Better Late Than Never

Chaim Walder (Jerusalem Post)

Sometimes good things can result from bad things that came first. It appears that this is what happened here. The exposure of a Chaim Walder - a once beloved Charedi author of children’s books - as a decades long serial sex abuser may have actually changed the culture of how Charedi world now deals with accusations of sexual abuse. 

It has been a long time in coming. But the attitude seems to have changed from going to rabbinic authorities first to going directly to the police.

Back in 2015, a courageous group of 100 rabbis from around the world - many of them Charedi and led by Chicago’s Agudah Dayan, Rabbi Shmuel Fuerst, signed a Kol Korei – a public declaration espousing their views on this issue. Which in part said the following: 

…any individual with firsthand knowledge or reasonable basis to suspect child abuse has the religious obligation to promptly notify the secular law enforcement of that information.

Not that this should have surprised anyone. R’ Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, ZTL, who was considered the undisputed Gadol Hador by the Charedi world at the time made an almost identical statement.. 

But that didn’t much change the Charedi culture on this issue. The Agudah Moetzes declared that suspicions of abuse must first be brought to rabbis who would then decide whether they were credible enough to report. 

One may wonder how the Agudah Moetzes who are so fiercely dedicated to the best interests of the Jewish community could come out with a statement that seemed to contradict R’ Elyashiv?  That’s because they did not trust their public enough to know what is and isn't a credible accusation of abuse. They believed that innocent people would be accused by vindictive individuals with an agenda to destroy the reputation of a personal albeit innocent enemy. Once the police got involved, the accused’s reputation would be tainted for life even after they were cleared.

So with the best of intentions they decided that rabbis from their own community must be consulted to determine whether or not there was a ‘reasonable basis to suspect child abuse’. They did not trust secular authorities to be discreet whereas they would be.

That effectively nullified R’ Elyashiv’s directive. Or at best delayed action on suspected offenders allowing them to keep offending. And at worst it allowed rabbis not trained in these matters to make decisions about people they knew. Decisions that were  unwittingly biased because of the accused’s often pristine reputation. 

These rabbis thought they were protecting innocent people from false accusations while in truth they actually were bamboozled by them into believing their cries of innocence. Thus allowing predators to keep on doing it with impunity while being even more careful not to get caught.

But Rabbi Fuerst and the original group of 100 rabbis understood the pain of survivors, the urgency of protecting the public, and getting sexual predators off the streets. Correctly trusting the Charedi public to know what a reasonable basis to suspect child abuse - is.

And now this kind of thinking seems to have moved a lot more rabbis to sign on to that document.  And strange as it may seem, we can thank Chaim Walder for that. There had been credible accusations against him in the past. But his pristine reputation protected him. And to the best of my knowledge, the police were kept out of it. 

Few heard those accusations  or refused to believe them if they did. Threats from Walder himself toward his victims  helped him too. And enabled him to continue his abuse for a long time. Who knows how many additional victims could have been spared had those accusations been directly reported to the police?! They have been trained to know how to investigate those crimes without the impediment of the natural bias of rabbis that knew him. 

The lesson was apparently learned. As reported in the Jerusalem Post many additional Charedi rabbis have now seen the light; seen the wisdom of going directly to the police; and abandoned the policy of informing rabbis first:

New signatories of the kol koreh include Aish HaTorah, the UK Federation of Synagogues,  dayanim (religious court judges) and leaders of orthodox communities around the world, including Monsey, New York.

So thank you Chaim Walder for your posthumous albeit unintended service to the community you so egregiously violated throughout your life.  Maybe your special place in hell will not be as hot because of that. Although I doubt it.