Haredim Sexually Abuse Children Because They Don't Know It Is A Crime, Attorney Says
"After years of familiarity with this area, my theory is that many
ultra-Orthodox commit these acts because they are unaware that a
specific act is a crime and because a lack of awareness of the
punishments associated with these crimes. In the secular world, there is a crime, there's
a criminal, he's caught and punished and the news is relayed through
newspapers and television The message is clear. In the
ultra-Orthodox community, the media doesn't report [such crimes].
There's no newspaper or other place to hear about what happened to some
ultra-Orthodox person who committed a crime even if they were punished,
no one knows what happened to them. The neighbors think that they moved
abroad. One of the goals of punishment is deterrence, but there is none
in the ultra-Orthodox public. There is always someone will hide things."
Ha'aretz has an article on the alleged rape of a 5-year-old girl in the haredi town Modi'in IIllit. As you may remember, the supervisor of the town's kindergartens reported the rape; she now claims she made up the story because she has seen so many cases of child sexual abuse, she decided to create a storm over the issue to get haredim to focus on it.
Police aren't yet sure whether or not the rape took place, although they appear to have evidence that it did.
Ha'aretz talks to anti-abuse activists who think the ploy – if that is what it is – was a stunning success because, as one of them, attorney Rivka Schwartz, noted:
“The public debate that arose in the community is far more important than the issue of whether the incident took place or not," she says. “The fact that this was talked about in every house in the town is a huge achievement. The discussion may have happened without a real victim, but it evoked many other real cases. People suddenly remembered stories about some yeshiva teacher who did this or that. The multiple stories that surfaced emboldened others to speak out, and hopefully will also lead to filing of charges. From my perspective that's a big accomplishment."
What Schwartz – who was only licensed to practice law a few months ago – fails to mention is that a false claim like this gives haredi leaders the ability to argue that real claims are false, and it will make those haredi arguments more successful.
Ha'aretz also discusses the Nachlaot ritual child sex abuse panic, but does so without correctly reporting the facts:
This was the first case that tried someone accused of pedophilia in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Nahlaot that was at the center of a pedophilia scandal last year. The scandal was branded as it unfolded the largest case of pedophilia in Israeli history and along the way increased the awareness among the ultra-Orthodox public of the dangers of pedophilia in its community. At the height of the scandal, neighborhood residents claimed that no fewer than 200 neighborhood children had been harmed by a sophisticated ring of pedophiles operating in the neighborhood. The police arrested 15 neighborhood residents on suspicion of having been involved in various sexual acts with minors. But soon enough it became clear that the testimonies of children taken by youth investigators were not reliable enough to be used in court and most of the suspects were released. In the end, indictments were filed against only three suspects. One of the suspects, Binyamin Satz, was convicted last week with committing indecent acts with minors, three counts of sodomy with children. The cases against the remaining two suspects are still ongoing.
The defendants' lawyers as well as various people living in the neighborhood have raised the possibility that most if not all of the supposed pedophilia cases in the neighborhood were actually the result of a mass panic and not actual attacks. According to these people, an insular society like the ultra-Orthodox community in Nahlaot didn't know how to deal with the phenomenon of potential child abuse and was dragged into a witch-hunt that ensnared innocent people. On the other hand, many parents of the children who filed complaints feel that the police didn't understand the codes of conduct in the community and, consequently, didn't find the children's testimony to be reliable. Some parents also claim that because the community is a very insular and conservative one, the children could not have fabricated testimony describing various acts of sexual abuse on their own and, thus, they should be believed.
What Ha'aretz fails to tell you is that parents and local freelance social workers corrupted evidence. They also induced children to agree with adult statements about abuse that supposedly happened to the kids.
At the same time, a mentally ill rape victim known for smearing people she doesn't like (and for smearing others she doesn't have any real hostility to but who become collateral damage) began to incite Nachlaot's parents against some of these people.
Haredim are great lovers of conspiracy theories because, for the most part, haredim do not think logically. Their education tells them to believe the stories that science and history prove wrong, to deny the reality around them in order to make the Torah literally true. It is not a great leap from believing the universe is literally less than 6,000 years old or that a talking donkey argued with an evil prophet to believing that there is a ring of more than one dozen pedophiles who use children in sexual rituals and hide ther evidence in secret tunnels running between their houses.
