A school employee appears to be sexually abusing young boys. And the school's principal allegedly will not take action to stop him.
The late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson
The heder in question has approximately 150 students.
The principal was once a Chabad emissary. He abruptly left his post, moved across the country and began teaching in this Chabad heder. After a few years, he became the heder's principal.
This principal's family is connected to one of Chabad's three international leaders based in Crown Heights (or, in the case of one of those three, Philadelphia).
The heder in question has a part time employee who is not a teacher and whose job does not involve teaching, counseling or working with children in any way. This man allegedly lures children into his office by offering them candy. He then closes the door and keeps the child inside his office for a period of time.
The office is windowless.
This behavior is unacceptable.
I'm told the principal knows about this behavior but has not taken any steps to stop it, even though he has been asked to do so.
I hope my sources are able to tell me no later than Tuesday that police have been contacted by Chabad and that steps have been taken by Chabad to remove the principal from his job and to ban him from teaching or working in any Chabad organization or institution that deals with children or vulnerable adults. The same ban should be in place for the part time employee, as well, unless or until police, after conducting a full forensic child sex abuse investigation, clear him.
The principal has an absolute obligation to protect his students from harm and his apparent refusal to act to do so in this case makes him unfit to work with children or other vulnerable people no matter what police find.
Chabad's own policy, which it touts whenever journalists ask about the issue, states that police must be called when child sex abuse is suspected.
I've noted previously that based on the evidence i've seen, the few such teachers and rabbis Chabad has reported are overwhelmingly people without yichus, meaning they lack important family connections and political power in the movement. Chabad's international leadership has also never condemned the alleged coverup of child sex abuse in several Chabad schools, most prominently the alleged child sexual abuse in Chabad's Yeshiva Centre in Melbourne, Australia and the coverup of this abuse by the late head of Chabad in Australia, Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Groner. Rabbi Groner's brother was an aide of the late rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Police have spoken to more than a dozen men who say they were sexually abused by the Yeshiva Centre's security head, David Cyprys, when they were students at the yeshiva.
Cyprys' trial begins this week.