Charlie Rose?! Not Possible!

Charlie Rose interiews Putin

If one wants to understand why it is so difficult to believe that a highly respected figure in any given community is guilty of sexual misconduct of any kind, I think yesterday’s revelation about Charlie Rose is instructive.

I don’t know Mr. Rose. Never met him. But I was a fan. He seemed to me like a man of great honor and integrity in a business where that is sorely lacking. He had an ability to disarm world leaders during sit-down interviews on his PBS television show. At 75 years of age, I don’t know if there was anyone more respected in the television news business than Charlie.

I am kind of a news junkie. Which is why I have my morning coffee watching the CBS’s Morning News every morning. I record it since it begins at 7:00 AM while I am in the middle of studying Gemarah (Daf Yomi). I looked forward every day to watching a 20 minute uninterrupted newscast by this respected reporter who along with his 2 female partners co-hosted the show. Charlie seemed like a mentor to them.

I wondered how those two female co-hosts would react to the tawdry revelations by his victims about their mentor. This morning I found out. Clearly they had the right approach. They condemned his behavior and applauded his victims for coming forward. But you could see the disbelief and disappointment written all over their faces. It transcended their words. They simply could not believe that their partner and mentor for whom they had in the past expressed so much respect and admiration; a man that had not displayed anything but warmth and professionalism - could have done anything like that. But he did. He admitted it in an apology he made publicly. (How ‘nice’ that he apologized now after being exposed!)

This might be one reason why there has been so much resistance by some rabbinic leaders to reporting suspicions of sexual abuse directly to the police. They look at the people that have been suspected of it in their own community that garner similar respect and wonder how it is possible? In many of those cases, those respected individuals have denied it – claiming that allegations of abuse are false and the result of some sort of personal agenda. They just cannot get themselves to believe that an individual that is one of their community icons could ever do what he was accused of doing.

One may recall exactly that kind of reaction by the Satmar community to accusations of abuse and rape by Nechemya Weberman of one of his ‘patients’. It might now be a little easier to understand it. They could not – and did not believe this highly respected man who had ‘helped’ so many teens at risk; a man who exuded an exemplary religious lifestyle, a man who was so religious; so Godly that he recited Tehillim throughout his trial in his seat next to his lawyer – hardly paying any attention to the proceedings; a man whose family stood by him and his denials throughout his trial and after… They could not believe such a man was capable of doing what he was accused of. He was the ‘Charlie Rose’ of Satmar. Only instead of admitting it, he denied it.

It was pretty easy for the rest of us to see him as guilty. The cold hard facts of sexual abuse came out during his trial. He was found guilty. But to his peers in the world of Satmar? Impossible. They rejected the verdict and blamed it on lies by his accuser and on the antisemitism of the court and the jury. To them Weberman was hero being punished because of what he looked like - A Chasidic Jew.

I get it now. After seeing how Charlie Rose’s colleagues reacted to the devastating accusations against him even after he admitted it – I can understand why Weberman’s colleagues in the religious community whose reputation among them was similarly high - reacted to allegations about him when he denied it.

Much like the denial about Shlomo Carlebach’s sexual abuse by so many of his fans. A man like that?! Impossible. He too was the ‘Charlie Rose’ of his fan base.

Please do no misunderstand. I have not changed my views at all about reporting suspicions of sex abuse directly to the police, no matter how respected the suspected abuser is. That is is a no brainer for me. But at the same time, I understand the resistance to it.

What is happening now is something I never in a million years would have believed could happen. I had always believed that sex abuse was the province of sociopaths that could never gain any respect. Their narcissistic personalities would have prevented them from it. 

How wrong I was! These are all sick people. They are not always purely evil. In some cases there is a lot of good in them too. Otherwise they could never garner any real respect from their community, let alone become icons. Obviously the bad far exceeds the good. Because they carelessly and recklessly disregarded the value of the human life they destroy. By their disgusting behavior they ruin lives. Apologies like those of Charlie Rose that come after they have been exposed are disingenuous and pretty meaningless in my book.

I am still in a state of shock about all this. When is it all going to end? It seems like every day, new revalations about sexual misconduct of one type or another comes out about yet another prominent individual - about which one would have never expected it. How many prominent people are there that have yet to be exposed? They must all be shaking in their boots!

If you would have asked me just a few weeks ago whether so many icons would be outed so quickly as remotely abusive, I would have answered ‘No possible way!’ And yet here we are. The list is of prominent people so accused (going back to the 70s) is breathtaking. In both their number and station: 

Bill Clinton, Roman Polanski, Bill Cosby, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Anthony Weiner, Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, James Toback,  Kevin Spacey, George Bush (41), Shlomo Carelebach, Dustin Hoffman, Ben Afflek, Louis CK, Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Moore, Jeremy Piven, Mark Halperin, Al Franken, Charlie  Rose… 

This is just a partial list. There is probably more to come. Will it ever end? Who’s next?