Changing the Rabbinic Mindset about Suspected Abusers

Deputy Health Minister, Ya'akov Litzman and fellow Charedi politicians (TOI)

Can sexual abuse ever be eradicated? I doubt it. Sociopaths have always existed and will continue to exist. People with psychological aberrations like that don’t care about anyone but themselves. Other human beings are seen as objects to use and discard at will. Sexually or otherwise. With little or no guilt.

No matter what we legislate I do not believe we will ever get to a point where it will never happen again. Sociopaths seeking sexual gratification by abusing others will somehow find a way do it.

That is the unfortunate reality. The best we can hope for is to protect ourselves the best we can. We must be fully vigilant in educating ourselves and our children in preventative measures. And to not hesitate to report credible suspicions of abuse to the police immediately.When an abuser is caught, we must make sure he gets the punishment he or she deserves: Prison time for as long possible where he can no longer do any damage. The punishment must be severe if it is going to have any deterrent effect. It will not eliminate it completely. But hopefully it will reduce it significantly 

Perhaps the one thing that might have the most positive impact is for the rabbinic establishment to stop seeing the victimizer as the victim. And thereby further victimizing the real victim of abuse.

Although that has begun to change a bit, we are far from a rabbinic approach to sex abuse that would be a fully just one. Yeshivas Rabbenu Yitzchok Elchanan Mashgaich, Rabbi Yosef Blau makes this point in a Times of Israel article: 

A few days ago, the Israeli police recommended that Deputy (in name only) Health Minister Yaakov Litzman be indicted for, among other offenses, using his position to tamper with witnesses in order to help Malka Leifer, an accused sex abuser, avoid extradition to Australia. This is fundamentally different from ordinary corruption that arises from greed. The leading figure in a Haredi party was (allegedly) protecting an accused abuser from his community, openly showing contempt to victims. If television reports have credibility, this was part of a pattern of behavior to gain special treatment for Orthodox sexual offenders.

This  bizarre concern for abusers over victims is unfortunately common in certain religious circles, particularly when the victims are now non-observant. Opposition to Orthodox Jews being judged by secular courts is seen as a religious value, though clearly there are no religious courts that can adequately punish the guilty.

Supporters of Leifer do not deny that she has done what she is accused of. They claim that they only want her to go to an Israeli prison. Note that if their strategy of claiming that she is mentally unfit to attend hearings had been successful, Leifer would have avoided time in prison altogether. 

Rabbi Blau makes a point of saying that by being silent, the religious world in Israel (including its rabbis) is tacitly endorsing what Rabbi Litzman has done. One Religious Zionist cabinet member actually admitted not being familiar with the charges but said that he knows Rabbi Litzman to be a decent man! For him, that apparently ends the conversation.

That right there is the problem. When someone is perceived as a decent man, then what he does – even if it might be technically illegal – must be the decent thing to do. But Rabbi Litzman’s decency was directed towards the accused and ignored her victims. And the rabbinic establishment in Israel seems to be OK with that.

Rabbi Blau notes that survivors are devastated by such reactions. Is it any wonder that so many of them go OTD? …or worse suffer lifelong depression with a high rate of suicide attempts?

Every Jewish life is precious. Period. It doesn’t matter whether they are observant or not. But even if it would be true (which it isn’t) that an observant life is more precious and worth saving than a non observant one - do they not realize the reason so many survivors go OTD  is not so much because of the abuse itself but the skeptical way their accusations are treated by the rabbinic establishment? And because of the contempt it might have towards an accuser for even suggesting that the accused did something as heinous as that?

Is there any wonder that when rabbis protect people accused of abuse while their victims are treated as liars - that they will reject what those rabbis have been preaching and what they stand for ...seeing them instead as bunch of hypocrites shilling for an unjust God?

This is the one area that could use a huge improvement if we are ever to make substantial progress. If we want to prevent a survivor from going OTD or worse, the rabbinic habit of protecting the abuser must change. 

The idea that ‘he (or she) COULDN’T HAVE’ has to be completely dismissed from their thinking, hard as that might be to accomplish. If they cannot be objective about it, they must step aside and let those who can be in charge and let the decide who is the real victim. And then follow all of their recommendations.

Until that happens, the Litzmans of the world and their rabbinic enablers will just keep on helping victimzers escape justice. And by doing that they will have a hand in destroying the mental health and spiritual well-being of fellow Jews who through no fault of their own are now survivors who - because of the way they have been treated by the rabbinic establishment - feel that they have been abandoned by Judaism.