Bizarre Case of Child Abuse

An American family immigrates to Israel. Then something goes incredibly wrong…

…as Ha'aretz reports:

…According to the details of the investigation, the parents of the children invited Rabbi Elior Chen and several other men to their home in order to study Torah. The men, including David Kugman and Shimon Gabai, lived in the family's home. When the relationship between the mother and the father deteriorated, the men allegedly drove the father out of the house by force, and he moved elsewhere.

Rabbi Chen allegedly told Kugman and Gabai to discipline the children, but they failed to do so.

The police said that when the routine methods of discipline failed, Rabbi Chen ordered them to use violence, which allegedly included beatings, burnings, pushing, shaking and tying. Investigators also suspect that the two men placed the children in baths of hot and cold water, and broke their bones with hammers and blows.

The Jerusalem Post is a bit more graphic:

A Jerusalem woman who immigrated from the US and her companion are expected to be indicted next week for allegedly abusing her two young children, police said Wednesday.

The woman's three-year-old child remains hospitalized in critical condition with severe head injuries, and is likely to remain in a vegetative state, officials said.

Police said that several months ago, the woman's relations with her husband broke down, and he was removed from their Jerusalem home by two men whom the couple had brought into their home to educate their children.

The mother told police that since they were unable to educate her children in the "standard" way because they were "mischievous," the two men "corrected" the children, a police representative told a Jerusalem court on Wednesday.

The "corrections," which took place in the mother's presence, included beatings, tying up the children, shaking them dozens of times, setting their fingers on fire, dousing them in hot and cold water, and breaking their bones by beating them with hammers and other tools, according to the testimony of the police representative.

A court order has prevented the release of the names of the woman and her companion, who on Wednesday were remanded in custody for an additional five days by the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court ahead of their planned arraignment next week.

The children's father, who has been released from custody, was allowed by the court to pray at his child's hospital bedside, in the presence of social workers.

The two key suspects in the child abuse case, identified by police as Shimon Gabbai and Rabbi Elior Chen, remain at large, and are wanted by police.

The Jerusalem abuse case is one of a series of grisly incidents of brutality against children that have recently come to light.

Ha'aretz also details charges against Rabbanit Beruriah Keren, the leader of the Burka cult:

In the case of the Beit Shemesh woman, the indictment states that she beat her children for years with a belt, a stick, a rolling pin and an electrical cable.

Both women have been denied bail.

Comments

[SnipeFu]

This makes me so incredibly sad. May God heal the children and bring those responsible to justice and teshuvah.

[maven]

We always assume that Americans olim are of a certain class, and its true for many, but there are many families that really fall apart there, sort of like that Tranquility Bay story, with kids out on the street, etc. There was a remarkable woman, R, who used to run a shelter and programs for at-risk kids of American olim in Jerusalem, but she was terribly undersupported and the program disappeared after several years.
This case, is of course, way beyond anything like that.
By the way, to the person who said those responsible should be brought to Teshuva, its time for the community to remember R. Kook's prescient words in the opening of Orot HaTeshuva that teshuva is not the response for mental illness. Someone who can break children's bones with hammers is a little beyond working on their middos or an Aish discovery program.

[SnipeFu]

Thus the comment about Justice first. If it was in my power I would lock these kinds of people away and throw away the key. Makot would probably be good too.

[maven]

For those keeping score, here is what the competition is up to:

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=546112&hp
TUESDAY, MARCH 25 We continue with the first of the week's two stories involving children killed by religion. Today's saga comes from Weston, Wisconsin, where Dale and Leilani Neumann face possible criminal charges after their daughter was pronounced dead from undiagnosed diabetes. Details come from the Associated Press, which reports 11-year-old Madeline Neumann died Sunday, with an autopsy determining the cause of death to be diabetic ketoacidosis, a treatable ailment that left Madeline with too little insulin in her body, exposing her to roughly 30 days of nausea, vomiting, excessive thirst, loss of appetite, and weakness before ultimately killing her. "She got sicker and sicker until she was dead," said Police Chief Dan Vergin to the AP. As for the parents: They told investigators their daughter last saw a doctor eight years ago to "get some shots" and attributed her death to a lack of faith. In lieu of medical attention, Chief Vergin said, the parents believed "it was better to keep praying. Call more people to help pray." One of those called: a relative in California, who phoned Wisconsin police out of fear the girl was "extremely ill, dire." Officers arrived at the home and rushed Madeline to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead. As for the parents' deadly faith: "They have a little Bible study of a few people," said Vergin, but the family does not attend an organized church or participate in an organized religion. The girl's death remains under investigation, with findings forwarded to the district attorney to review for possible charges. Creepy fact: In addition to the now-dead Madeline, the Neumanns have three living children, ranging in age from 13 to 16. "They are still in the home," said Chief Vergin. "There is no reason to remove them. There is no abuse or signs of abuse that we can see."