On the other hand, Israel police were woefully slow in responding to parents complaints as was social services.
This toxic combination created the panic.
As for change in Israel's haredi community, the truth is that haredim who want to fight the haredi community's status quo on dealing with child sexual abuse in Israel, the UK and other locations outside the US have been encouraged and emboldened by what anti-haredi-child-sexual-abuse activists have been able to accomplish in the US.
Schwartz believes haredim molest because they don't know it is crime to do so:
Schwartz, who became an accredited lawyer only half a year ago, became acquainted with cases of severe sexual abuse in the ultra-Orthodox community during her internship with the State Prosecutor's Office and after a friend broke her own silence and confessed to her that she had been the victim of sexual abuse.
"After years of familiarity with this area, my theory is that many ultra-Orthodox commit these acts because they are unaware that a specific act is a crime and because a lack of awareness of the punishments associated with these crimes," says Schwartz. In her words, ultra-Orthodox society is not aware enough of the relation between crime and punishment.
"In the secular world, there is a crime, there's a criminal, he's caught and punished and the news is relayed through newspapers and television," says Schwartz. "The message is clear. In the ultra-Orthodox community, the media doesn't report [such crimes]. There's no newspaper or other place to hear about what happened to some ultra-Orthodox person who committed a crime even if they were punished, no one knows what happened to them. The neighbors think that they moved abroad. One of the goals of punishment is deterrence, but there is none in the ultra-Orthodox public. There is always someone will hide things."
Schwartz believes that this difference is significant. "[A situation] has been created where people are ignorant of the punishment. An ultra-Orthodox person who commits a crime because of a momentary impulse says to themself that it's their own problem and that will find a way to square things with God. He doesn't know how serious [his crime] is in this world, that there is also someone here who can punish him."
Schwartz's claim that haredim molest children because they don't know it is crime or don't think the crime is serious is largely false.
Every haredi man knows that anal sex between two males is a serious crime in halakha. Every haredi man knows that secular society punishes child sexual abuse.
What Schwartz may be trying to say is that in child sexual abuse cases where there is no anal penetration, halakha has not much to say about it. "Spilling seed" – a male orgasm when his penis is not inside a woman's vagina – is a crime in halakha (with some exceptions for married couples). But that crime is not punished by man. There is no beit din, Jewish court, proceeding, no fine, no reparations paid to the victim, no imprisonment, no lashing, no stoning. The crime is sin, and the sin is punished by God alone.
In other words, child sexual abuse without penetration is a sin like masturbation is a sin. And despite the kabbalistic claims about the severity of masturbation, halakhicly it is no big deal. And neiter is child sexual abuse.
This is, in essence, what Rabbi Manis Friedman claimed and what Rabbi Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg claimed before him.
Haredim do need to be made to understand that secular law will not tolerate this, that sexual abuse of children will be punished to the fullest extent of our laws – not theirs.
The way to do this is to put more haredi pedophiles behind bars and to prosecute and imprison the haredi rabbis and community activists who try to obstruct justice.
But Schwartz is right about one thing – the haredi media and the rabbis who control it are complicit in these crimes.
One of the ways we will know that true change has taken place will be that haredi newspapers, websites and radio stations accurately and completely report all haredi child sexual abuse cases. So far, the haredi media has reported none of them.
[Hat Tip: HeathenHassid.]
Right they learn so much toireh that they have no idea of what is wrong or right in their eys molestation is just part of their sick life they are all sick mentally and no one cares enought to commit them into a lunatic asylem there are just too many of them sick, it will overwhelm the institution.
Posted by: jancsibacsi | February 09, 2013 at 08:41 PM
Haredim Sexually Abuse Children Because They Don't Know It Is A Crime, Attorney Says
How silly, this implies that the only thing that stops people from sexually abusing children is that it is illegal. What gibberish!
Posted by: Albert | February 09, 2013 at 08:48 PM
Haredim Sexually Abuse Children Because They Don't Know It Is A Crime, Attorney Says
How silly, this implies that the only thing that stops people from sexually abusing children is that it is illegal. What gibberish!
Posted by: Albert | February 09, 2013 at 08:50 PM
does anyone have any actual statistics of the rate of molestation in NY Haredi communities? I heard Rabbi Rosenberg mention 1 out of 5 on the CNN report.
