Ivanka Trump made the following comment to the Associated Press when asked about about Judge Roy Moore, Alabama’s Republican nominee
for the US Senate:
“There’s a special place in hell for people who prey on children. I’ve yet to see a valid explanation and I have no reason to doubt the victims’ accounts.”
I think she’s right. And so does just about anyone
else that has been following the Roy Moore saga. But for those that haven’t.
Roy Moore has been accused of sexually molesting teenage girls as young as 14. Many years ago when he was a prosecutor in his thirties. He
has vehemently denied all accusations. Most of the
reaction to this has been to believe his accusers. Apparently the crimes he has been
accused of are no longer prosecutable since the statute of limitations ran out a long time ago.
Few people doubt the credibility of those women.
Even conservative House and Senate members of his own Republican Party. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has asked him to step down and has threatened to expel him for the Senate should he win the election. That has not, however, stopped his core supporters in Alabama from not
only continuing their support, but doubling down on it. They believe that all these
accusations are politically motivated because of their timing.
I admit that for a moment, those thoughts occurred to me too. The
timing was definitely suspicious. Why have these accusers come out at this
particular moment when it was too late to change the ballot and substitute someone else in Moore’s place? Were they politically motivated with an agenda of getting one
of their own elected? If that is the case, it probably worked. Moore’s double
digit lead against his Democratic opponent has vanished. Polls now show
that Democrat, Doug Jones now leads
Moore by as much as 12 percentage points.
I suppose anything is possible. But there is little
doubt in my mind. The accusers are not lying. It has been well established by professionals who deal with sex abuse that the
vast majority of those kinds of allegations are credible. In Moore’s case, there are just too many accusations
from around the same time by girls of about the same age for them to all be lying.
Why
did they wait decades before revealing what Moore did to them? Experts say that it is not
uncommon for victims of abuse to not report sex abuse when it happens. I think that might be because
they are embarrassed by it and just want to get on with their lives in most
cases. They do not want all the negative attention it would have brought upon
themselves - fearing public disbelief or accusations like it was their own fault
(blaming the victim). Why then did they do it at this particular time?
That’s an easy one. It probably had nothing to do with the election. What it did have to do with can
be answered with two words: Harvey Weinstein. His exposure as a serial sex abuser has generated the #metoo
campaign. Which has been encouraging victims of sexual misconduct (both male and
female) to come forward and tell the world what happened to them,
no matter how long ago.
This is a wonderful development. A lot
of respected people have been exposed as sexual predators of one sort or
another. Prominent names keep coming up. Almost every day there is a new revelation
of a prominent member of society who has been accused of such behavior - far to
many to list. The latest being Senator Al Franken. This phenomenon will allow our
culture to ‘clean house’! All of these people will at long
last suffer the embarrassment and dishonor they deserve. And hopefully be removed from
the ‘public square’ (as some already have).
I don’t think this will eliminate sex abuse. There
will always be sociopaths that will seek to gratify their own sexual appetites –
and find innocent victims to do so, They will be Dr. Jekyll by day and Mr. Hyde
by night. That is the nature of the universe. And its been that way since the beginning
of time.
What it will do is make people
a lot more aware of the problem and better able to protect themselves. It will hopefully also change the culture of victims hiding abuse for fear of embarrassment into a culture of
immediate exposure of the abuser – and the prosecution of predators (and their enablers where that applies).
We of the Orthodox Jewish community should be
pleased at this development. Our values are Torah values where crimes of sex
are deemed the most unholy of acts. Jews are a Goy Kadosh – a holy people.
Holiness demands that we remove ourselves as much as possible from forbidden sexual
acts. And there is little more disgusting than forcing sex abuse upon innocent children.
Which brings me back to Roy Moore. Or more
specifically to what appears to be an Orthodox Jew publicly defending him. In front of a camera. I
don’t know who that Charedi looking fellow in the above screenshot is . But I do know that, while he might mean well, what he has done
is a Chilul HaShem. And whoever he is, he deserves to be called out for it!
Why did he do that? I guess he feels the ends
justify the means. Whatever it takes to get someone into office whose public
views match their own. In this case, Judge Moore is on the same page with this fellow’s religious agenda with respect to the moral climate of this country. Moore is campaign is based on that. The fellow in the picture said as much. He claims that all
these accusations are being made because of Judge Moore’s position on morality.
I’m sorry. Even if this fellow is right and Judge
Moore’s views are the Torah’s views - siding with
the devil is not the right way to go about promoting that agenda. It is instead the way to show
the world we don’t care how we get our own religious agenda done as long as it gets
done. If it takes the devil, so be it. The absurdity of that should be obvious. Siding
with a sexual predator for purposes of supporting a higher societal standard of morality is absurd!
I used to think Judge Moore’s views did in many ways
reflect our own. Before running for the Senate he was most famous for putting
up a sculpture of the Ten Commandments on the front lawn of his courthouse. He was
sued for that by the ACLU - accusing him of mixing church and state. He was ordered to take
it down. He defied the ruling.
At the time I supported Judge Moore. How could a monument to the Ten Commandments displayed on public property be any worse than a display of the Nativity scene we find on public property during this time of year? At the time I felt he was being
persecuted for seeing the values of the bible as a moral guide.
But now that he has been shown to be a hypocrite, I
place no value on him. And neither should anyone that calls themselves a religious
Jew. Ivanka Trump is right about him. How sad that this fellow doesn’t
understand that his means do not justify his ends. They counteract them.