SATURDAY, MARCH 29 We continue with the second of the week's two stories involving children killed by religion. Today's setting: Clackamas County, Oregon, where 15-month-old Ava Worthington died on March 2 from what the state medical examiner identified as bacterial bronchial pneumonia and an infection—two illnesses that could have been easily cured with antibiotics. Unfortunately for Ava, her parents belong to Oregon City's Followers of Christ Church, which ABC News reports "has a history of shunning medical care in favor of faith healing." So instead of taking their mortally ill baby to a doctor, 28-year-old Carl Worthington and his 25-year-old wife, Raylene, chose to pray for her recovery. Unfortunately for the Worthingtons, their prayers failed, after which both parents were charged with second-degree manslaughter. "This is child abuse, plain and simple," said state senator Mark Hass. "There is no other way to say it."

[Y. Aharon]

This story is so shocking that it's hard to fathom properly. Based on the limited facts or charges made available, it appears that the woman fell under the influence of a cult led by a thoroughly evil guru. It's almost incomprehensible that a sane mother could watch her little children be tortured by these monsters. It's also incredible that the father could countenance being forced out of his home and have his children controlled by these men without reporting it to the police.

I sure hope that these evidoers are quickly caught and sentenced. The leader deserves to be locked up with other violent men without the possibility of parole. He deserves whatever abuse would be meted out there (even criminals have their sense of what is beyond the pale).

Y. Aharon

[maven]

Is this the same R. Elior Chen?
http://www.aad-online.org/2005/english/6-June/4-9/8-6/1.htm

[Shmarya]

Probably.

[Heifuch Mistabra]

Maven, I'm curious. What was Rav Kook's recommended response to mental illness?

[maven]

I suppose I should have phrased that less ambiguously. The point he makes is that Teshuva is an activity for people with a clear mind who wish to elevate themselves, not a refuge for the mentally ill, which is, as we see, is how it is frequently considered. I'm at work, but I can try to enter the text later at home. I always throught it was a good point, as I've seen "kiruv" attempted on uncontrolled schizophrenics at the hospital. Of course, you can "dress them up" but you can't "take them out".
Part of the issue in Israel is that the mental health system is in shambles, and there is a strong anti-science and anti-medicine element particularly in the extreme baal-teshuva world there. I took care of a patient with almost fatal anorexia who Uzi Meshullam, the cult leader, was treating with "holy crumbs" and fasting, until she was brought in looking like a camp victim after passing out. But that's nothing compared to some of these cases now coming to light...

[nachman]

This situation has absolutely nothing to do with religion. These are sick paople who need to be treated for their ailments.

[jewishwhistleblower]

1)http://www.newstimes.com/latestnews/ci_8808115

Child sex arrest of Danbury man stuns rabbi, coach
By John Pirro Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 04/04/2008 06:35:45 AM EDT

Photo: http://www.newstimes.com/portlet/article/html/render_gallery.jsp?articleId=8808115&siteId=3&startImage=1

DANBURY -- A Danbury man accused of seeking sex with a mother and her 7-year-old daughter was a respected member of his temple and a coordinator for a local youth soccer league.

The arrest of 46-year-old Leonard Shuster in Clermont, Fla., Tuesday shocked members of the Brewster synagogue he attended with his wife and three sons and those who knew him from his involvement with the Danbury Youth Soccer Club.

"That is pretty scary," said Vitas Kotach, of Danbury, who coached a team of 5- and 6-year-olds last year in a league for which Shuster was a volunteer coordinator.

It remains unclear how much direct contact Shuster had with the young players, or whether he was still involved with the organization at the time of his arrest. Numerous attempts to contact soccer club president Mike Diker and his wife, Liz, who also is associated with the club, were unsuccessful Thursday. A person who answered the phone at their residence said they were out for the evening.

Shuster, who is a sales analyst for a beverage company, also is a member of the board of directors at the Temple Beth Elohim.

"I only know what I read," said Rabbi Solomon Acrish. "My concern is for the family and the children. They have to be protected."

While Shuster was involved with activities at the temple, the rabbi said he was "most definitely not" in contact with children there.

Shuster was arrested by detectives from the Lake County Sheriff's Office as the result of an Internet sting operation

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Advertisement

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
that began in January, according to Sgt. John Herrell, a spokesman for the agency.
Over the past three months, investigators said, the Danbury man conducted an online correspondence with a detective Shuster thought was a 32-year-old woman with a 7-year-old daughter.