Posted by: Eugene | February 09, 2013 at 08:54 PM
"Don't cram your cock into little children" may not be in toireh, but Jesus H. Christ how degenerate do you have to be to realize it's not a nice thing to do?
And even if there are some ignoramuses who don't know it's a crime it doesn't matter. Ignorance of the Law is not a defense.
Posted by: A. Nuran | February 09, 2013 at 09:19 PM
I did not have any sexual experiences during my tenure at Chaim Berlin nor did I know of any homosexual incidents among students or rebbe'im during my time there (I dormed there from age 13 to 22 during the latter part of the tenure of Rav Hutner as Rosh Yeshiva -- I was NOT in New York or at Chaim Berlin during ANY of Aaron Shechter's tenure as Rosh Yeshiva).
This "1 in 5" deal must have been very covert or must be a recent phenomena that's arisen during the 1980's to today or it must have occurred at other places than Chaim Berlin.
Posted by: R. Wisler | February 09, 2013 at 09:22 PM
Every time I hear about naive Yerushalmis and charedim, I want to vomit.
They choose to ignore the laws of the Zionist State. Therefore, they don't commit a crime of any kind. However, they all know what is an aveirah. Some behaviors are inherently heinous, and everybody knows they are crimes. The naive one is Schwartz.
Rabbis and religious leaders protect the guilty because of fear of reprisals against them and their families, personal involvement in a crime (being a molester or the molested), or believe that a molester can do tshuvah or is sick, not criminal.
Posted by: Bas Melech | February 09, 2013 at 09:52 PM
Um, these allegations seems implausible on the face of it; and no evidence or studies offered. Just some know-it-ally sorts of assertions; like it all is just self-evident.
Posted by: Yoel Mechanic | February 09, 2013 at 10:41 PM
Posted by: R. Wisler | February 09, 2013 at 09:22 PM
I was in Satmer in the 60’s and it was prevalent. I don’t know if other yeshivas were as much action as in Satmer, but that is not Molestation in the eyes of the judicial systems, because, the age of both participants is close to each other. What the article is talking about sexual molestation, whereby an adult is molesting a child or teenager.
Posted by: Joe Field | February 09, 2013 at 11:58 PM
Not so much applicable to this story but thursday night I was in a strip club near Monsey and there were 2 Hasidic men there. One of the funniest moments of my life was watching one of them take off his vest and tzitit before getting a lap dance!
Posted by: Jake24 | February 10, 2013 at 12:28 AM
It is not a great leap from believing the universe is literally less than 6,000 years old or that a talking donkey argued with an evil prophet to believing that there is a ring of more than one dozen pedophiles who use children in sexual rituals and hide ther evidence in secret tunnels running between their houses.
The same thing went on for years in the evangelical subculture (many still believe it). It's a phenomenon common to subcultures based upon repressive ideologies.
Schwartz sounds as though she herself comes from that world. I often find this attitude among former evangelicals as well; they want so desperately to think well of the family and friends they left behind. They can't bear to think of them as being ill-intentioned.
Posted by: Jeff | February 10, 2013 at 02:43 AM
right....
they don't know it's wrong!
C'MON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
omg
but me wearing sleeves that expose my elbows is wrong.
me not wearing socks with my sandels is wrong.
me eating vegetarian is an unkosher restaurant is wrong.
okaaaaaay
Posted by: ruthie | February 10, 2013 at 04:02 AM
Its not that "haredim do not think logically." Besides being unnecessarily offensive, I think it is inaccurate. Some Haredim, the ones who don't slack off and pretend they are learning to avoid the draft and getting skills to get a job, are really able to follow complex logic of the gemara, the commentaries on it and Halakha, but that is not why I say this. I say that Haredim think logically, because logic is something innate and hard to unlearn completely.
Instead, I suggest that the Haredim are working with some crazy assumptions and starting points. Just like kids, http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/188/kid-logic . What also stops them from reaching logical conclusions is that they are more distrustful of facts from the real world than Fox News viewers and conspiracy theorists.
Posted by: Seraphya Berrin | February 10, 2013 at 04:53 AM
I say that Haredim think logically, because logic is something innate and hard to unlearn completely.
Yeah, we've seen some prime examples on this blog of Haredi "logic".
Posted by: Jeff | February 10, 2013 at 05:26 AM
Either way, once a few people starting serving long sentences in jail, people will learn that it's not the thing to do. I am sure everyone in Satmar in NY now knows it's illegal with severe consequences.
