Haredim Riot To Protest Abusive Mother's Arrest

Woman allegedly starved her child and kept toddler near death. Haredim threaten to boycott Hadassah Hospital because Hadassah doctors uncovered the abuse.

Haredim protest abusive mother's arrest
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS • Jerusalem Post

"Jerusalem's 'Eda Haredit' will boycott Hadassah Ein Karem Hospital, since its medical team fabricates libels against our community members and abuses them," declared Yoel 'Yoelish' Kraus, the 'operations officer' of the staunchly anti-Zionist haredi communal organization.

Speaking on Army Radio Wednesday morning, Kraus's statement came after a night of haredi riots in the capital, protesting the arrest of a Jerusalem woman apparently suffering from a psychiatric disorder, whose arrest for allegedly near-starving her three-year-old son to death was made public by police on Tuesday.

The mother of four, a member of the extreme Natorei Karta hassidic sect in Jerusalem who is five months pregnant, is suspected of severely abusing her child for two years, until he weighed a mere 7 kilograms, according to police investigators.

She was arrested last week during a meeting with a social worker.

In response, scores of haredi protesters took to the streets Tuesday night, setting garbage bins on fire on Rehov Bar-Ilan and in the Mea She'arim neighborhood, snarling traffic in the area, Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said.

A man who tried to move a burning garbage bin from the street was lightly injured when he was hit in the head by a stone. The man was taken to Jerusalem's Hadassah-University Hospital at Mount Scopus.

The young boy, who is hospitalized at Hadassah-University Hospital in serious condition, has been in and out of hospitals seven times over the past two years, suffering from high fever, vomiting, inflamed oral wounds and severe weight loss, police told a Jerusalem court during a Tuesday remand hearing. In addition to severe malnutrition, the child was found to be suffering from hair loss.

A series of medical tests subsequently performed by hospital surgeons to determine why the toddler could not eat or drink did not uncover any internal problems, the police said.

After all the tests came out negative, medical staffers who treated the boy for what seemed to be "failure to thrive" began to suspect the child had in fact been abused by his mother.

Dr. Yair Birnbaum, deputy director-general of the Hadassah Medical Organization, said that after noting that the symptoms did not result from a physical disease they had become more and more convinced that the problem was intentional abuse.

Then, after efforts to feed the child intravenously during one of his hospitalizations failed, security cameras installed in the room revealed that the mother had in fact disconnected the feeding tubes, and in some instances poured unknown substances into the tube, the police said.

The hospital then contacted welfare authorities, who did not have any previous record against her - though at least one doctor who had treated him had suspected the malnourished child was being mistreated.

The woman, a Mea She'arim resident, apparently suffers from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a psychiatric disorder wherein those affected abuse someone else, typically a child, in order to draw attention or sympathy to themselves.

In the rare syndrome, an individual - usually a mother - deliberately makes another person - generally her own preschool child - sick or convinces others that the person is sick. The parent or caregiver misleads others into thinking that the child has medical problems by lying and reporting fictitious episodes.

The perpetrators usually derive satisfaction from gaining the attention and sympathy of doctors, nurses and others who come into contact with them or possibly from being able to deceive people they consider to be more important and powerful than themselves.

The child's health has improved since he was separated from his mother, the court was told. Although still hospitalized in serious condition, he is now able to eat normally without vomiting and has gained 20 percent of his body weight.

The child's mother was remanded in custody for five days by the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court on Tuesday - her second remand hearing since her arrest - as police pursue the investigation.

A court gag order was lifted Tuesday afternoon, although the suspect's name cannot be published due to the involvement of minors in the case.

The woman is not cooperating with police, nor is her husband, a yeshiva student, who is now at home with their other children.

The boy's father, who was at the court remand hearing, claimed he didn't know about his wife's actions.

Police are investigating whether any of the couple's other children were similarly abused.

The police investigation of the children is compounded by the fact that they do not speak Hebrew.

The news of the woman's arrest sparked renewed rioting Tuesday night by members of the extremist haredi organization, which has been leading violent, month-old protests against the opening of a parking lot in the city on Saturdays.

On Sunday, haredim torched the neighborhood welfare office to protest the fact that the suspect was arrested there.

It was not immediately clear if the arrest in the abuse case within the community would further inflame the Sabbath protests.

At the urging of the defense, the court told prison officials to take into account that the alleged child abuser was five months pregnant, ate only food certified kosher by the Eda Haredit organization and had difficulty residing among smokers.

The case came on the heels of two separate severe child abuse cases uncovered in Israel last year.