The conversations quickly turned sexual, and in subsequent e-mails and telephone conversations, Shuster discussed plans "to meet with the mother and her daughter for sexual activity," the investigator, Detective Chris Loyko, said.

Authorities said Shuster advised the "mother" how to groom the young girl for sex -- by sleeping together naked and going around the house without clothes. Shuster also sent the mother at least 120 images of child pornography, according to the arrest warrant affidavit.

Shuster finally e-mailed that he would be coming to Florida on Tuesday, ostensibly on a business trip but really for a sexual encounter, authorities said. He was taken into custody while looking for what he thought was the woman's house.

"This is a shock," said Laurie Amatulli, whose husband, Rich, worked as a coach in the league coordinated by Shuster.

"He was the go-to person when you need shirts or registration information," she said. "Never once was there an issue. He was always very professional."

Authorities said Shuster admitted communicating with the mother and sending child pornography, and told investigators he only transmitted the images from his computer at work.

He remains in custody pending a court hearing.

Contact John Pirro

at jpirro@newstimes.com

or at (203) 731-3342.

2)
http://www.newstimes.com/latestnews/ci_8784469

Update: Danbury man caught in sex sting
By Karen Ali STAFF WRITER
Article Last Updated: 04/04/2008 06:35:31 AM EDT

A married Danbury man with three children who flew into Florida's Orlando International Airport Tuesday on his way to meet a mother and her 7-year-old daughter for sex was instead arrested on 126 criminal counts, according to authorities.

Detectives had pretended to be the woman in Internet correspondence with the man, Leonard Shuster, 46, since January, according to police.

He was caught while looking for what he thought was the woman's house in Clermont, Fla., according to Sgt. John Herrell, a public information officer for the Lake County Sheriff's Office in Lake County, Fla.

Shuster is a sales analyst for a Connecticut beverage company, he said.

On Jan. 4, Shuster contacted someone in a Yahoo chat room whom he thought was a 32-year-old woman with a 7-year-old daughter, police said.

"The communications became sexual in nature and plans were eventually made to meet in the Clermont area for the aforementioned sexual activity," Herrell said.

Shuster remains in police custody pending a court hearing.

Besides 120 counts of transmitting child pornography, he was arrested on charges including attempted capital sexual battery of a person under 12 years old, traveling to meet a minor, transmission of child pornography, attempted lewd and lascivious battery, and prohibition of certain acts in connection with obscenity.

Shuster confessed to using a work laptop to talk to someone he believed to be a 32-year-old. He said he "only would send images of child pornography from his work computer," according to police.

"The defendant did admit that he sent numerous images of child pornography to what he thought was the mother and stated that he did talk about having sex with the mother and her 7-year-old daughter."

He also told police he sent adult and child pornography to the mother so the 7-year-old could look at it, police said.

Contact Karen Ali

at kali@newstimes.com

or at (203) 731-3341.

3)
Shuster's affidavit. [Warning: Graphic]
http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site3/2008/0403/20080402_031538_shusteraffidavit.pdf

[jewishwhistleblower]

http://blog.mlive.com/grpress/2008/03/childabuse_victim_sue_william.html

Child-abuse victim Sue William Silverman reconciles with her Jewish faith
Posted by Kristina Riggle | The Grand Rapids Press
March 22, 2008 08:00AM
Categories: Editors' Choice
GRAND RAPIDS -- Sue William Silverman clutched a rosary as a child, believing it would keep her safe.

She knew from stories of the Holocaust that bad things happened to little Jewish girls. But Christian girls, she believed, were protected.

In a literal sense, the rosary didn't work: Her father still molested her.

But Silverman says the rosary gave her hope that there were children out there who weren't being hurt by their fathers -- that it was possible to be safe.

"I could find these pockets of safety within my head," she said.

Press Photo/Rob Kurtycz
Author Sue William Silverman, seen in her Grand Haven home, discusses how she lost, then found, religion in her award-winning memoir, "Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You."Silverman, a Grand Haven resident, recently talked at Congregation Ahavas Israel about how the Jewish community has responded to her award-winning memoir, "Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You."
In her book, she described how the molestation drove her from the Jewish faith.

"There's no way my family could have been a spiritual family," she said.

Silverman said she is now finding her way back to Judaism, though she struggles with the idea of a male deity.

The reception her memoir received, and the invitations by many in the Jewish faith to speak about her experiences, turned her perceptions of her childhood religion upside down, she said, and helped her come "home" to a sense of spirituality.

Rabbi David Krishef said he invited Silverman to speak after hearing about her from a member of his congregation.