Posted by: Steven | February 10, 2013 at 06:18 AM
I say that Haredim think logically, because logic is something innate and hard to unlearn completely.
I think hasreidim dont think at all, if they would they would live their lives behaving and dressing differently then their ancesstors did prewar europe in shtettels.for gods sake we live in a big city where theese hassidim look like weirdos circus performers,if you cant fathom that then there is something very very wrong with youre brain
Posted by: jancsibacsi | February 10, 2013 at 08:57 AM
According to the Halakah, man of any age can marry girl as young as three, WITHOUT HER CONSENT, by giving Dmei Kiddushin to her father, or even by RAPING HER WITH HER FATHER’S PERMISSION.
Therefore, Haredim cannot see sex with children as sick, criminal, and amoral and PER SE-for them, the “problem” is only in lack of “formalities”, such as obtaining father’s consent and rewarding him for it. Consistently, rape of underage girl is considered CIVIL offence toward HER FATHER, because it was done without his permission and without paying him appropriate “fee” for his daughter body.
So, it is not surprising that so many Haredi men, who are studding 24/7 these degenerative Talmudic laws as holy of holiness, are predominantly sexual abusers. Lack of natural contact with female age-mates, and some degree of mental and emotional degeneration because or close-relatives marriages (in order to keep “Yihus”), also contribute to the picture.
Posted by: Russian PhD | February 10, 2013 at 11:03 AM
They don't know what crime is. Any crime. They only know from what they learn in their ghettos, and the wealthier find Machiavellian purpose in sustaining ghetto stunted thought.
If someone does something that riles up the ghetto people or their world of benefactors, there is no punishment. They may, under that code of un-ethics, have a feeling or even knowledge that certain behavior is un-good... but it's never bad and there aren't any substantive repercussions for dishonesty or un-goodness.
They look at the components of commission of a crime as a template of behavior and call it by another name. A rose by any other name is not a rose. Secular society is here to benefit them. And it does. Why should they change?
Posted by: dh | February 10, 2013 at 03:08 PM
@Russian PhD- That sounds pretty disturbing to me, especially as a father of 2 little girls. May I inquire where in the Chumash are these halachos established?(I forgot, lol)
Posted by: Eugene | February 10, 2013 at 06:44 PM
So when I get to olam haba, I'll be excused for not being observant because I didn't know it was an aveira? Because that's what all of my authority figures tell me.
Posted by: Jeff | February 11, 2013 at 01:31 PM
There's a number of charges these miscreants could be brought up on, but who will have the backbone to stand up for the rights of the innocent victims and put an end to this depraved, high-risk behaviour once and for all?
"Abuse": Physical or nonphysical misuse or maltreatment or use or treatment so as to injure, hurt, or damage.
"Apostacy": The ancient criminal offence of atheism or not being Christian, or of denying the doctrines of a state religion.
"Automatism": An act done by a person who is not conscious of what he is doing.
"Deliberate Ignorance": Willful blindness to criminal activity.
"Depravity of Mind": A degree of moral turpitude and psychical debasement associated with a crime such as repeated and excessive acts of physical abuse or unreasonably brutality or outrageously and wantonly vile, horrible, and inhuman.
"Ignorantia Juris Non Excusat": Latin: Ignorance of the law is no excuse.
"Manslaughter": Unlawful killing of a human being without malice or deliberation.
"Pedophilia": A medical condition causing a sexual preference for young children.
"Physical Force": Power, violence, or pressure directed against an individual consisting in a physical act.
"Psychopath": An individual with an abnormal personality charterised by irresponsibility, lack of emotional control, impulsiveness resulting in unstable adaptations to environment.
"Sexual Assault": A sexual act upon or directed to another which is unwanted and not consented to by the other.
Source: Criminal Law Dictionary
Posted by: Vigilant Citizen | February 15, 2013 at 03:20 AM
I remember I once told a Hasidic Rabbi, a son of a big dayan, that drugs and prostitution were legal in the Netherlands (we were visiting kivrei tzaddikim together in Amsterdam). He was surprised that prostitution was illegal in most of the US. It is possible that some Haredim know that it is a sin to molest children but not be aware that the civil law prohibits it.
Posted by: once upon a time | March 14, 2013 at 10:34 AM