Judy Siegel contributed to this report.

Ladaat.net has an amazing video taken from inside the riot. Apparently the riot ended after announcements were made saying "rabbis" wanted everyone to go home.. Those announcements were made, it seems, after police promised leaders of the Toldos Aron sect that the woman would be released from jail in the morning. In the video you get a sense of how large and threatening the demonstration is. Clearly there are hundreds of haredim involved.

Previous Post.

[Hat Tip for the wall poster: Joel Katz.]

Comments

[Phillip]

Heaven help Israel....... If these fools
ever become a government the whole country
will become Iran (2).

The founders of Israel must be turning over in their graves... This is not want they
wanted back in 1948.

[Dr. Dave]

OK. They are destroying welfare offices and boycotting hospitals.

Who are they hurting but themselves?

[Hometown Postville]

They can't stand their women, but everyone jumps to this one's defense when caught abusing one of the kids?? Or is that really the case? do they just want her returned to extract their own justice? Enlighten me on the logic behind any of this!

[soso]

Comment 1: I completely agree with you. The number 1 caracteristic of the pasdaran (guards of the revolution) in Iran was that they were rough, uncultivated idiots, and that you could not speak reasonably with them.

The same applies here: first they shoot, then they check what happened.
If I understand this sentence right
ל'בחדרי חרדים' נודע כי ההנהגה הרשמית מגנה את המעשים הללו. במגעים שנערכו בין מחלקת הרווחה להנהגת העדה החרדית סוכם כי המחלקה תמליץ על שחרור האישה, ובתמורה לא ייערכו הפגנות, והאשה תטופל על ידי גורמי מקצוע. הסיכום המדובר הגיע לאחר שהוצגו הוכחות ברורות על התנהגות האישה לילד הפגוע.
http://bhol.co.il/news_read.asp?id=10786&cat_id=1
the "leaders" of the riots got proof that the accusations (of starving the child) were founded.

The chareidi version of the story goes like this:

the woman is not disturbed, but the child is sick and was misdiagnosed and treated for cancer, the poor mother protested, in order to cover their own mistakes up the hospital staff had her arrested.

The misdiagnos of cancer and chemotherapy could perhaps be confirmed by the fact that the child lost his hair.

The theory that the hospital staff had her arrested is countered by the fact that they refused to have her arrested on hospital grounds.

the theory (published on the fakshevilim that prompted the riots) that she was asked to go urgently to the social welfare office, where she was arrested is countered by the version in the newspapers where it says that the police asked the social worker to tell them when the next interview was due.

[Yochanan Lavie]

HP: Fanatics of any stripe are misogynistic. But they circle the wagons when one of their own is attacked- no matter what the merits of the situation. This is typical fanatic behavior not confined to chareidim.

[ah-pee-chorus]

well we already knew from the kabbalist that doctors are liars.

[A Real Mother]

I vote for her to undergo madatory sterilization after the next baby is born, and to place that baby up for adoption.

[Todd Ellner]

Philip, Iran for all its problems is a functioning country. It has a vibrant if flawed political process. It has real schools and a normal economy. There's a dress code for women, but they go to university, have real jobs, vote, speak and can even sing.

These twits would turn Israel into Afghanistan under the Taliban and have everyone living in caves.. Infinitely worse.

[justayid]

to keep it in perspective, this seems to be only neturei karta, who are a minority within Satmar, which in turn is a minority within the Haredi world.

The odds of NK taking control of Israel anytime soon are rather less than the odds of becoming a billionaire by winning the lottery.

The possibilty of ALL Orthodox taking control of Israel is significantly higher, but the minute that happened, they would go after each other with an intenisty that would make Khameni vs Rafsanjani seem quite tame.

[ah-pee-chorus]

justayid :
i noticed you failed to respond to my post on the beit shemesh article where i responded to your snide remark intimating that i would need an anti-semitic source for my claim. i take that as your realization that you were just ill-informed regarding what is written in the talmud.

[Maven]

justayid: "they would go after each other with an intenisty that would make Khameni vs Rafsanjani seem quite tame."

the current conversion crisis is confirmation of your statement.

[kathiego]

I agree with you Real Mother. She doesn't deserve to keep those kids. They should all go for adoption. That mother needs psychiatric help!

[MisterApikoros]

If Israel were to go the way of Iran (or Afghanistan) they would soon cease to exist.

Most Americans would no longer support them, including most American Jews. We'd be working to get our relatives over to the USA, the real Promised Land.