"I invited her in order to make us feel uncomfortable," he said. "We should be uncomfortable. This is not a comfortable subject and our discomfort should move us to act in certain ways, either to prevent abuse in families, if we can, or, maybe, more within our grasp -- to be safe people and provide safe resources within the congregation, within the building."

Silverman said that is one of her hopes because a "safe person" might have saved her as a girl.

"We have our schools, we have our temples and our churches, and those are the places where groups of people congregate," she said. "Those are the places where people turn."

The Jewish community has a particular difficulty with issues of abuse within families, Silverman said.

"When you're a minority group, I think that there is the desire to look perfect and to give that appearance because there's been so much discrimination," she said. "And, so, it's just been very hard to overcome that."

Krishef said he hopes Silverman's speech raises awareness of the issue within the congregation and the area. He said Ahavas Israel will place posters in the women's restrooms advertising a local domestic crisis center and there has been discussion of an informational program for middle-

school children and older.

"I think having the program was an important step in just letting people know the synagogue is a place where this discussion is welcome," he said.

Silverman said her message is not intended to shame anyone.

"It's more a matter of offering hope and health and, regardless of religion," she said, "there is also this community of mankind, womankind -- that, in some ways, we're all in it together."

see also: http://www.theawarenesscenter.org/irwinsilverman.html

[jewishwhistleblower]

Simply file it under Bizarre.
Rabbi (Jeremy) Hershy Worch:

1) gloating over a fire in the home of Rabbi Eichenstein;

2) alleging Luke Ford is michallel shabbos; and

3) telling us how "Sometimes when I'm having sex I think of (the founder of the Awareness Center)".

Folks, you can't make this stuff up.

We have sick people in our community.

http://rebhershy.livejournal.com/40737.html

rebhershy (rebhershy) wrote,
@ 2008-01-24 20:08:00

Been feeling like journaling lately
It's been so long since I felt safe I hardly recognize the feeling.

Seriously, since my enemies tried their hardest to crucify me three years ago not a day went by but I dreaded some new infamy.

Evil has many faces, but ugliest is the face of virtue triumphant. It matters not whether it triumphs like Rabbi Eichenstein who quietly calls my employer to have me fired, or like Vicki Polin who calls my ex-wife to say she's talking to 26 women who say I raped them in front of the children. There's no question in my mind that the worst sins are those we commit with the Yetzer Tov - Good Inclination. By the way, Eichenstein discovered I was working for XXXXXXXX XXXXXX Funerals Ltd as a Shomer - Guardian; someone who sits with the dead. He discovered it because one of the dead I happened to sit with (reciting the psalms at his side), was an uncle of his. When the good rabbi saw it was me, he called the funeral director and had me fired. He also stiffed me for the $15 an hour I'd earned sitting there all night.

Now I say that having a man fired because you think badly of him, doesn't make you less of a man. But stiffing the man who sits guarding the corpse of your uncle, finding an excuse to avoid paying him his fee after he's done the job, now that makes you a very small man indeed.

The thing is, the really important thing is that Eichenstein's Shabbes candles burned his house to the ground. Well, his wife put the tea lights on the plastic tablecloth which ignited when it heated up sufficiently, to be more precise, but you get the picture. I know which I prefer, having a mean prick try and burn my livliehood down or have the Sabbath burn my house down! Sometimes when I'm having sex I think of Victoria Polin, especially when I'm laughing. Or sometimes when my breath catches in my throat at the sheer beauty of woman skin or the perfume of her private places, I catch a glimpse of all the hot laughing sex Vicki doesn't have a hope of tasting, and I ask myself, who came out of all this enriched, and who impoverished? It's something to think about, isn't it?

You know, once a month like a fetish, on the 14th or 15th of the month, Luke Ford will visit all my web pages looking for only he knows what. 5 or 6 times in the last two years the 14th and 15th have fallen on the sabbath. So here's this convert to Judaism, to orthodox judaism no less, lives on a futon on the floor in a basement somehwere in Los Angeles, who can't hold back from firing up his computer to go snooping on the sabbath. Talk about being born again and getting a life!

I shouldn't crow, I suppose. But I feel like crowing, damnit.

[Anonymous]

I agree.

The thought of having sex with Vicki Polin is beyond the bounds of acceptable conduct.

[Stanley Kards]

Hope you collect your money. Is there more Evil now than in the past or just reported now?

[Rojario]

My cousin was a victim of child abuse, emotionally more than physically. He had undergone some treatment, but the trauma he still bears in. We observed some psychological disorder too. The treatment mainly involved counseling. I think the only way to stop it is through educating the kids and making them aware of the vices around. We all pray that my cousin would soon lead a normal life.