduced. Victims
will think, “Who after all wants to marry me - a victim of sex abuse?” Not an unreasonable fear considering the well known attendant psychological issues from which an abuse victim often suffers.
We can “scream” all
day long about how important it is to report abusers to the authorities. No one
wants that taint. Especially at a time where the Shidduch crisis seems to be at
epic proportions. It’s hard enough finding a mate even if one is completely
normal never having experienced sexual abuse. How can we ask a victim to reveal
to the public that they were sexually abused? They may as well put a sign on their
backs saying, “Don’t marry me, I was sexually abused!”
It is easy for those
of us on the outside to say (as I have many times) that victims must come out
of the closet, identify their abusers, and make sure they are punished for
their crimes. Without doing that the problems of sex abuse in the community
will only get worse.
Which Shadchan will now suggest this victim as a
Shidduch? Is it even ethical to hide that fact from a potential mate?
So we have a
conundrum. On the one hand it is an absolute necessity to report abusers to the
police and to have victims testify against them in court. And yet doing so can
ruin the life of a victim by making it public that he or she was abused. Not that their lives have not been adversely affected
already – just from the abuse itself. But adding the pressure of Shidduch
problems surely does not help.
I suppose in the
best of all possible worlds reporting abuse should be possible without the victim’s
identity being made public. But the accused has the right to be faced by their accuser
in court. So I’m not sure how it is even possible to keep a victim’s identity secret.
And then again,
keeping it a secret from a potential spouse is unethical. People have a right to
know about traumatic events that happened to a potential mate which can
affect their marital lives. Such events can easily hurt the relationship, especially
in the area of marital intimacy if they are kept hidden prior to the marriage.
The solution to this
problem is to change the culture. There must be widespread education about this
phenomenon. Victims need to be come forward and testify. In addition to that –
and perhaps even more importantly – victims and their immediate families need
to be treated by mental health professionals trained in the field so they can all
become whole again.
There should be no
stigma attached to such counseling. In fact
one might say that with the proper therapy victims will come out even stronger
than they were before they were abused – understanding more about their own
psychological makeup and thereby become betters spouses and better parents because
of it.
Only if there is
community wide education about these matters can there be a culture change. If
that happens Shadchanim no longer be inhibited from recommending abuse
victims. But until that happens – if it
ever does – the problems are real and will only get worse. Abusers will go unpunished
and remain free to find new victims. Victims will go untreated and live a life
in their own personal hell. Some will go OTD. Some will become abusers themselves.
And some will become so clinically depressed that they will attempt suicide. If
the culture remains as it does, only the abusers will gain. Everyone else will
lose.
