The Jewish Press On Sexual Abuse And Family Violence

The Jewish Press has a comprehensive article on sexual abuse and family violence in the Orthodox community. Sadly, most of the haredi leaders quoted want beit dins to handle abuse and violence issues. This is impossible for many reasons, as YU's Rabbi Blau notes:

Rabbi Blau put it this way: "The old Israeli, Meah Shearim solution of posters telling people to stay away from so and so" will not work today.

"I’m not convinced we have batei din at the present time that are able to deal with it," he said. "Who will investigate? Who is able to? Who is trained and sensitive to all the ramifications?"Batei din, he explained, would have several difficulties to overcome, a major one being a lack of expertise in the field of abuse. Would all dayanim, for instance, possess sufficient understanding of the deleterious long-range effects of abuse on victims?

While the above is easily solvable — batei din could work in tandem with experts — a more difficult problem, said Rabbi Blau, is the lack of a set of accepted criteria. "What kind of testimony will be used? How much trust will be afforded the testimony of victims? You can’t use regular halachic criteria. Halachic expertise alone is insufficient."

A third difficulty, he said, is that batei din will have to define key terms ranging from age of consent ("according to halacha, a girl is an adult at 12," he pointed out) to what kind of touching constitutes abuse.

Any attempt to fix the latter two difficulties would prove to be daunting, he said. "Who would be in charge? Who would set up the system?"

Rabbi Blau also raised the issue that outside of Israel, batei din have no investigative powers.

"We know there are cases of charismatic people who are able to bring lying [witnesses to appear before a bet din]," Rabbi Blau said. "No consequences if someone lies in front of a bet din."

Some of these problems could be solved if there were a national bet din in this country, he added, but of course there is none. Over the centuries, he pointed out, rabbinic authorities came up with ways of dealing with difficult accusations — i.e., a lack of two witnesses — but that such solutions require "a society we don’t have, where a bet din can bring things to bear."

"In Israel," he continued, "if X doesn’t give his wife a get and we feel he’s [obligated], he can be thrown in jail. These methods are not available to batei din in America."

Rabbi Michael Broyde, a dayan on the Beit Din of America and a noted expert on the intersection of Jewish and secular law also notes:

Rabbi Broyde noted that "batei din do not get involved in cases involving what American law considers a crime" — they never, for example, adjudicate murder and violent theft cases. He added that while abuse, sexual and otherwise, encompasses a large spectrum of offenses, he believes that no halachic authority "thinks a violent rapist should be summoned to a bet din."

Rabbi Broyde's colleague Rabbi Yona Riess notes:

"We don’t have jurisdiction over criminal cases," said Rabbi Yona Reiss, director of the Beth Din of America.

Rabbis Blau, Broyde and Riess are Modern Orthodox.

The Brooklyn DA was forced to set up a special project to deal with haredi family violence, because haredim simply would not call police – and women and children were badly injured because of this. Called Project Eden, it specializes in keeping haredi abusers out of court and out oif jail. In return, it gets some minor protection for abused women and children.

Think about this. Would we tolerate special treatment for WASPs, special treatment that kept rich, lilly-white abusers out of jail? Would we tolerate it if the special treatment was given to blacks?

Project Eden is a terrible idea loaded with the potential for abuse. Haredim need to learn how to live in the real world. That includes realizing that abusers should not be allowed to walk the streets.

Comments

[YUGUY]

I have made a YU facebook group to cry the acts of Yudi Kolko to the masses here. YU is a school of young Jews seeking out things to be active about, and I feel this is one of them. Facebook is a membership site, but heres the link for anyone that is willing to register. I am trying to do my part to spread teh knowledge of this Mamzer and raise awareness.
Any help is much appreciated. I have been challenged many times in the past day since creating this page. People think there will be no effect and that my idea of using facebook will in no way help the situation. We still have 120 members of the group in one day, so well see how it grows.

http://yu.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2241000967